Market research is critical for driving growth. It can inform strategy development, product development and marketing, setting you up for success. But it’s even more important when it comes to growing your business in countries outside of your home market. 

The global market research process looks different from domestic market research and requires a different approach in order to get the best results. In this article, we’ll break down why global market research is so important, the challenges involved, and how to do it as effectively as possible.

What is global market research?

Global market research is an umbrella term for the collection and analysis of information that companies undertake in a country that isn’t their domestic market. This includes designing the study, conducting the fieldwork, analysing the data and reporting the results – and can pertain to anything from customer understanding to product development research. It differs from market research that takes place domestically, with an understanding of cultural differences being crucial to its successful execution. 

Why is global market research important?

Global market research serves a number of important purposes. It helps companies understand their current or potential customers in international markets. These markets — and the people in them — are often radically different from your domestic market in many significant ways.

Failing to understand the often subtle distinctions between different global markets and gain a solid understanding of them before you launch a product can be a critical mistake that costs companies dearly.

Market research is equally important in global markets where you already operate. Here, it helps companies feel out new potential product launches and marketing campaigns, understand how numerous factors in those areas may have changed since they last conducted research, and better understand the feelings of their customers internationally.

Here are some of the main reasons to prioritize global market research:

What works well at home might fall flat abroad. You may have heard of Starbucks. It’s one of the most successful businesses in its home market of the US and is a hit with customers in many other countries across the globe. In many cities around the world, you’ll find a Starbucks almost on every corner.

In Italy, however, its presence is more limited. This is because the Italian coffee culture is profoundly different from what Starbucks offers, and the Italian public simply doesn’t have much of an appetite for the brand. The fact Starbucks has been able to gain a foothold there is an impressive achievement in itself and was only possible by significantly altering its product range — a change driven by extensive market research and collaboration with local businesses. 

It allows you to improve operations and save costs. Market research helps you gain a more thorough and clear understanding of your new markets and the logistical and practical steps involved in operating there.

This allows you to get your operations right the first time, avoiding expensive mistakes and delays and streamlining the process so you can maximize your chances of overall success.

It helps you understand your competition and what you’re getting into. When it comes to new global markets and expanding into different cultures, competition is a huge factor. Market research helps you understand your competition so you can compete effectively and avoid being completely eclipsed by more popular brands.

When Best Buy attempted to move into the Chinese market, it failed miserably, closing all its stores in the country just five years later. Why did this attempt fail so badly? Ultimately, it was due to local competition.

Local, smaller Chinese electronics companies were able to offer similar products at a much lower price by paying staff less and offering fewer benefits. They also had stores in more accessible locations, catering to a more bike-based and less car-based customer population.

Had Best Buy spent more time researching the local market, they may have taken a different approach, or opted not to expand into China at all.
It allows you to identify new opportunities you may not have otherwise considered. By better understanding your market through research, you’ll be able to pinpoint new opportunities to grow, generate ideas for new products and strategies, and innovate in a way that increases your chances of success.

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The challenges of global market research

Doing market research on a global scale can be much more challenging than doing it domestically and there are many more factors and variables to consider. Much of your market research will involve speaking to customers in markets that differ from your home country. This can be difficult for many reasons:

Cultural

Some international markets will be home to a vastly different culture from your domestic market. This can make research difficult. It’s important to respect cultural norms and take these differences into account both when designing your research approach and analysing your results. 

For example, in some cultures, like in China, people might be more inclined to moderate their views in a group setting, making it harder to get to the heart of an issue in a focus group, for instance. Understanding this can help you determine which methodology to choose, along with how to probe, and what to look for when you’re analysing the data.

Linguistic

Carrying out customer surveys, focus groups, in fact, anything involving interviews and questions poses obvious linguistic barriers in foreign markets. This makes global research particularly challenging. You’ll need to be able to connect with respondents and understand their views in the local language. Understanding nuances and ensuring key details aren’t lost in translation is vital, so it pays to work with native speakers to help you navigate these issues. 

Logistical

Finding appropriate facilities to conduct research in a different market can be tough, particularly if you’re working on logistically challenging projects such as central location tests or taste tests, where you also need to factor in transporting products for consumers to test in person. For this, it’s important to plan ahead so you can anticipate problems and delays that might not exist in your home market.

Legal

In many parts of the world, there are laws and regulations in place that you’ll need to consider when designing your research approach. For example, Europe’s GDPR or Singapore’s PDPA.

(More information on the challenges of global market research and how to overcome them can be found in this article).

The right way to do global market research

Learn as much as possible about the regions you’re targeting

Before you start actually speaking to people and conducting market research, it’s essential to gain a thorough understanding of the region you’ll be working in. This helps avoid or mitigate many of the cultural and linguistic challenges mentioned above.

Find out as much as possible about the demographics, laws, culture, language etc of your chosen region. Publicly available resources can help with this. You may be able to access government statistics or reports that can give an illuminating view of the business landscape for companies in your industry in your chosen market and what other firms are doing. This can provide you with a solid base for your research before you even start talking to your target audience.

Design an effective research approach, rooted in your understanding of the market

You need to design a research approach that works in the context of the market. Every region of the world is different, sometimes in quite startling ways, from your domestic market. It’s important to make sure your research is designed in a way that reflects that.

This is important when you’re considering what methodology to use. For instance, you’ll need to ensure that if you’re conducting online research in China, the platform will need to be mobile-first due to the technological leapfrog the country has  experienced. 

(For more information about conducting online research in Asia, read our best practice guide)

It’s also important when thinking about sampling. For example, when conducting research in Vietnam, it’s essential to understand the striking cultural differences between North and South. People in the North tend to favour well-known brands, whereas those in the South are typically more open to new experiences,Make sure you think carefully about who you want to research at the outset, and if you are exploring an entire country, beware that these nuances do exist. 

One of the best ways to really immerse yourself is by working with an agency that has boots on the ground, and offices in the location you want to explore. This allows you to build a research strategy that is adapted to your new market, helping you to obtain valuable insights.

Collect the data and analyse the results, bringing cultural understanding to bear 

Once you’ve designed your approach, you’re ready to embark on the research itself. 

There are multiple methods you can use here, such as:

  • In-person interviews
  • Online surveys
  • Focus groups
  • Online or mobile research 

Each method has its own pros and cons, and the best research strategies will contain a blend of several approaches. Again, cultural understanding is really important here. 

This can impact the way you approach every element of your research. For example, when writing a questionnaire in Japan, it’s important to acknowledge the cultural aversion to giving negative feedback. Here, if you used a typical 5-point Likert scale, responses might tend to end up right in the middle, giving an unhelpful result. Instead, try a 4-point scale to give a clear indication of attitudes or intent. 

The next step is analysis, where again, a deep understanding of the market is critical to be able to properly interpret the results and to compare between countries. In Vietnam, for instance, it’s common for Vietnamese respondents to show high interest levels when asked about their likelihood to purchase a product. But these responses are not always realistic — many Vietnamese people will enthusiastically signal their desire to buy a product even when they don’t have the economic means to realistically do so. It’s important to cross-reference these results with other market data for a more reliable result. 

Remember to account for translation or working with native speakers at this point to ensure success too.

Looking to embark on a global market research project?

Global market research is an essential process for any company looking to expand into different international markets or grow their presence in existing ones. It allows you to optimize your chances of success when trying new things in markets that may be profoundly different from your domestic market in numerous ways. It also helps you understand those markets much more keenly so you can better serve your customers there.

There are lots of variables that can make the research process for global market research projects much more challenging. It’s important to take the time to understand your new market before you begin the research process.

However, if done right, global market research can be a critical factor in mounting a successful market entry attempt, marketing campaign, or product launch allowing you to expand your brand across the world and reach entirely new levels of growth.
At Kadence, we help businesses all over the world expand into new global markets by carrying out in-depth and localised research. Contact us to find out more about how we can help you do the same.

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In the world of market research, we can only get so far by relying on hard, numerical data.

Hard metrics (generated from quantitative research) are extremely useful and should form a core part of any business strategy. But they only tell part of the overall story.

To dig deeper and gain a fuller picture of why our customers behave the way they do, it’s important to consider supplementing quantitative research with a more qualitative approach. Qualitative research is based on conversational and open-ended communication and aims to dive a little deeper than quantitative metrics and explore the why behind customers’ actions.

If you want to get the most out of your research, you should be using both approaches. In this guide, we’ll take a look at what qualitative research is, what makes it so useful, and how you can employ it in your own work.

How is qualitative research different from quantitative research?

Quantitative research:

  • It is more data-based, relying on hard data points and objective measurements.
  • It uses statistics and numerical data to identify trends and patterns.
  • It allows you to quickly establish what’s happening and look at possible causes. 

Quantitative studies are extremely valuable. They allow us to gain a reliable, accurate understanding of what’s happening in our market and amongst our customers and make clear-headed decisions that influence the bigger picture. But quantitative data alone isn’t enough.

Qualitative research is more human-focused. It’s less concerned with numbers and figures and more focused on what customers have to say. It can take the form of interviews, focus groups or online communities, and its goal is to dig into the more intangible and subjective reasons why customers behave the way they do.

Why is qualitative research useful?

Qualitative research is useful because it helps us dive into the human factors driving our customers’ actions. People are complex and often unpredictable, and our behavior can’t really be boiled down into a series of metrics.

For example, we might know that sales for one product are outperforming another. But why is this happening? Our hard metrics can show us the overall trend and might allow us to pinpoint certain glaring patterns, but they don’t tell us what’s going on in our customers’ minds.

For this, we need qualitative studies. We need to gain insight into the microtrends that lie beneath bigger patterns. 

The benefits don’t end there, though. Qualitative research means getting to know your customers and their motivations better. Here’s how that helps:

  • It can help you to understand customer needs, generating new ideas for products and services. 
  • It can provide valuable feedback on your existing offering. Using qualitative research, you can explore pain points and barriers to use, helping you understand how to improve your current products and services.
  • It can be a useful input to your marketing. By truly understanding your audience, you can take a more personalized approach, speaking their language and talking to your customers in a way they can really relate to. It can also provide useful input to campaign or content development. By understanding customer needs, you can create marketing content that solves specific problems for your audience and delivers real value in response to the challenges they face and the pain points they grapple with.
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Qualitative research methods 

Qualitative research is made up of a range of different methods and techniques. Each has its own use cases, and the best approaches will combine several methodologies based on your customers and your goals. Here are some of the main methods:

Qualitative research methods are approaches and techniques used to gather and analyze non-numerical data to understand human behavior, experiences, and social phenomena deeply. Unlike quantitative research, which focuses on numerical data and statistical analysis, the qualitative study seeks to explore and interpret the meanings, patterns, and complexities of human experiences.

Qualitative research methods are characterized by their flexibility, contextuality, and emphasis on subjective interpretations. They are suitable for studying social and cultural phenomena and individual perspectives and exploring new or complex research areas. Here are some commonly used qualitative research methods:

  • Focus groups. This is where you bring a small number of customers (usually less than 15) together in a group to discuss a particular issue. By tapping into the power of group dynamics, we’re able to uncover rich insights around attitudes and behaviors, and explore underlying motivations, need states and perceptions.
  • One-to-one, in-depth interviews. Here, researchers speak to customers directly in a one-to-one setting. It’s a good way to get truly in-depth on a topic, delving into the participant’s opinions and gaining valuable feedback and insight. In-depth interviews can be carried in person, on the phone or online. 
  • Expert interviews. Like in-depth interviews, expert interviews involve speaking to industry experts to build a rich understanding of the market and its direction. This approach can help you explore the impact of emerging trends to help future-proof your business.
  • Ethnography. This is where researchers immerse themselves in customers’ worlds to understand more about their day-to-day lives and the role of brands and products. Ethnography can take different forms, from visiting consumers and accompanying them as they go about their day to mobile self-ethnography, where consumers complete video tasks to show us how they live. 
  • Online communities. This is where groups of consumers are brought together over a series of days on an online platform to explore specific issues. Consumers then complete individual or group tasks, enabling the researcher to uncover rich insights. Like mobile self-ethnography, online communities can involve photo and video tasks and are a great way of bringing an audience to life for key stakeholders. What’s more, as online communities consumers over a longer time period than an in-depth interview or a focus group, they allow you to explore complex or sensitive issues and uncover deep insights into attitudes and values to inform your decision-making.

Traditionally qualitative research was done according to the grounded theory method. This is a framework for research that involves collecting qualitative data through the above methods and then using that data to form a theory or hypothesis. However, it’s easy to underestimate the sheer amount of data you can collect through qualitative research and this is particularly true of online methods such as online communities. As such, using the grounded theory method is often not feasible. At Kadence we take a different and more structured approach, exploring hypotheses with key stakeholders and designing the research so that we can test these. This means that the research is tightly focused on the areas that matter most to stakeholders, ensuring that the insights we uncover are actionable.  

These methods often employ thematic analysis, constant comparative analysis, and coding to organize and interpret data. The data collected in qualitative research can be rich, nuanced, and context-specific, providing deep insights into human behavior, motivations, and social phenomena. Qualitative research is frequently used in disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, education, and marketing, where understanding the subjective experiences and meanings attributed to phenomena is essential.

Some examples of qualitative research questions you might ask:

  • How important is corporate responsibility to our customers?
  • What are the main reasons people use social media?
  • Why do people want to work for our organization?
  • How do adult males feel about hair loss?
  • What are the key motivations for undertaking a weight loss program?

Qualitative research is essential if you want to truly understand your customers and improve your product or service to deliver what they want and need. It goes hand in hand with more quantitative methods of research and helps add context, explanation, and depth to the more numerical and data-based metrics.

At Kadence, we can help you get the most out of qualitative research better to understand your customers and market on all levels. To find out how to get in touch with us.

Our kids media experts Bianca Abulafia and Sarah Serbun shared their top tips at Qual 360 of how to conduct qual research with kids and the cultural considerations to bar in mind in each market.

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Amy Lo explores her personal experiences growing up across two vastly different continents and how these have shaped her insight career. 

When I was 12 my Dad announced I was to leave my home in Taiwan to attend boarding school in England. The resulting 10 years were to shape me in a way neither he, nor I could ever have imagined. 

Growing up across two continents that are so vastly different in terms of culture, climate and consumption meant living in a state of perpetual adaptation, seeking ways to adjust to the environment around me, both at school and then back at home during school holidays. 

I think this constant need to adapt to my surroundings is the reason I first started to closely observe the people around me, their behavior, their motivations, the things that made them similar and the things that made them different.

Skip to the present and as it turns out my fascination with people, their stories, backgrounds and culture has influenced me in my choice of career. As a qualitative market researcher it is my job to investigate the beliefs, perceptions and essential truths behind people’s behavior – and establish patterns amongst them.

I love this career for the opportunity it gives me to gain insight into our respondent’s lives and, of course to deliver Insight Worth Sharing to my clients. 

There is also a lot of variety; during my first role as a Graduate Insight Executive in Taiwan I spent time with a wide variety of respondents from tech-savvy consumers aiming to optimize a mobile-friendly home page for Yahoo to new mums sharing all about their nappy usage. One weekend we would be speaking to HNWIs about luxury holidays and the following weekend, accompanying Chinese teenagers on their hunt for the perfect pair of jeans! 

During a recent project in my current role at Kadence International in London I found myself face to face with my two ‘home’ nations. The study, for a luxury technology brand, involved investigating some of London and Shanghai’s wealthiest individuals and uncovered some vast and fascinating differences in priorities, preferences and behaviors of the Chinese elite against their UK counterparts. 

This study motivated me to understand more about today’s Asian consumer. How can brands adapt their approach to suit this vast and lucrative market? And, how can we as researchers select the best methodologies in order to gather the richest, most valuable insights?

Growing up across two continents that are so vastly different in terms of culture, climate and consumption meant living in a state of perpetual adaptation. I love this career for the opportunity it gives me to gain insight into our respondent’s lives and, of course to deliver Insight Worth Sharing to my clients. With over 700 million Internet users and a little shy of 600 million smartphone users in China (as of 2016), the future of online qual is extremely exciting.

In true millennial style, I started my investigations through my own social network. My friends from Asia were always posting in feeds, reviewing the latest products they have tried. I observed a willingness to share allegiances to particular brands, which doesn’t represent brand loyalty per se, simply that they are not afraid to share their opinions. Many of my female friends have their own blogs, discussing their views on the latest trends in clothes and make up and my feed is regularly inundated with ‘outfit of the day’ posts with links that take you to web shops where you can make a quick purchase from the endorsed brand or seller. 

Surprisingly for China, a country where censorship is widespread, opinions and voices on the Internet are loud and plentiful. Unlike Western countries, there is little trust in traditional media sources such as TV, press or radio. Instead, word of mouth is an increasingly powerful tool, as people use social media platforms to personally share information and opinions with friends and family. 

This trend has been identified by brands in China, who have made it their priority to create intelligent, comprehensive digital campaigns to facilitate the spread of their products or services. This is also why brands are carefully monitoring their e-reputation. Product reviews on the web have a growing influence on people’s decision making. Brands understand the need to nurture advocates within each and every social circle to build credibility and customer proximity. 

Back to my professional experience, working closely with a wide range of Chinese audiences both in Asia and in the UK, I have learnt that I most enjoy using methodologies that give me longer and closer contact with my audience, these allow me to really get to know each and every one of their stories, background and culture. 

Market research online communities offer a highly effective way for UK researchers to gather insight from Chinese audiences. Logistically simple (no working around time differences); methodologically effective (tap into natural online behaviors to provide a truthful engagement with our target audience) and financially efficient (no expensive flights and hotels!). 

Chinese audiences can often be more comfortable providing their opinions via the Internet particularly with certain more sensitive or divisive topics where they can retain a sense of anonymity. With online research methods, there are fewer concerns about their voices or faces being identified – and therefore a greater willingness to share.

With over 700 million Internet users and a little shy of 600 million smartphone users in China (as of 2016), the future of online qual is extremely exciting for me. Mobile devices are the main mode of Internet access and instant messaging is the top online activity in China. Apps such as WeChat are used on a daily basis, just as you and I use WhatsApp to keep in touch with friends and family. WeChat has evolved from a pure instant messaging app to (quoting the FT in April 2016) an app that is a phone, messenger, video conference, ecommerce platform and gaming console, not to mention noodle delivery service, for a nation of people in love with their smartphones. 

Some companies are already using WeChat as a data collection tool for short quantitative surveys, tapping into its mass user base and taking full advantage of its ability to provide instant responses.

And given that the app is already in most people’s pockets means we can largely conduct many of the conventional qualitative methods through WeChat as well. We’re already gaining insights through both interaction and observation, from in-depth interviews to accompanied shopping, to digital diary logging. It’s amazing – but we’re able to follow the steps of Chinese respondents through the lenses of their smartphones from the comfort of their chairs in London. 

The casual nature, accessibility and users’ familiarity with WeChat helps encourage user interaction, engagement and participation, thereby improving our capability to obtain accurate and honest insights. 

The opportunity to use social media platforms for qualitative research is not completely unique to the Chinese market. We know some have been doing focus groups on WhatsApp, and some are using Facebook as a research tool. There is no reason why something similar cannot become a more prevalent research method in the West, provided we have a similar multifunctioning social media platform and the same abundance of users already familiar with the platform.

Personally, I find the possibility of conducting focus groups and in-depth interviews from my iPhone a very exciting prospect. With social media platforms such as WeChat, in a click of a button, I’m in touch with a group of people 5000 miles away, tapping into every aspect and every minute of their lives and uncovering trends through my very own device. I can do this whilst on the go and, when something I see on the street suddenly inspires me, I no longer have to wait until Monday. I can simply pop a question to my group and wait 5 seconds to see what they have to say. 

Looking back, whilst my 12 year old self may have resented my Dad’s decision to send me away from Taiwan to the UK, in hindsight, it was the best decision he ever made.