A Summary of our latest report —Feeling Good: Powering the Next Generation of Fitness and Medtech.
Today’s consumer is spending less on acquiring things and more on doing things, and this trend is making its way into the fitness and medical industries.
Research shows that when consumers feel good about their fitness regimen, they are more likely to continue the program. In short, the outcome consumers are looking for is not just looking good; but also feeling good.
So what do consumers want from their fitness routines? And what do they want from their gym experience?
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This report examines the top technology trends in the health, fitness, and medical industries. Download the complete report here.
Trend 1: Wearing your heart on your sleeve
You will see wearable fitness devices on professional marathon runners, casual gym-goers, and even those attempting to become more active.
The simple steps tracker has evolved into our trusted health advisor, dietician, and fitness trainer.
It is no wonder, then, that worldwide shipments of wearable devices from 2020-2021 showed an increase of 27.2 percent.
The increased use of the Internet, 5G technologies, and constant innovations have made North America the dominant market, with a 38.6 percent market share. The Asia Pacific is the fastest-growing market.
Consumers are taking charge of their well-being with wearable technology.
Rising health awareness, a sedentary and hectic lifestyle, increasing healthcare costs, the growing prevalence of chronic diseases like diabetes and obesity, and the increasing popularity of the Internet of Things (IoT) are driving the market. As health and fitness took centre stage during the pandemic, it accelerated the adoption of wearable fitness trackers.
Trend 2: The growing application of wearable technology in the medical device Industry
The healthcare industry has seen the growing popularity of wearables significantly impacting the prevention and treatment of many chronic diseases.
The pandemic has changed our relationship with sleep and its therapeutic benefits. Consumers are more aware of the health benefits of quality sleep and are using sleep-tracking technology to understand their sleep patterns better.
Download the complete report to discover Oura ring’s foray into Health and Medtech
The Future of Holistic Healthcare Smart Wearable Devices.
Wearables have many life-altering benefits that make them invaluable in the medical field.
Download our complete report to learn the various use cases of wearable devices in diagnosing, monitoring, and treating chronic diseases.
Initially, North America led the world with the highest share of wearable device sales; however, the Asia Pacific region has recently grown leaps and bounds, becoming the fastest-growing region.
Download our complete report to learn more about the leading countries in the sector.
Trend 3: Taking the gym home
The trend of bringing home the gym with smart home equipment took off during the lockdown as gyms had to shut down worldwide.
Also, read an in-depth analysis of why 1.4 million users are paying a premium for the Peloton bike.
Trend 4: Fitness apps and AI-powered personal trainers
The lockdown forced people to shift from physical gyms and fitness studios to virtual fitness classes, which led to a considerable number of apps being downloaded, giving an impetus to the fitness app market.
The increased prevalence of chronic diseases or diseases that prevail over the long term, like diabetes and obstructive pulmonary disease, is driving the growth of fitness and nutrition apps.
Trend 5: Mental health goes digital
In 2020, we saw an uptick in downloads of mental wellness apps, as the pandemic and its repercussions propelled this growth. Developers of apps are delivering on market demand, as 20,000 mental apps are available for download today.
Many of these apps emphasise mindfulness and meditation and go beyond providing support from a traditional therapist. Mental health apps also offer professional online therapy sessions on the go.
While the number of app downloads is a good metric, returning users is the fundamental metric for an app’s success.
Trend 6: Entering the fitness metaverse
Companies are creating immersive fitness experiences by partnering with premium gaming and fitness brands.
This is bringing about a trend in fitness gamification, a new generation of immersive exercises and workouts using music, visuals, wearables, and instructors to offer users an exciting, immersive experience.
Putting our bodies (and data) out there
Data security risks are one of the biggest challenges we face as we move mountains in the fitness tech industry. These trackers can allow hackers to intercept personal data, and if the data is not adequately protected, it can make us vulnerable to unauthorised users accessing our information.
}The future of wearable technologies is in the health and medical sectors. Although some companies, like Apple, have tight privacy controls for users, there is not enough research on wearable tech for digital health technologies’ security, data rights, and ethics.
The ubiquitous use of the Internet and smartphones and the shifting tendency toward healthier lifestyles and increased wellbeing have sparked significant growth in the global fitness and medical device technologies market.
This summary of the report, “The Asian Consumer: 4 Key Trends for the Next Normal,” examines the purchasing trends, consumer characteristics, and brand preferences of major Asian markets that embody a unique national and cultural identity.
If you want to grow your company’s presence in Asia, make sure you read the full report here.
This report is based on the analysis of local experts across Kadence International’s eight Asian offices: China, India, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Japan.
In this summary, let’s look at how four driving forces are changing the consumer landscape in major Asian markets.
Read the full report to determine what drives consumer interest and engagement in individual countries in the region.
Trend One: Changes in food and shopping patterns
Since the beginning of 2020, wet markets have taken a hit in popularity and accessibility throughout the Asia Pacific region, just like the rest of the world. This trend is unlikely to change substantially in the coming years, and therefore, Asian consumers are starting to look for food and grocery alternatives.
Read the full report to learn more about the impact of COVID19 on wet markets across major South Asian countries, including China, India, the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore, and Indonesia.
There is a burgeoning demand for meal kits and prepared foods. Asian consumers are lured toward meal kits not only due to their convenience and simplicity but also the healthy food options and the high-quality food products included in these popular “Next Gen TV Dinners.”
Read the full report to discover the key players in the Meal Kits market in China.
While most industry experts don’t predict the demise of wet markets and wildlife trade any time soon, changes in Asian consumer behaviors and preferences in what food they eat and how they purchase it continue to evolve.
Adopt a Cow, a new entrant in dairy within China, capitalized on these changes to capture the dairy market that two leading Chinese dairy brands previously dominated. Adopt a Cow connected with China’s consumers in a way that spoke to their evolving tastes and behaviors.
Read this intriguing case study to discover how this new dairy brand broke into the market and faced its competition head-on, ultimately becoming the leading dairy company in China.
Trend Two: In the age of Zoom, work from home has altered how we work and live at home.
The WFH employment trend is destined to stay in some form well into 2022 and beyond. Even after the pandemic, the Asian workforce will continue working 80% from home in some hybrid form. For Asian consumers, this translates into not just the way they work, but even more so, a new relationship with the space in which they now both live and work.
Unlike workers in both China and Japan, employees in India prefer video conferences rather than in-person meetings. It is also interesting that companies in Asia do not embrace remote working options for their employees as readily as businesses in the West.
Japan has some of the lowest WFH employees in all of Asia. Like many households throughout the region, Japanese remote workers deal with small, overcrowded home environments and cramped spaces that are less conducive to productivity. In many parts of Japan, space has always been tight and comes at a premium.
Savvy homebuilders in Japan knew it was time to rethink the Tiny House model into Tiny Home Office structures.
Read the case study to learn how a real estate company found a market among those struggling to work in tight spaces at home with Tiny Home Office.
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Trend Three: Gen Z and the demand for customizable consumer goods.
Gen Z is poised to set market trends for many years to come.
According to McKinsey & Company, Asia’s consumerism is rapidly growing and expected to reach 3 billion by 2030, a 50 percent increase from today’s consuming class.
Discover how the convergence of personalization and social media influencers drives consumer engagement for Gen Z Asian consumers in the full report here.
To build a personal brand on TikTok, Gen Z Asian consumers feel the need to create a unique personal online identity. This is why they gravitate toward products that allow room for personalization, customization, and exclusivity.
While many major luxury brands have jumped on the customization trend, the best example of the popularity of personalization comes from a rubber shoe company.
Learn how Crocs exploded in the Asian Marketplace through customization and celebrity influencers.
India is among the top five nations globally in beauty and cosmetics manufacturing and distribution. Mass beauty in India possesses a market value of more than $11 billion, with an additional $3 billion if you add hair care and personal hygiene products. There is also a growing market for customizable beauty products.
Discover the exceptional opportunities for industry innovators entering the Indian beauty market in the case study when you download the full report here.
Trend Four: The rise of Electric Vehicles.
China is the global leader in electromobility, with a 5.75 percent market share of electric cars in the Asia Pacific region.
Even though September 2021 car sales in China took a 17 percent dip year over year, electric automobile sales in the country trended up with a jaw-dropping 355,000 registered electric vehicles that month. The year-over-year growth rate was more than 170 percent, and these Chinese consumer buying trends are expected to continue to grow well into the future.
Japan is lagging in this category with a 0.64% market share. India follows Japan occupying the seventh position with a relatively low 0.06% market share.
On the other hand, Singaporean consumers welcome the onset of the age of electric cars.
Sales of Teslas in Singapore have also substantially increased throughout 2021, rising from just 30 cars sold in the first six months of the year to nearly 500 in Q3 alone, even though these cars cost more than three times the cost of the US sticker price.
Read the full report to discover EV trends and consumer demand in all major countries in the region.
Trusted by
Like virtually all aspects of modern life, the market research industry has undergone an explosive change in our COVID-19 pandemic era. While most of the principles of market research remain intact, brands worldwide have had to refine and modify their research methods as part of this “new reality.”
Generally speaking, market research starts with a “wide-angle” look at the spheres of influence upon a market (including new and changing customer behaviours, emerging industry trends, etc.), then zooms in on specific nuances within a target audience.
The data collection and analysis gained from in-depth market research offer brands “a clear and detailed understanding of what your customers want, what they already like, where they conduct their own research, and much more.” Understanding the broader context of a market enables companies to:
- Gain insights into how customers use their products or services
- Differentiate their offerings from competitors
- Lay the groundwork for successful product upgrades or launches
- Identify new opportunities for growth
These insights gained can set the tone and messaging for a brand’s marketing efforts both now and in the year to come.
Here’s a look at key trends in the market research industry today and what lies ahead on the horizon for 2022.
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Trend #1: Agility and Technology
Despite the changes wrought by the pandemic and other global forces, one factor remains constant: the continual evolution of technology underpinning advanced market research.
Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, for example, enable researchers to gather information from an increasingly wide range of distinct sources. These advances also contribute to a new emphasis on agile research and speed of insight. Various elements include:
Automation of routine research practices. Automating the more routine facets of research facilitates a speedier analysis and interpretation of findings. This helps researchers save considerable time and effort while winnowing down to what’s truly essential in their work.
Shorter and smarter polls and surveys. Employing surveys that can be positioned and distributed quickly (and which take respondents only a short time to fill out) are a further boon to the speed of analysis and insight. This approach involves identifying a “mobile-reliant” population that will actively engage in a poll or survey upon request, and within a brief period of time.
Ongoing research. Agile research equals ongoing research. In a global marketplace that’s continuously in flux, the insights garnered from one survey can dramatically change by the time a new survey is undertaken. In the same respect, researchers can expand on findings garnered from one survey to craft a new, more specialized survey that focuses on changing factors in the marketplace.
As we have stated before, “when you know your offerings suit current and emerging customer needs, your business will develop a reputation for being wholly customer-centric that your competitors can’t match.”
Trend #2: AI, Machine Learning, and Emotion
If 2021 is any guide, we can expect the avalanche of raw data to keep increasing in the year to come. The vast array of sources promises to generate more information than researchers can ever hope to compile and analyze on their own. That’s why AI and machine learning are invaluable for research purposes.
Emotion AI, for example, seeks to “decode” human emotion by analyzing voice patterns, eye movements, facial expressions, and a range of non-verbal cues—all designed to generate data that enhances a brand’s capacity for linking emotion to consumer behavioural patterns. By evaluating consumer responses to a proposed upgrade or new product launch, emotion AI can more precisely “read” human feelings and gauge the success or failure of a new venture.
As MIT Sloan notes, “New artificial intelligence technologies are learning and recognizing human emotions, and using that knowledge to improve everything from marketing campaigns to health care.”
Trend #3: Social Listening
Interacting directly with customers often yields the most pertinent data for marketing trends. But engaging in social listening can be an equally effective research method.
Social listening involves analyzing social media conversations and trends related to your brand to your industry. This extends beyond monitoring basic metrics such as “likes” or “mentions” or “followers,” with a focus instead on the buyer’s mood behind the data.
Customers frequently express their sentiments about products and services on popular social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.). Market researchers can look at this as real-time feedback about customer preferences, brand awareness, the inroads made by competitors, etc.
In this respect, social listening offers a beneficial way of gauging customer sentiment (what they like and don’t like about the purchasing experience, preferences regarding how a purchase is made, and so on).
For effective social listening, research methodology can include the following actions:
- Search on the most popular social platforms for branded keywords, phrases, or product names.
- Explore customer review sections on platforms.
- Learn about customer sentiments regarding competitors.
- Anticipate potential new trends using Google Trends or other social media listening tools.
- Identify relevant or industry-specific social media influencers.
Social listening should be “a critical component of any company’s marketing strategy, as it allows you to react and respond to customer sentiment — and gather data to make improvements in the way your business runs,” notes Reputation.com. In essence, social listening is like “your very own perpetual focus group, rich with constantly updated and actionable business intelligence.”
Trend #4: Longitudinal Studies
There has been a steady increase in longitudinal studies for long-range market research, and the trend will continue in 2022. This approach works most effectively when a brand wishes to continuously monitor a fixed sample of its target audience over a pre-determined timeframe.
Longitudinal studies, also known as continuous research, tracks consumer and market attitude trends over extended periods. To do so, researchers gather information from the same sources through a long-term methodology that yields insights into buying habits or consumer response to a new product or service launch.
Trend #5: DIY
Another emerging trend is the do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to market research. The proliferation of agile or smart research tools enables in-house teams to conduct surveys and other research activities, often using a centralized online platform. Types of DIY market research include:
- Interviews with existing and potential customers through surveys, questionnaires, or focus groups
- Segmentation of the target audience into clearly defined groups (demographic, behavioural, psychographic, and geographic)
- Product testing, in many cases, before a brand reaches the initial production stage
- Measuring satisfaction with loyal customers
DIY research should aim for gaining “insights into how happy your customers are and any specific areas they like or dislike.” This enables brands to:
- Identify any areas of current (or potential) concern.
- Drill down to core issues by identifying (and then interacting with) dissatisfied customers.
- Determine what’s needed to improve customer attitudes and experiences.
One caveat worth mentioning regarding DIY marketing. As Forbes notes, “if you go to a third party [for market research], you’re going to likely get a different perspective than what you would get from your own team. There’s also a greater chance that the perspective you receive is an unbiased one, which is healthy” and potentially more insightful about what a target audience truly cares about.”
Trend #6: Aligning Brand Mission and Values with Customers
In 2022 and beyond, market research will continue to explore the value of aligning a company’s mission statement and the values of its customer base.
Gone are the days when a brand could tell consumers what it stands for and leave it at that. Today’s savvy customers do their research to determine if a brand “walks the walk,” particularly concerning those values consumers hold dear—be it the environment and sustainability, income inequality, racial harmony, and so on.
Consumers who prefer brands aligned with their values often become very loyal once they identify that brand. However, if and when customers detect a lack of consistency between what’s expressed in a mission statement and what actions a brand takes, they may abandon that company and seek out more compatible businesses to support.
In 2022, brands are encouraged to take a fresh look at their mission and values and how these are communicated to a target audience. Monitoring social media conversations around these values can illuminate the process of refining a company’s mission statement. It’s also an excellent opportunity to look into making a fresh commitment to support the causes and initiatives that a brand’s audience considers most valuable in their own lives.
Market research trends come and go, but the end result remains consistent from the past to the future. The primary objectives are always:
- Improving products or services
- Generating more sales
- Delivering expected results
- Enhancing customer service
- Boosting customer retention
Market research supports the need for brands to maintain agility in an ever-shifting marketplace. Customer needs never remain static. If a brand meets current needs—and, better yet, anticipates future customer needs—its place in the global market will be stronger and more durable than that of its competitors.
Each year, an average of 30,000 new products enter the marketplace (that’s enough to fill the average grocery store!), and 70% will fail to sustain or grow sales in the first two years.
How does a brand ensure that a new product stands out in the sea of competition? How does it increase the odds of success?
The key is to avoid a one-size-fits-all approach and instead get the correct product in front of the right customers at the proper time.
To achieve this level of specificity, brands must use proper market segmentation. This practice allows a company to focus its product development and marketing efforts narrowly.
What is market segmentation?
At its most basic, market segmenting is breaking a broad swath of potential customers into smaller customer groups with similar characteristics. A company can then design products and marketing campaigns tailored to the needs and interests of a particular target market.
Few companies have the resources to sell to a mass market. Most must focus their efforts to meet more limited budget constraints.
Market segmentation identifies the many different reasons people purchase products to help companies make smaller investments with more significant returns.
The more that a brand can narrow the audience for a new product, the more likely it can successfully sell to them. Rather than trying to persuade a generic customer base to buy a product they may or may not want, you can place the product in front of people who need it.
Benefits of market segmentation
Market segmentation provides valuable customer insights that can be used to create many positive business outcomes.
● Product development: By identifying narrow market segments and researching their specific needs, brands can create products that satisfy those exact pain points. These specialized offers will have little to no competition.
● Business growth: The more a company understands various market segments, the more it can expand by moving into new geographic areas, offering complementary products to existing customers, or creating new products to appeal to a previously uninterested audience.
● Optimized marketing: Using the insights from segmentation research, marketing teams can create highly targeted messages on the most relevant platforms. Even
better, they can make calculated decisions about media spend to reduce costs.
● Better distribution strategies: Knowing where and when your customers shop can help you change or tweak your distribution strategies to streamline and save money while improving customer satisfaction.
● Customer retention: Done well, market segmentation can create brand loyalty. When you’re able to anticipate and address a customer’s needs at every turn, they are far more likely to become repeat buyers and brand advocates.
A company that takes the time and energy to cultivate a deep understanding of its customers is almost guaranteed to have a competitive advantage. It’s far more likely to expand its market share and profits.
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Types of market segmentation
There are four main types of market segmentation, each of which offers a different method for identifying clear attributes unique to a particular group of customers.
Geographic segmentation
It can be helpful to group customers by a specific area—from a country down to a neighbourhood.
This approach is particularly effective for products and services that address localized concerns. This may include items affected by the weather (lawn care, clothing) or regional preferences (cuisine, sports, or other recreational activities).
To use geographic segmentation, break down potential customers by identifying characteristics such as state, county, zip code, climate, primary language, or population density.
Demographic segmentation
It’s helpful to group customers by quantifiable factors like age, income level, family size, religion, race, nationality, language, educational level, marital status, occupation, home ownership, political party affiliation, or income.
Demographic information is generally easy and affordable to access, which makes this type of segmentation one of the simplest to use.
A product may use demographic segmentation to position itself as the best solution for a specific type of person (for example, married men, 30 to 40 years old, who have a full-time job earning $100,000 or more and own a home).
Demographic segmentation may not be detailed enough to create distinct product differentiation. That’s why it’s often combined with another type of segmentation to narrow the customer group further.
Psychographic segmentation
One of the most detailed forms of market segmentation divides customers based on qualitative traits. These details can’t be easily measured like demographics and include things like values, habits, attitudes or opinions, personality, lifestyle or social status, and hobbies or activities.
Gathering psychographic information requires more effort and can be achieved using surveys, focus groups, interviews, and social media monitoring.
Once you’ve identified shared psychographics for a particular market segment, turn it into a statement. For example, “we help busy moms who want to serve their young children a home-cooked meal in 30 minutes or less.” Then, ask your target audience whether the statement resonates with them.
Very often, marketers like to combine psychographic segmentation with demographic segmentation to create very distinct customer groups.
Behavioural segmentation
Finally, another popular method of market segmentation is based on customer behaviour during the buying journey.
Behavioural segmentation considers actions like when shoppers become customers (acquisition), how customers use the product or service (user journey), how frequently they use it (engagement), how long they continue to use it (retention), and how often they make new purchases (loyalty).
This method can be complicated to execute but is likely to generate beneficial insights. It’s often the best way to identify opportunities for new products or markets and for improving existing offerings.
How to validate a segment
To be worthwhile, a segment must be clearly defined and unique. To test whether your potential market segment makes the grade, ask yourself these questions:
- What does this segment value most about a product like ours?
- What is the number one reason this segment chooses to buy a product like ours?
- What is the buying journey for this segment (what content, platform, features are crucial)?
The answers to these questions must be based on data from actual research, not just your intuition or anecdotal experiences.
If you can easily and with great detail answer each of these questions, then your segment has great potential to be actionable and profitable.
If you don’t have clear answers, however, then you likely need to do more research or further refine the segment.
How to segment the market for a new product
The market segmentation process isn’t complicated. There are two major components—creating segments and executing a go-to-market plan—and a few significant considerations at each stage:
Customer Segments
- Set an objective for what you hope to achieve through market segmentation (create a new product, better serve existing clients, find more profitable customers, etc.).
- Identify which segmentation type or combination of types you’ll use, and assess the viability of your proposed market (Is it too large? Is it large enough?)
- Conduct research by collecting hard data and anecdotal evidence related to your preferred segment. Avoid rushing this stage because it is the most crucial component of quality segmentation.
- Compile your research and use it to determine which new products or marketing approaches you’ll use to target this segment.
- Validate the offer or messaging with a representative sample of the segment using surveys, focus groups, and polls.
Go-To-Market Plan
- Develop a launch plan using marketing and sales strategies relevant to the target segment.
- Test the effectiveness of your strategy by implementing conversion tracking early.
- Continue to execute the plan and monitor the results over time, adjusting as necessary.
To ensure the best results, companies may want to invest in marketing software. Many products will automatically segment customers into relevant groups, analyze the segments using interactive charts, and provide third-party data to improve results.
Market segmentation best practices
As you execute a market segmentation plan, watch out for these common mistakes that can negatively affect your results:
● Unaligned segments: The markets you target must harmonize with your company’s strategy and structure, rather than trying to conform your brand and offer to suit the segment.
● Segments that are too broad: Failing to make the segment narrow enough will allow the competition to gain an advantage by targeting a more clearly defined and like-minded portion of your segment.
● Segments that are too narrow: Focusing on too small of a segment will significantly limit the return on investment of your time and money.
● Too many segments: It’s tempting to pursue all of the potentially profitable segments you identify, but this can dilute resources and negatively affect revenues.
● Targeting people, not money: A perfectly aligned and well-sized segment is useless if its members don’t possess sufficient buying power. Focus on market segments that will create a positive ROI, even if they aren’t the largest or most glamorous.
● Never updating segments: People change, and those changes can come quickly in today’s global, tech-savvy world. Frequently revisit your segments and adjust as needed to remain relevant and competitive.
Market segmentation is a highly effective strategy, and it isn’t complicated. It can be time-consuming, however, and may be challenging if it’s a new approach for you and your marketing team. Expect mistakes as you execute this new approach.
Stick with it, though, because segmentation is an incredibly valuable process that shows customers that you genuinely understand them. Providing tailored products and messages that resonate with your customers’ specific needs will help your brand grow exponentially.
Market research is an essential activity for companies of all kinds. When entering a new local market or category, it’s crucial to do as much research as possible in a multitude of areas to ensure you’re as prepared as possible to launch a successful entry with minimal risk.
When entering an international market, market research is no less important. In fact, it may be even more important, as the stakes are higher and you’ll be facing entirely new market conditions.
A question we often hear is, “why is it important for marketers to research the competition?” This article will examine international market research, how it typically differs from what you’re used to in your domestic market, and some of the main reasons why companies need to do it.
What is international market research?
International market research is a blanket term for all the research and preparation you do on a new market, usually before entering it. Unlike domestic market research, international market research is focused on an overseas market, often with completely different cultures, business conditions and consumer behaviors.
There are many different methods and stages involved in international market research. In many cases, the individual methods and techniques are the same as domestic market research, but your overall strategy will likely be very different.
What are the objectives of international marketing research?
International market research is a way of understanding a new, overseas market before you launch a product or service there. The main objectives are to understand your target customers, identify any challenges, get familiar with your competitors, and anything else that will boost your chances of success and avoid unpleasant surprises.
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How is international market research different from domestic research?
There are several key differentiating factors between domestic market research and international market research. Here are some of the key differences:
You’re entering a market with social and cultural differences
Domestic market research is already difficult, but the often vast differences between your home country and your target country make international market research much more challenging in many ways.
Often, the reasons for this difficulty are the exact same reasons why you need to do the research in the first place — you need to learn as much as possible about a region and culture that may be entirely unlike your own.
The differences between countries can create many challenges for researchers. For example, a research method like one-on-one interviews that works extremely well in western countries like the UK and US may fail miserably in other parts of the world where it is treated with suspicion.
There may be more restrictions around research
In addition to cultural and social differences, international markets also come with legal differences. While you might have a good understanding of how the law (as it relates to market research) works at home, the reality abroad may be very different.
This means you’ll need to be aware of an entirely new set of rules in order to avoid breaking them and ending up in legal trouble. One example is the USA’s TCPA, which forbids calling a cellphone using an automated dialing system.
Legal differences make it imperative to conduct legal research and coordinate with lawyers in your target market before beginning any research. Ending up on the wrong side of the law could be catastrophic.
It requires much more investment
Market research on your home soil can often be done relatively cheaply. When doing the same research abroad, however, costs can quickly skyrocket. Seemingly simple things like hiring venues, running telephone interviews, and gathering people to interview can become exponentially more complicated when you’re doing it in a foreign country with people who speak another language.
You may find yourself needing to hire a small army of staff on the ground to help you carry out these tasks. To make things even more frustrating, the cheaper market research methods like email and online surveys don’t work nearly as well in developing countries with less widespread internet access.
8 reasons why companies need to research their international markets
Despite the additional challenges involved, international market research is simply unavoidable if entering a new market overseas. Here are some of the reasons why.
1. Differences in culture
The culture of your overseas target market may be similar to yours, but it could also be completely different. Failing to adequately research the culture of your target market could result in serious blunders, which could seriously harm your market entry and brand reputation.
Cultural differences don’t have to be vast in order to cause major problems. For example, in many African countries containers are labeled with a picture of their contents. When baby nutrition company Gerber entered this market with their jars labeled with photos of babies, the reaction was understandably negative and seriously impacted sales.
2. Differences in laws and regulations
Laws and regulations don’t just have an impact on your market research methods. They can affect every part of your market entry process and how you conduct your business in your new market.
If you enter a new market without a comprehensive understanding of the law and its relation to your activities, you risk ending up in legal trouble.
There are many different potential legal pitfalls to consider when entering a new market. Some examples are environmental regulations, tax laws, and laws that pertain to hiring new staff. On top of this, rules can change quickly, and what was completely legal five years ago might be a huge no-go today. This is one area where one-off research isn’t enough — you’ll have to conduct regular and ongoing research and work with legal experts in your target market.
3. Differences in customer preferences
Customers in one country may have completely different preferences to those in another. This can be due to the cultural issues mentioned earlier, but it can also result from other factors.
When China began allowing its citizens to buy and own homes a few decades ago, US DIY chain Home Depot quickly capitalised on this new opportunity. Six years later, they closed all their Chinese stores, never to return.
The reason — they opened all their stores in the suburbs, but most middle-class Chinese citizens tend to live in apartment blocks in the cities, homes that don’t require or allow much renovation. This simple misunderstanding due to incomplete research led to the complete failure of Home Depot’s market entry attempt.
4. Understand competition
When you enter a new market, you’ll need to compete with the brands that are already there. This is not easy — you’re already at a significant disadvantage compared to companies who have been established in that region for a long time and are well-known to the local consumers.
It’s essential to understand who you are competing against, and — more importantly — how they have been able to succeed. What exactly is it that customers like about your competitors? What keeps them coming back? What has allowed them to gain and maintain a hold in your target market?
Answering these questions through research will give you valuable direction on what your brand has to do to succeed. It will also highlight weaknesses in your competitors that you can address in your marketing.
5. Mitigate risk
Entering any new market is a risky venture, and that risk increases when you expand abroad. According to research by the Harvard Business Review, companies operating abroad faced far lower Return on Assets compared to those in domestic markets. Many of these companies do not survive the attempt.
Market research allows you to mitigate your risk by being as prepared as possible for the myriad challenges involved in entering a foreign market. You’ll better understand your customers and what they want, be more prepared to take on your competition, avoid legal issues, and have a more viable strategy. Entering a new market overseas will never be risk-free, but research allows you to minimise that risk.
6. Logistical challenges
The logistical challenges involved in entering a foreign market can be enormous. You’ll need to do things like select and evaluate suppliers, hire new staff, find appropriate premises, learn about payment procedures and financial infrastructure, find ways to transport your products around your new market, comply with import and export regulations, and much more.
When entering a market in the developing world, these challenges become compounded. Regions without well-established transport infrastructure, financial systems, labour laws, government, and so on can create an endless series of logistical challenges.
To prepare for this, you’ll need to research your new market rigorously. Understand all the potential issues facing you so you have time to prepare and aren’t caught unawares by a problem that might set back your operations by a significant amount.
7. Prepare a solid strategy and budget
A well-established strategy and budget plan is an essential starting point for any market entry process. The only way to do this effectively is through diligent market research.
Market research allows you to understand the costs of your new market, including unexpected costs. It also helps you anticipate obstacles and challenges, and flesh out your strategy in a way that boosts your chances of success.
Suppose you need to win the support of high-level stakeholders in your organisation. In that case, a well-prepared and financed strategy is an excellent way to convince them that your market entry attempt is well-placed to go ahead.
8. Find available marketing channels
Marketing your product in a foreign market comes with a unique set of challenges and considerations. Channels that work well in your home country may fail abroad — for example, digital marketing in a country with poor internet access.
On top of that, your messaging will need to take into account all the cultural and linguistic characteristics of your target market. An advertising campaign that works well at home may very well perform terribly on the other side of the world.
Market research is a great way to identify the marketing channels and approaches that typically work well for similar products in your target market, helping you plan an effective marketing strategy and boost your chances of success from the start.
Market research is an essential and unavoidable task if you want to enter a foreign market successfully. Done right, it can help reduce the many risks involved and give your product the best possible chances of succeeding in a market that may be radically different from the ones you currently operate in.
Contact Kadence to learn more about how we can help you with international market research, along with all other kinds.
Considering expanding into an overseas market? If so, you’ll need to do international market research, and there are many different methods involved.
The difference between good and bad market research can make the difference between the success and failure of your product, and this is even more true when launching in foreign markets.
All the various challenges and obstacles of market entry are compounded when you enter a market with different cultures, customs, languages, laws, and infrastructure to what you’re used to dealing with in your domestic market. Without conducting rigorous research beforehand, you risk being poorly prepared for an already challenging process.
This article will look at some of the most effective methods for international market research, the things you’ll need to consider compared to domestic research, and some tips on how to make each one work.
The three main types of data
Before we explore the methods available to researchers, it’s important to look at the three main types of data you will be aiming to collect:
Secondary data
This refers to data that was not collected specifically for the task at hand (in contrast with primary data). It can involve things like government records, business reports, information from NGOs, and scientific publications.
Secondary data is usually the easiest to collect and makes a good starting point for your international market research. When researching in a foreign market, it’s important to consider linguistic differences and the fact that certain data may be less accessible for political reasons.
Survey data
This is a blanket term for all the data you gather through speaking to real people in your target market. There are many ways to collect it, including face-to-face surveys and interviews, electronic methods like email surveys, via telephone, and more.
When dealing with an international market, surveys can be extremely effective as they offer a direct connection with your target customers in your new market. However, there are challenges to overcome around language barriers and cultural differences.
Experimental data
Experimental data is gathered through an experiment. In market research, this can take many forms. For example, you could divide customers into groups and offer one a full-price product and the other a discounted product, then measure which has more uptake.
Once again, experimental data is a useful tool when researching an international market, since it yields real-world findings and allows you to draw concrete insights about how your product will be received.
It’s worth noting that primary data simply refers to any information collected solely for the task at hand, so survey data and experimental data can be considered primary or secondary depending on the source.
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9 of the most effective methods in international market research
Now, let’s explore some of the most effective methods available to market researchers when getting started in a new, overseas market.
1. Overseas business research
The research conducted by other businesses can be an extremely useful starting point for your market research. This data may have been collected by businesses in your space, or not. It may have been collected by businesses based in your target market or some other location.
Business research is valuable because it’s an example of another organization that has done some of its work for you. You can learn a lot about the business trends, cultural differences, market, laws, and more from the research of other companies.
However, this is always just a starting point. No business in the world will have exactly the same set of questions, challenges, and needs as yours, and nobody will have the same product and audience for it. For effective market research, you’ll have to do your own work too.
2. Collecting foreign government information
Governments collect a tremendous amount of information about their populations and the business within their borders. This includes demographics, geography, and culture, which can be extremely useful when planning your marketing and choosing where to sell your product.
In addition, government data can provide valuable insights on the legal challenges you might face when entering a new market, and the various regulations you’ll be required to comply with as you market and launch your product. Much of this information is readily available on government websites.
3. Collecting information from NGOs
Non-governmental organizations like charities can be excellent sources of data due to their work in research. NGOs may provide more accurate and up-to-date data than governments in developing regions of the world, which can lack the infrastructure to collect information properly.
4. Face-to-face research
One-to-one interviews and focus groups can both be highly effective market research methods. They afford you a direct insight into what your customers think, what they want, what they worry about, what their pain points are, and how they feel about your competitors, among many other things.
However, doing face-to-face research in an international market comes with a unique set of challenges. The logistical demands are higher — you’ll need to locate and hire venues and work with interviewers on the ground, which may be harder than doing so back home. You’ll also need to consider linguistic differences, which means hiring interpreters or locally-based staff.
Another challenge here is cultural differences. For example, some Middle Eastern cultures treat interviews with suspicion and it may be difficult to gather a meaningful sample group.
5. Attitude scales
Attitude scales — like the Likert scale — allow respondents to give a score on how they feel about a question or statement, usually on a scale of “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree”.
There are many benefits to using this type of research method in international markets. It tends to transcend language and questions can be easily translated. It’s also easy to distribute and can easily be done either in person or electronically.
However, there are still challenges. Some cultures, such as Japan, may be unwilling to give strong responses, leading to many neutral answers and no meaningful takeaway.
6. Text message (SMS) survey
Text message surveys involve sending out a series of questions to a group of respondents via SMS. It’s quick, easy, cheap, and allows you to reach a large number of people. You won’t get detailed responses from this kind of survey, and it tends to miss out on nuances, but it’s potentially a good way to get lots of feedback with minimal effort.
The drawbacks are that it’s dependent on mobile access. Many countries around the world lack this — Laos, for example, has a mobile phone penetration of just 53.4%. This makes it harder to distribute your surveys to a significant number of people.
7. Online survey
There are many different types of online surveys available to you when conducting international market research. Email, social media, and web forums are just a few examples of places you can connect with respondents and distribute surveys and questionnaires.
Online surveys are one of the cheapest and easiest ways to gather information and can be done from anywhere in the world with no need to hire additional staff or deal with logistics in your target market. You’ll get fast responses, and surveys are also easy to translate into multiple languages.
There are some challenges involved, however. Anything involving the internet is dependent on internet access in your target market, which may be very low in some parts of the world. This method works well in areas like North America and Europe but is poorly suited to countries like Eritrea, where only 14% of the population uses the internet.
8. Mobile web survey
This method involves distributing surveys via smartphones through applications or some of the other online methods mentioned above. In many countries, smartphone ownership exceeds computer ownership, making this a valid alternative.
In other countries, however, very few people own smartphones. Pakistan is one example — smartphone penetration here is just 18.4%. However, if your target market has a high smartphone penetration, this can be a very reliable research channel.
9. Remote Face-to-Face
In recent years, we’ve all seen an explosion in the use of video chat software like Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Today, this is used regularly to communicate with friends and family, attend work meetings, and even see your doctor. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this trend and forced us to rely on remote communication for almost all of our social interactions.
This technology applies to market research and is ideally suited to researching foreign markets. Now, face-to-face interviews and focus groups can take place entirely digitally, removing the need to send team members abroad or hire people in your target market.
There are still limitations, of course — it relies on your audience having access to electronic devices which can lead to skewed results (for example, you end up interviewing only younger and more affluent people). It should be combined with other methods for best results.
Market research is an essential but often challenging process, and it becomes harder when you try to do it in a completely new market far from home. Fortunately, market researchers today have access to a wealth of methods and tools, many of which did not exist even in the recent past.
Get in touch to learn how Kadence can help you conduct international market research as effectively as possible, allowing you to mount a confident and informed market entry.
One of the most important tasks for any business is making sure your customers are satisfied. Without customers, your business is nothing, and dissatisfied customers are unlikely to stay customers for long.
There are many ways to measure how satisfied your customers are with your current products, service, and brand. This article will take a look at why it’s so important to measure customer satisfaction, some of the methods available for doing it, and finally we’ll explore 5 of the top metrics to pay attention to.
Why it’s important to measure customer satisfaction
Today’s customers have more choices than ever before. The internet has made it possible to find dozens of competitors to a product or brand at the click of a button. If a customer has an unpleasant experience with a product or service, it’s never been easier for them to move on.
Here are some of the reasons it’s so important to prioritise customer satisfaction.
Bad news spreads
But losing a customer isn’t the worst outcome of poor customer satisfaction — they might also tell their friends. When products or services fall short, almost 13% of customers spread the bad news to over 20 people. If you fail to prioritise customer satisfaction, the ripples could spread out much farther than one unhappy person, and in the age of the internet, they could spread very far and fast indeed.
Learn how happy you are making your customers
Measuring customer satisfaction allows you to gain insights into how happy your customers are and any specific areas they like or dislike. By following up on this feedback, you can identify any concerning areas, talk to dissatisfied customers, and find out what you need to fix to improve your customers’ experience.
Identify loyal customers and promoters
Loyal customers are the lifeblood of any business. Those who keep coming back and spending money with your brand are incredibly valuable and should be treated as such. By measuring customer satisfaction you can locate the customers who like your brand and reward them with things like discounts, loyalty points, and other treats.
There’s one group that’s even more valuable than your loyal customers — promoters. These are the people who not only use your brand regularly but also tell their friends and others about you, essentially growing your business for you, for free. Your promoters should be rewarded especially highly and incentivised to keep spreading the word.
Improve revenue
It’s a simple equation: the more customers you retain, the more money you make. If your customers are constantly satisfied with your brand, it’s much more likely they will stick around, keep making purchases, and contribute to your revenue growth. Measuring customer satisfaction helps you take concrete steps to keep your customers happy and your company growing.
Compete with other businesses
Many brands fail to prioritise customer satisfaction, and many don’t measure it at all. This means that by getting to know your customers and their concerns, you can go beyond what your competitors are doing and gain a valuable edge.
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How to measure customer satisfaction
Focusing on customer satisfaction helps you deliver better customer experiences, attend to your customers’ needs and concerns, and ensure you retain more customers and continue to grow your business. But how do you measure it?
Face-to-face interviews
Talking to your customers face-to-face is one of the most effective ways to measure customer satisfaction (and almost anything else). You’ll get direct answers in real-time, with the option to follow up immediately.
In face-to-face discussions like interviews and focus groups, you’ll also be able to see body language and take note of the quirks that get lost in less personal forms of communication. The challenge is finding a physical space to host these discussions, and incentivising your respondents to take the time out of their day.
Web app surveys
Whether on desktop browsers or mobile apps, online surveys are a quick and easy way to get feedback from your customers. You’ll likely get much more of a response compared to face-to-face interviews, and at a much lower cost to you. However, these surveys are much simpler by nature, and you’ll need to offer some kind of reward for participation (which can be as simple as a small discount code).
Email surveys
Almost everyone has an email account today, and it’s easy to collect email addresses from your customers during the sign-up process. This makes it easy to send quick surveys and questionnaires to your subscribers to measure customer satisfaction.
Telephone surveys
Telephone surveys used to be one of the most common ways to contact customers and get feedback. Today, they have to compete with newer media like email and mobile apps, but they’re still a popular choice for many brands and work especially well with older demographics.
Postal surveys
Postal surveys are one of the slower ways to get customer feedback and tend to result in low response rates, but they are cheap and allow you to contact a very wide pool of respondents.
Top 5 metrics for measuring customer satisfaction
Whatever method you use to contact your customers, you’ll still want to focus on measuring the same metrics. Here are 5 of the most important metrics to focus on when measuring customer satisfaction.
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
Perhaps the most straightforward metric to measure, Customer Satisfaction Score involves simply asking your customers to rate their level of satisfaction with your brand, product, or service.
It typically involves a scale, usually 1-5 or 1-10, and customers are asked to give a score in a number of areas like ease of use, value for money, and customer service. In addition to a numerical scale, you can also use words like “very satisfied” and “somewhat dissatisfied”.
This metric is simple, direct, and easy to compare with other brands’ results. However, it’s also subjective and easily influenced by lots of factors, not least your choice of wording in the survey itself. It may also be biased towards positive responses over negative and neutral ones.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Net Promoter Score is a measure of how likely customers would be to refer you to another person. Usually, it involves an index ranging from -100 to 100, and it can be highly impactful.
Measuring NPS allows us to find out how likely customers are to recommend us to their friends and hone in on specific promoters who we can then reward and ask further questions to determine why they are so keen to spread the word.
The results can be powerful. American Express used an NPS survey to understand their customers better. The insights they gained from the survey led them to implement changes which resulted in a 10-15% increase in customer spending and a 4 to 5 times higher retention rate.
Customer Effort Score
Customer Effort Score measures how much effort a customer felt they had to put in to achieve a given desired outcome. It’s calculated similarly to the other metrics here by asking customers to provide a score on a scale.
CES is a valuable metric because the level of effort customers have to put in is strongly related to their loyalty. In the book The Effortless Experience by Matthew Dixon, Nick Toman and Rick DeLisi, we learn that 96% of customers who invested a lot of effort to resolve issues are more disloyal. In contrast, only 9% of those who did not invest high effort were disloyal.
Customer Churn Rate
This metric measures how many customers you lost over a given period. To calculate, you define the period you wish to measure (like a month, quarter, or year). Take the number of customers at the end of that period and subtract it from the number at the start. Then, divide the result by the number at the start.
This is one way to find out how many customers are happy with your brand — happy customers tend not to leave. Of course, there could be other factors at play like a poor marketing strategy that fails to stay connected with customers. Like all the other metrics on the list, CCR is just one piece of the overall puzzle.
Customer Retention Rate
On the other side of the coin to Churn Rate is Customer Retention Rate. Of all the customers you acquire, how many are you actually retaining?
You calculate this by taking the number of new customers acquired during a period (weekly, quarterly, monthly, etc) and subtracting it from the total number of customers you had at the end of that period. Then, divide the result by the number of customers you had at the beginning of that period to find the CRR.
Customer Retention Rate is an important metric because it costs 5-25 times more to procure a new customer than it does to retain an existing one. Keeping hold of your customers is always much better than finding new ones (although you should of course be doing both). CRR also gives a good indication of how satisfied your existing customers are.
Measuring Customer Satisfaction is an essential activity for companies. Choosing the right metrics to track is a crucial component of this, and can make the difference between an accurate understanding of your customers and confusion. Doing this job right can be a major factor in the growth and success of your business.
Contact us to learn more about how Kadence can help you better understand your customers and conduct important research in a range of areas.
When launching a new product to market, it’s imperative to be prepared with relevant information. You need a deep understanding of your market, how your products will benefit that market, the potential challenges you might run into, and much more.
This is why it’s so important to write an in-depth, professional, and relevant market research report. Not only to gather and display all the right information but also so that you can share that information clearly and easily with people within and outside your organization. This is important for a wide range of different reasons.
In this article, we’ll look at why market research reports for product launches are so important and show you how to do it as effectively as possible.
Why market research reports are important
Conducting a detailed and relevant market research report before you launch your new product is a good idea for all kinds of reasons. Here are some of the main ones:
- Get buy-in from senior decision-makers. When launching any product, you’ll always want the full support of the top decision-makers at your organization. This can be a tricky thing to acquire, especially if your team is relatively unproven. A detailed and informative market research report can be the deciding factor in winning their support, convincing them that your product is well-placed to succeed, and making it much easier to achieve your goals.
- Learn more about your customers and target audience. One of the main reasons to conduct market research is to understand your prospective customers in more detail. The work you do to compile a report will give you a clear and detailed understanding of what your customers want, what they already like, where they conduct their own research, and much more. This will arm you with the insights and knowledge you need to launch your product confidently and successfully.
Discover ideas for new products and how to improve existing ones. When you research your target market, you’ll likely stumble upon inspiration for new products in addition to the one you’re planning to launch. The feedback you get from your research will also be laced with ideas for improving and tweaking existing products
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How to write a market research report effectively
In the rest of this guide, we’ll show you what you need to do to ensure your market research report is as detailed, relevant, and valuable as it possibly can be. Let’s start with the type of information you need to include.
What you need to include:
Buyer personas
This is a crucial part of getting to know your customers and the different groups they fall into. You should start by researching your target market members as much as possible through a range of channels — interviews, social media research, email surveys, and more. Then, divide them into demographics and create a detailed persona to represent each one.
This is an incredibly valuable step because it allows you to break down your market and make broad predictions about each group’s preferences, pain points, habits, and desires. If done right, this helps you target your future marketing much more accurately and effectively.
Understand your competitors
Getting to know your competitors is a key element of market research. It allows you to understand what you will be up against when launching your product and what segments of your market might be easier or more difficult to sway from their loyalty to your competitors.
Your research report should contain detailed information about each of your competitors and what they offer. What do their products lack that yours can provide? Why do your customers go to them? How dominant are they in your market? What kind of loyalty do they command? What are some of the keys to their success? All this will help you understand what you’re up against and strengthen your chances of success.
Who did you talk to?
Much of your market research will involve talking to various people and groups of people in situations like focus groups, interviews, and surveys. It’s important to document this side of your research carefully and include it in your market research report. Be sure to break down the people you spoke to into demographics and be as specific as possible — try to align this with your buyer personas.
This will help you understand what different demographics want, identify any areas you may have missed, and see any opportunities for segmentation or expansion, as well as providing clear visibility into your research process and allowing you to justify your findings and decisions to other company members carefully.
Clearly show what will happen next — how will you use your findings?
When you present your market research report to decision-makers in your organization, their primary concern will be what you want to do with it. Research is only valuable if it has a practical application, which should be a key element of your report.
It’s best to be specific — create plans and roadmaps for campaigns, build strategies, and include timelines and carefully researched cost estimates. If you can present a clear and viable plan for your product launch, it will be much easier to gain the support and buy-in of the higher-ups in your company. Be ready to defend and justify these plans.
Primary vs Secondary Market Research
There are two main types of research you’ll need to do when preparing your market research report: primary and secondary. Here is the difference:
- Primary research. This refers to the first-hand information you have gathered during your research — straight from the primary source. Examples include interviews with individuals, focus groups, surveys, and information from sales teams. It helps add a human touch to your research, incorporating real people’s distinct voices and opinions.
- Secondary research. This is data that your company didn’t personally collect but is available in the form of things like public records, trend reports, and market statistics. While it lacks the specific human element of primary research, it’s a great way to gain valuable overall insights about your target market without having to conduct huge research projects yourself.
Convincing company decision-makers with your market research report
One of the most essential functions of a market research report is to convince your company’s key stakeholders that you are prepared for a product launch and have everything in place to begin the process successfully.
When creating your report, you should always have this goal in mind. Here are some ways to do that:
- Always clearly tie your research for business outcomes. For every conclusion your report reaches, explain what this means for the business and what concrete actions you will take as a result.
- Use as many stats and as much hard data as possible. Clearly express this data in the form of graphs and other visual aids. Show where your data came from, how you collected it, and how your findings will impact your product launch.
- Consider using Porter’s 5 Forces Model. This business model is aimed at understanding and explaining the fundamental market forces at work in any given industry. It can be illuminating to tie your research into this model.
A well-researched and detailed market research report is an essential part of a successful product launch strategy. It allows you to clearly understand your market, formulate concrete plans and strategies, and gain the support of your organization’s decision-makers.
Without one, you’ll be plunged into the dark, facing the monumentally challenging task of launching a product without the support of extensive research and data.
To find out more about how Kadence can help you prepare a market research report and launch your product with confidence, contact us.
Senior Marketing Executive
Sales & Marketing
Vital Strategies
Customer Intelligence Director