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International Marketing MKT630

Lesson # 18

INTERNATIONAL MARKETING RESEARCH PROCESS

Four Steps of International Marketing Research

Framework for international marketing research:

Marketing research are the formal studies of specific situations. As discussed in the earlier lectures

major issue in decision making is that managers often fail to appropriately understand the issues or

problems and hence end up making right decisions for wrong problems. Since international markets are

often foreign to a marketer there are even more chances that the marker mat miss-understand the

problems / issues. To avoid such scenarios it is beneficial first to conduct exploratory research for

understanding the issues / situation better.

business

research

process

consists

four

steps;

Step 1:

Defining the problem (the decision for which info. is needed) and research objectives along with:

market structure

· size of market, stage of development etc.

product concept

· meaning of product in a particular environment

Marketing research project may have one of the three types of objectives;

· Exploratory research - is to gather preliminary information that will help define the problem

and suggest hypothesis

· Descriptive research -

is to describe things such as market potential for a product,

demographics, or attitudes of customers

· Causal research - is to test hypothesis about cause-and-effect relationships

Step 2:

Once research objectives are properly defined the marketer / researcher should then develop the detailed

plan for conducting the research. A detailed research plan should include the following five aspects;

Developing the research plan

Determining specific information needs

research objectives must be translated into specific information needs

Plan for gathering secondary information

information that already exists somewhere, having been collected for another purpose -

relevant, current, impartial (objectively collected & reported)

Primary data collection plan

information collected for the specific purpose at hand - research approaches : observation,

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International Marketing MKT630

survey, experiment

Deciding contact method

mail, telephone, personal

Detailing the sampling plan

sampling unit, sample size, sampling procedure

Step 3:

Implementing the research plan

· data collection phase is generally the most expensive & most subject to error - wrong

implementation, problems in contacting respondents, biased or dishonest answers,

problems with interviewers (mistakes or short-cuts)

Step 4:

Interpreting and reporting the findings

· both researchers & managers must work together at this stage - researchers know

methodology better while managers understand problems and possible management solutions

better