Market research is a critical foundation for any company expanding beyond its domestic operations. While research is valuable at every stage of a business lifecycle, it becomes indispensable when entering unfamiliar international markets. The risks are greater, the variables more complex, and the assumptions that hold true at home often fall apart abroad.

Understanding the needs of international marketing starts with recognising that success abroad demands more than simply replicating domestic strategies. It requires deep, localised insight—into consumer behaviours, cultural context, infrastructure, regulations, and the competitive landscape. International market research provides this insight, equipping businesses with the data and foresight necessary to reduce risk, allocate resources strategically, and compete with incumbents.

What Is International Market Research?

International market research refers to the process of gathering, analysing, and interpreting information about a foreign market before entry or expansion. Unlike domestic research, it involves working across languages, legal systems, cultural values, and operational realities that may be unfamiliar or unpredictable.

At its core, this research aims to answer several fundamental questions: Who are the customers? What do they need? Who else is meeting that need? What regulations will shape entry? And how do economic, social, and political conditions affect market potential?

While the research techniques—such as surveys, interviews, and competitive audits—are often similar to domestic research, they must be adapted to suit the norms, expectations, and infrastructure of the target market.

Why Domestic Research Alone Falls Short

The distinction between international and domestic research isn’t just about geography. It’s about context. Companies often underestimate the degree to which consumer behaviour is shaped by local culture, infrastructure, history, and regulation.

For example, qualitative research methods like focus groups may perform well in the United States or UK but prove ineffective or even counterproductive in countries where group participation is limited by cultural norms or trust issues. Online surveys may have broad reach in developed markets but suffer low response rates or access limitations in developing economies with poor internet penetration.

Assuming that domestic insights can be directly transferred into new international markets leads to misalignment, miscommunication, and costly mistakes.

Eight Reasons Why International Market Research Is Essential

1. Cultural Context Shapes Consumer Response

Cultural missteps are one of the most common reasons market entries fail. Norms around communication, packaging, imagery, and even colour can vary significantly across borders. What feels aspirational in one culture may appear aggressive or inappropriate in another.

Consider Gerber’s failed entry into several African markets. The brand’s standard baby food packaging featured a smiling infant on the jar. In markets where labels typically depict the product inside, consumers assumed the jars contained baby meat. Without research into local packaging norms, Gerber misread its audience and suffered reputational damage.

Even subtle cultural signals—like the tone of advertising, the role of gender in decision-making, or the expected pace of customer service—can dramatically influence perception. Research allows brands to calibrate messaging, design, and experience in ways that resonate.

2. Regulatory Environments Are Market-Defining

Every market has its own legal framework. This includes data privacy, advertising laws, product standards, hiring regulations, and consumer protection policies. Failing to understand these nuances can stall launches, trigger penalties, or lead to costly compliance overhauls after launch.

Market research helps identify not just what is legal, but what is common practice. For instance, a telemarketing strategy might technically comply with regulations but still be viewed as intrusive or culturally insensitive in certain markets. Likewise, compliance with GDPR in Europe requires a different data management approach than marketing to consumers in Japan or Indonesia.

3. Preferences Aren’t Universal

Consumer preferences don’t always follow logic. They follow context. Taste, aesthetics, pricing sensitivity, and usage behaviour are all deeply shaped by regional expectations.

Home Depot’s failed expansion in China is a case in point. The brand assumed the do-it-yourself (DIY) model would translate easily. But most Chinese middle-class consumers live in high-rise apartments and prefer hiring professionals over undertaking home renovations themselves. The model that made Home Depot successful in the U.S. was culturally misaligned in China.

Market research helps uncover these critical nuances before strategic decisions are locked in.

4. Understanding the Competition Requires Ground-Level Insight

Competitive landscapes in foreign markets may appear similar on paper but behave differently in practice. Local brands may have decades of relationship capital, unique pricing models, or distribution arrangements that aren’t visible through desktop research.

Studying these players helps foreign entrants avoid head-on competition where they are unlikely to win. Instead, research allows companies to identify underserved niches, behavioural gaps, or brand positioning opportunities that incumbents have missed.

5. Risk Mitigation Requires Local Knowledge

Entering any new market carries risk. But international markets add complexity in the form of currency volatility, political instability, unfamiliar tax codes, supply chain friction, and talent shortages. These risks cannot be fully understood from afar.

International research helps companies anticipate issues before they escalate. It equips leadership teams with the foresight to scenario-plan, buffer budgets, or pivot entry strategies in response to external shocks. Research can’t eliminate risk, but it makes risk measurable and manageable.

6. Logistics and Infrastructure Vary Widely

Domestic logistics solutions rarely translate directly into foreign markets. Everything from warehousing and payment systems to transportation and fulfilment may need to be rethought.

In countries with limited last-mile delivery networks, e-commerce models must adapt. In regions where mobile wallets are more trusted than credit cards, payment systems must localise. International research helps uncover these frictions in advance, allowing for appropriate operational planning.

7. Strategy and Budget Planning Require Evidence

Entering a new market without solid data is a gamble. Research provides the financial benchmarks, demand forecasts, and competitive intelligence necessary to build realistic market entry strategies. It allows decision-makers to prioritise regions, allocate budgets, and measure viability before investing substantial resources.

In many organisations, well-founded research also plays a key role in securing internal buy-in. When marketing and product teams can clearly show why a region is attractive, how consumer demand is evolving, and what conditions favour entry, it becomes easier to justify budget and resource allocation.

8. Marketing Channels Must Be Context-Specific

A campaign that performs well domestically may fall flat abroad. Marketing channels are shaped by local media habits, platform penetration, language nuance, and consumer trust.

For instance, while Facebook advertising may deliver results in the U.S. or Philippines, WeChat, KakaoTalk, or Line may be far more influential in East Asian markets. In rural markets with low connectivity, offline channels like radio or SMS may still dominate. International market research surfaces these realities so campaigns can be designed for relevance, not just reach.

How International Market Research Differs from Domestic Research

The core methods of market research may be consistent, but their execution and interpretation change significantly across borders. International market research must account for:

  • Cultural fluency: Understanding not just what consumers say, but what they mean within cultural context
  • Legal variance: Navigating country-specific compliance and ethical boundaries
  • Operational constraints: Adapting research methods to infrastructure realities (e.g. mobile surveys in mobile-first markets)
  • Linguistic nuance: Translating more than just language—capturing idioms, tone, and intent

Success in international markets doesn’t come from applying domestic strategies at scale. It comes from rethinking assumptions and rebuilding strategy on local insight.

Closing Insight: Insight Is a Strategic Asset

In the global economy, assumptions are expensive. The first step of the research process is essential because it reveals the unknowns that domestic success often obscures. It’s not simply about avoiding failure. It’s about seeing what others miss.

Organisations that treat international market research as a strategic discipline—rather than a compliance formality or launch checklist—position themselves to grow with confidence. They enter new markets not as outsiders, but as informed players who respect local complexity and act accordingly.

To succeed globally, companies must begin locally. That begins with asking the right questions, in the right places, and listening closely to the answers that emerge.

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Expanding into a foreign market requires more than translating your existing strategy. It demands local insight, and that starts with selecting the right international market research methods. Understanding what consumers want, how they behave, and what barriers exist—from cultural nuance to infrastructure—is what separates successful entries from expensive missteps.

The quality of your research is directly tied to your market outcome. Poorly chosen methods can lead to costly misjudgements, particularly when entering unfamiliar international markets where assumptions rarely hold.

Every challenge of domestic expansion—from compliance to messaging—is intensified when moving into a foreign market. Without local research, you risk launching into an unfamiliar environment blind to the cultural, legal, and logistical realities that shape consumer behaviour.

The following methods represent some of the most effective approaches for conducting international market research. Each has strengths and limitations depending on the market context, infrastructure, and cultural norms.

Understanding Data Types in International Market Research

Before selecting the appropriate methodology, it’s critical to understand the types of data international market researchers typically rely on: secondary data, survey data, and experimental data. Each plays a distinct role in shaping insight, and their relevance often shifts depending on the infrastructure, openness, and regulatory constraints of the target market.

Secondary data

Secondary data refers to information that has already been collected for other purposes—government publications, trade association reports, academic studies, and NGO findings. It offers a low-cost starting point, especially in regions with transparent regulatory or economic reporting.

However, researchers must be cautious. In some countries, government or institutional data may be outdated, politically influenced, or difficult to access. Language barriers and translation inaccuracies can also compromise the clarity of findings.

Survey data

Survey data includes any information collected directly from individuals within your target market. It encompasses methods such as online questionnaires, telephone interviews, in-person intercepts, and mobile surveys. Surveys are particularly useful in international research because they provide firsthand insight into consumer preferences, behaviours, and unmet needs.

Challenges emerge quickly across borders. Researchers must navigate dialects, idioms, translation accuracy, and cultural tendencies that influence how questions are interpreted or answered. Standardising instruments across geographies requires localisation, not just language conversion.

Experimental data

Experimental data is generated by testing variables in controlled environments. In international market research, this might involve A/B testing promotional offers, pricing strategies, or product messaging across different cultural or regional cohorts. This method lets companies observe actual behavioural responses, not just stated preferences.

Experimental approaches yield some of the most actionable findings, but they’re also among the most difficult to execute across international markets. Regulatory approval, ethical review processes, and operational complexity vary widely. Testing that seems routine in one country may face resistance or legal obstacles in another.

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9 Effective Methods for International Market Research

Selecting the right market research methods is one of the most important decisions you’ll make when entering a foreign market. Different regions demand different approaches. Infrastructure, cultural norms, technology access, and data availability vary widely, and each factor affects how you collect insight. Below are nine of the most effective methods used by researchers to navigate these complexities.

1. Overseas Business Research

Reviewing existing business research can provide a valuable foundation. Internal reports from companies operating in your target market—whether competitors or not—can reveal macro trends, industry dynamics, regulatory conditions, and consumer behaviours.

While business intelligence offers a useful snapshot, it’s not enough to rely on other firms’ findings. Each company enters the market with different priorities, resources, and audiences. Use these insights to sharpen your own hypothesis, but validate with original research tailored to your objectives.

2. Foreign Government Information

Government sources often publish extensive demographic, economic, and regulatory data. National statistics offices, trade ministries, and customs departments maintain datasets that help companies understand the makeup and potential of a given market.

These insights are especially important when navigating legal and compliance issues. Tariffs, import restrictions, tax obligations, and employment laws vary significantly—and change frequently. Reviewing official publications can help avoid costly surprises, but researchers should assess source credibility and update frequency.

3. NGO and Third-Sector Data

In emerging markets where government data may be sparse or outdated, NGOs often provide more current and granular insight. Their reports can be particularly valuable in areas such as public health, education, income distribution, infrastructure, and rural access.

International organisations like the World Bank, UNICEF, and regional development agencies often work with local partners to produce data that’s otherwise inaccessible. These sources are especially useful for companies entering underserved markets or aiming to understand social and environmental dynamics.

4. Face-to-face Interviews and Focus Groups

Direct interactions through in-person interviews and moderated focus groups remain one of the most powerful tools in international research. They offer context-rich feedback and reveal nuanced perceptions, priorities, and emotions that surveys may overlook.

However, these sessions require careful planning. Venue sourcing, translation services, recruitment, and local moderation can be complex—particularly in rural or low-trust environments. Some markets may view formal research processes with suspicion or deferential politeness, leading to skewed responses. Working with experienced local partners is often essential.

5. Attitude scales

Attitude scales such as the Likert scale allow researchers to measure intensity of opinion across cultures. They’re relatively easy to translate and can be applied across multiple channels, from in-person questionnaires to online surveys.

While useful, they must be interpreted with care. In some cultures, respondents avoid extreme ratings out of politeness or social harmony. In others, midpoint choices are overused to mask disagreement. Pre-testing and local adaptation are key to generating useful results.

6. Text message (SMS) survey

Text message surveys provide quick, low-cost access to mobile users. They’re ideal in countries where smartphone penetration is low but basic mobile phone usage is widespread.

However, SMS surveys offer limited depth and are constrained by character count. They’re not ideal for complex topics, and mobile reach varies significantly by country. For example, GSMA data from 2024 shows mobile penetration in Sub-Saharan Africa still lags behind other regions, reducing effectiveness in rural areas.

7. Online survey

Email-based or web-hosted surveys are among the most scalable research tools. They allow for broad distribution, rapid response, and easy localisation.

The challenge is digital access. Markets with limited broadband or low internet penetration cannot be reached effectively through online-only methods. Even where connectivity is high, survey fatigue and low engagement can affect data quality. Incentivisation and responsive design can improve participation.

8. Mobile web survey

Smartphone-based surveys have surged in popularity, especially in mobile-first economies. Apps and browser-based surveys can collect multimedia responses, geo-location data, and behavioural patterns in real time.

That said, access is uneven. Markets such as India, Brazil, and Indonesia show high smartphone usage, while others lag behind. Additionally, device type, operating system, and bandwidth speed all influence user experience. Designing mobile-first, low-bandwidth versions improves usability.

9. Remote Face-to-Face

Platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams have transformed the feasibility of conducting face-to-face interviews and group sessions internationally. These tools reduce costs, remove travel barriers, and allow researchers to moderate sessions from a central location.

However, the digital divide remains. Remote sessions often skew toward urban, affluent, and younger demographics with reliable internet. Where digital literacy is low, researchers should pair this method with offline approaches to ensure representative sampling.

The Next Step in Effective International Research

International market research is never one-size-fits-all. The methods you choose must match the realities of your target region—whether you’re navigating regulatory red tape, limited infrastructure, or cultural nuance. Getting it wrong can be expensive. Getting it right can set the stage for long-term success.

Kadence specialises in helping brands move beyond assumptions. With local teams in key markets across Asia, the US, and Europe, we bring grounded insight, real-world feasibility, and cultural fluency to your research process.

Get in touch to learn how we can support your next international launch with data-led precision and deep regional expertise.

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.

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The global health and wellness industry is booming. Already a top priority for many consumers pre-Covid, health and wellness has come into even sharper focus as a result of the pandemic. Research from McKinsey estimates that the global wellness market is worth $1.5 trillion and is growing fast – at a rate of 5-10% per year. But what are the big health and wellness trends for 2021 that brands need to watch?

Four key health and wellness trends for 2021

This blog post summarises 4 key trends from our latest report: Health and wellness trends for 2021. These are:

  1. My health on my terms. Advances in tracking and testing are facilitating personalized health and nutrition recommendations on demand
  2. Mental fitness. Consumers will take a more proactive and preventative approach to mental health
  3. The science of sleep. The global sleep economy shows no signs of slowing down, but innovation in the category will be driven by a new focus on circadian health.
  4. Function at the fore. No longer limited to just physical health, brands are focusing on products to better the body and the mind.

Read the summary below or download the full report to learn more about these trends and how brands can respond. It contains inspiring cases studies of companies across the world who are innovating to capitalize on these trends.

My health on my terms

One of the most significant developments in health and wellness has been the rapid advances in tracking and testing, which are facilitating personalised health and wellness recommendations on demand.  

Wearables are becoming ever more sophisticated. The models on the market now allow consumers to track more granular metrics than ever before, with Mind Body Green hailing this a new era of “micro-tracking”. Not only are wearables collecting a wider range of data, they’re using this to better empower their users. Oura, for instance, the world’s first wearable ring, provides a “readiness score” to help users understand when they are at their best – both mentally and physically – as well as when they should focus on recovery.

Similar developments are happening in the world of testing, with companies springing up that allow users to complete a series of tests at home, and then personalise their recommendations based on this. We profile the best of these in the full report but the really interesting thing about these examples is that, for the first time, they have real potential to enter the mainstream. In the past, in-home testing has been a barrier to personalised health and nutrition, but now, greater familiarity with the concept as a result of the pandemic could open the door to new services which combine tracking with testing to create hyper personalised recommendations at speed.

There’s certainly interest in these kinds of services, with 88% of consumers in the US, UK and Germany prioritising personalisation in health and wellness as much as, or more than, they did in the past two to three years, according to the McKinsey study.

Mental fitness

Over the last decade, mental health has become an increasingly important part of the conversation when it comes to health and wellness. This has come into even sharper focus as a result of the pandemic. The impact of the virus and the resulting lockdowns have seen anxiety and depression skyrocket and, in line with this, mental health has become a key focus. In China, for instance, 87% of consumers are focused on taking care of their mental health, according to research by PWC conducted after the onset of the pandemic.

This isn’t a short- term trend. Research we conducted to determine which of the behaviours adopted during the pandemic will persist in the long-term found that undertaking activities to support mental health is one of the areas with greatest sticking power. Businesses are increasingly prioritising mental health too. Recent research we conducted in partnership with Bloomberg found that 66% of companies are engaging an external vendor to provide healthcare / wellbeing training for their employees and half are looking to support employees with mental health and stress management.

In line with this growing recognition of the importance of mental health, we see the concept of mental fitness coming to the fore. What do we mean by this? This a move towards taking a more proactive and preventative approach to mental health, where consumers manage their mental health in the same way that they manage their physical health. The US is a market that’s really leading the way here. We’ve already seen a whole host of brands gaining traction but one of the most interesting is a company called Coa, which bills itself as the country’s first “mental health gym”. We profile Coa and other brands leading the way in our full report.

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Health and wellness trends for 2021

The global health and wellness industry is going from strength to strength. Already important to consumers before the pandemic, health and wellness have come into even sharper focus, with the industry undergoing significant transformation in response to Covid.

To help brands navigate these changes, we’ve developed a new report exploring 4 key trends that will shape health and wellness in 2021, profiling the brands and innovations leading the way.

Download the report

The science of sleep

Sleep is big business – with the industry set to be worth a massive $585 billion by 2024 according to Statistica. The impact of the pandemic is fuelling growth in this sector – with consumers placing an increasing emphasis on quality sleep against a backdrop of anxiety and stress.

This is leading to a more scientific approach to sleep. The Global Wellness Summit predicts that a new focus on circadian health will shape the products and services we see in the category. (A number of these – from a smart mattress to connected lighting – are profiled in our report.) Circadian health relates to aligning behaviors with our natural circadian rhythms – 24 hour cycles such as the sleep-wake cycle, which are influenced by external factors like natural light and temperature.

Shifting the way we think about sleep to place greater emphasis on circadian rhythms could have broader implications when it comes to other behaviours, for instance, disconnecting from devices before bed or the way we care for our skin, making this an interesting space to watch.

Function at the fore

The fourth and final big trend we see is a growing interest in functional food and beverages that support better physical and mental health. The most evident application of this is in the field of immunity boosting food and drink. According to re­search from Innova Market Insights, 60% of consumers globally are seeking out food and beverage products that support immune health and we’ve seen a seen a slew of product launches in this space as brands seek to capitalise on this trend. Increasingly, we’re seeing innovation extending beyond this to food and beverage products that support the mind. We feature the best of these in the full report. For brands looking to tap into this trend, this is a relatively nascent category so there’s real potential here, as well as for cross-over products to improve both physical and mental health.

To learn more, download the full report: Health and wellness trends for 2021

To learn more about how these trends, how they are evolving and the brands leading the way, download the full report. Alternatively if you’d like to speak to us to understand more about how these trends are playing out in your market, get in touch.

Market research is hugely valuable to any organisation. But understanding how consumers and decision-makers think and behave is rarely more important than when you’re trying to understand non-native markets. International business is big business – but it’s also a big investment. There are a host of issues to consider when you’re conducting international market research (for more, read our article on the topic). But getting the language right is perhaps the most obvious hurdle. So how is international market research affected by language differences?

Imagine you’re running a brand tracker to understand how your organisation is perceived across the world. You’ll need to localise the research in dozens of markets and yet still be able to draw broad, universal conclusions. For this, you’ll need to translate the survey into many different languages, whilst maintaining consistency of meaning and controlling for different emotive weights in the various dialects. Fail to do this, and the results you’ll get back could be misleading.

Why language matters

It’s not just language, of course. According to research from Columbia Business School, there are: “important cross-cultural differences in the processing, evaluation, and judgment of brand and product information. Much of this work suggests that cultural differences stem from pervasive socio-cultural … factors. For example, a good deal of research demonstrates that people have broad, culture-specific cognitive dispositions … which can guide consumer behaviour.”

But the same paper also stresses that language is a huge factor: “in recent work conducted in a consumer behaviour marketing context, we have found that structural aspects of a language can in fact critically affect one of the most basic aspects of consumer behaviour – categorisation of products. Grammar, phonology and semantics are fundamental building blocks to a linguistic system and should therefore have an impact on consumer behaviour.”

It’s not just what you say, then – but also how you say it, and to whom. All of which adds up to language, localisation, translation and interpretation as crucial building blocks of any international research project. Getting it wrong can be disastrous …

When language goes wrong

Many brands have learned the dangers of ignoring local idiom when they move into new markets. When Coca Cola first entered the Chinese market signs for ‘ko-ka-ko-la’ (the closest phonetic translation) were understood by locals as ‘bite the wax tadpole’ or ‘female horse fastened with wax’ depending on the tone.

This real life example highlights important language considerations, both in terms of asking the right questions and understanding the meaning of the answers when you’re working abroad.

Speaking their language

But hang on a second: isn’t all this slightly moot in the age of instant machine translation? Google Translate can handle dozens of languages, and even Microsoft Word now has a built-in translation function. While machine translation is improving in quality, it lacks subtlety, it struggles with idioms, and it misses the emotional salience that’s important to both qualitative and even quantitative research.

That’s even more important now that AI-type systems are being deployed to pull out topics, themes and even sentiments from research results. With systems like these, the meaning of local dialect or cultural implications could be missed. From a semiotic perspective, then, there are huge challenges with using AI for translation and analysis.

Another option could be to hire a language graduate to translate your surveys and responses. It’s true this is a step-up from the automated approach. But even if you can find a translator you trust, ensuring they understand the subtleties of local dialects and cultural nuances (see below) and the technical aspect of market research language is much harder. That’s where market research agencies like Kadence – with international offices across the globe and native speakers in house – come in handy. Having team members who instinctively understand the need to localise language and know how to do it is a major plus. After all, language and meaning evolve even over short time-spans so keeping up to date with trends and sayings is massively valuable. In Germany, for instance, 1200 new words and counting have come into being over the course of the pandemic.

The devil in the detail

The reason why all this is important is that just as culture varies widely between and within international markets, language has local subtleties. Even within English, there are layers of meaning that illustrate this point. Take the word ‘love’. He loves popping down to the shops with his mates on Saturday afternoon. She loves it when Leeds United score. They love their mum. She makes love to her sweetheart. They bask in God’s love. These are all very nuanced – and to a competent English speaker their varied meanings are obvious.

Then lots of countries have multiple languages – China, Malaysia, Belgium, Switzerland… there’s a very long list of places with minority language groups that a research project approached in the wrong way could marginalise. (Wikipedia has your back.)

Even when the language is clear, the nuances might not be. In Canada, for example, you need translators who know Quebecois, not just French. If you’re running field research in Mexico, you could stick to Spanish; or try to ensure the Spanish translation is appropriately localised for Mexican idioms; or even think about the indigenous languages that are still spoken by a minority of the population.

In the Philippines, Filipino and English are designated official languages. But Spanish is commonly spoken (a legacy of its own colonial role), as well as Tagalog, Minna and even Arabic.

That poses interesting questions about how your sample might be affected by language choice. Remember: you might only be interested in affluent consumers in a given market, say, and that means choosing the dominant language is no problem. But for a genuine look across a country – regionally and socially – a different approach might be needed.

Tone and culture – how these differences can affect international market research

Then tone has to be calibrated, too. Understanding why emotions are triggered in different cultures or regions is really important. In eastern Germany, for example, the long history of the Stasi secret police means that even though the country reunified 30 years ago, suspicion about intrusive questions lingers. That means a deftness in your translations will be important.

In France, questions about sexuality or religion are usually considered unacceptable unless you carefully rephrase the survey to yield the information you need. It’s true even in English: what’s the difference between ‘a hobby’, ‘a pastime’ and a ‘personal skill’? How might asking about those different categories affect the kind of responses you’d get?

Cultural salience is also a stumbling block. Someone in a focus group might quote a nursery rhyme to evoke a particular emotion or assumption. A native might pick up a lot of meaning; a foreign translator might understand the context; but a machine translation is just going to give a verbatim that lacks any appropriate meaning.

Practical considerations when it comes to language differences in international market research

When it comes to qualitative research, a lot of the nuance you need comes from non-verbal cues, and those are much harder to evaluate. Here, it’s not even a question of your translation services, you need ‘boots on the ground’.

From a quant perspective, there are practical considerations around research-specific translations. Some text will appear much longer when translated. For example:

ا هي المدة منذ زيارتك الأخيرة للطبيب؟

自您上次看医生以来有多长时间？

Wie lange ist Ihr letzter Arztbesuch her?

How long since your last visit to the doctor?

Berapa lama sejak kunjungan terakhir Anda ke dokter?

Gaano katagal mula noong huli mong pagbisita sa doktor?

¿Cuánto tiempo ha pasado desde su última visita al médico?

Combien de temps depuis votre dernière visite chez le médecin?

நீங்கள் கடைசியாக மருத்துவரிடம் சென்றதிலிருந்து எவ்வளவு காலம்?

That might mean the translation of survey questions has to be tweaked to be more practical or accessible to users depending on the format or technology being used in the field. It’s another reminder that having a single, integrated agency working on the project – handling the research design as well as the fieldwork and analysis – will bring many benefits.

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Beyond language – thinking about local context in international market research

We’re always mindful that when a global brand puts forward a research hypothesis, not only do we need to translate the language, but we need to be able to contextualise that hypothesis for individual markets. Equally, you also have to be able to take local outputs and fit them into a balanced global interpretation. A lot of that depends on the purpose of the research. Are we looking to assess uniform global products? Work out which markets to target? Tailor products or positioning for a local audience? That will shape how we make insights actionable for a brand.

This is where brands and their research agencies need deeper levels of understanding. Exposure to local culture, language, attitudes and even research norms makes a big difference to the value a project can deliver.

Ultimately, research projects need to be localised, not just translated. Miles in the US and UK; kilometres mostly everywhere else. That applies in a host of areas, not just weight and measures. Most people outside America are familiar with the frustrations of ‘US Letter’ being the default paper size in many software products! Ask a French sample how many pounds they would like to lose on their next diet, and you might get some confused responses.

Aiming for transcreation

With so many factors on top of the raw translation, many brands choose to ‘transcreate’ their research projects for new counties, not just translate them.

What is transcreation in translation?

Transcreation is “the process of adapting a message from one language to another, while maintaining its intent, style, tone, and context. A successfully transcreated message evokes the same emotions and carries the same implications in the target language as it does in the source language.” (Thanks again, Wikipedia.) This makes it the go-to approach for the many research projects that seek to reveal consumer attitudes or emotions to particular brands, products or categories.

In research terms it means identifying the purposes of the research – looking at the brief and how the insights will be used within the organisation – and asking how best those requirements can be met within different countries or regions.

Clearly many of the outputs may need to be standardised. But if the local research team understands the brief and the outputs, if they can parse the emotional intent of the research, they can recreate the desired level of investigation and effectiveness in another language. That might mean changing the actual content well beyond simply translating.

But it does also mean that the intent of the research project is translated, not just the words of a survey. Ultimately, marketers will get more value from their international research if they work with an agency that can deliver against the broad brief and desired outputs from a project using people with a deep understanding of different markets.

Looking for support with international market research?

At Kadence, we have offices in 10 countries across the world. We’re proud of the diversity within our offices too – with project teams spanning colleagues from Sweden to Taiwan. To understand how we can help you navigate the challenges of international marketing research, take a look at our international market research capabilities or get in touch to discuss a project.

Conducting market research on an international scale is an increasingly common requirement. Global markets are more critical than ever, offering growth to businesses facing domestic stagnation or saturation. But international market research can be a challenge to get right. This article explores the top 5 challenges in international marketing research and our top tips for overcoming these.

What are the top challenges in international marketing research?

#1 International markets are incredibly diverse.

Some brands fail to appreciate the diversity within a region or country. You can only get an accurate picture of what people value and whether your products and services might succeed by rooting out the nuances of different geographical areas, cultures, and consumers.

#2 There can be a temptation to go too broad.

Linked to this, sometimes, when companies set out on international marketing research projects, they make the mistake of going too broad and trying to understand a region as a whole. Another error we see is firms commissioning research to target one market and then using this as a jumping-off point into others with “similar” attributes. This inevitably leads to costly mistakes as brands map their assumptions about one market onto another.

To avoid this, be clear on the emphasis of your research. Where are you looking to focus and why? Looking too broadly across a region of different markets, or exploring how an entire product range might perform, can cloud the picture.

# 3 Finding the right research partner.

The next big question is whether you have the research capabilities to conduct meaningful projects internationally. Most brands and their research partners can run domestic research projects with ease. But if you’re in the US or UK, say, going as far afield as Japan, India, or Germany requires different sensibilities and capabilities. The more international you get, the harder you must look for that kind of experience and expertise.

#4 Bringing together local and global expertise.

Misalignment is one of the biggest challenges in international market research. To overcome this, there must be a collaborative effort and a shared understanding of the mission, methodology, and insights. A research team at HQ might work with a local marketing team to understand how to position a product for success in an emerging market. But if the teams are siloed and don’t have a consistent understanding of the brief, their approach to researching the market and their findings might not help deliver on the challenge.

#5 Ensuring the project is realistic from the outset.

This is where all the other challenges in international market research come together: which markets, what purpose, the capabilities available, and the effectiveness of the output – all within a budget that makes sense. There will always be limits to what’s practical – and the last thing any client needs is to spend large sums testing international markets to no effect.

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Meeting the challenges in international marketing research – tips and tricks from our experience in the field.

Get the brief and the scope right.

The more you can nail down exactly what you need to know and about which markets, the better your international market research will be. The key here is to dismiss the idea that lessons from one market can be overlaid onto other markets. Your approach might not even work in the same region, much less globally. So ensuring the brief isn’t burdened with too many assumptions, and is very clear on objectives, is key.

For research into one new international market, the brief can be clear-cut. You’ve picked a new place to trade, and you probably have some specific questions. Will the branding work? Do we need to alter the packaging? Are there particular features we need to tweak? But as soon as you broaden the scope – to, say, three new markets covering a region – the nuances become more critical in the research brief.

One solution is to ask questions at every stage. Why these three markets? What are they like? What do we need to know about purchaser sentiment there? How will a research project change what we decide to do in each market? Companies that are open with their agencies on operational and marketing strategies – rather than prescribing research about the areas they know matter in their existing markets – will see more effective results.

Understand the cultural nuances you’ll face

Everyone knows instinctively that cultural differences are both a factor in conducting meaningful research internationally – and a major reason for doing that research in the first place. ‘Market immersion’ is a key concept, and that’s all about getting to grips with the cultural context. But local nuances within new markets can catch people out. 

In South Africa, for example, there are multiple cultural groups. Having local knowledge of how to tease those out is vital to breaking in South Africa.

That means one of our jobs as global research partners is challenging clients at the briefing stage to ensure these considerations are baked into the research approach and the analysis and interpretation of the results. The good news is that when you have research experts living and working in these markets as we do, cultural nuances are easier to plan around. We use this inside knowledge about people’s lives to help understand opinions, habits, and behaviors.

Don’t think language is just about translation.

Companies are often wise to the importance of understanding ‘culture’ and, as a result, adopt a cautious approach. But one mistake people make in international market research is to assume that ‘language’ is more straightforward – or that it’s just a question of running a survey or its results through Google Translate. But that’s never a good idea. It requires a much more nuanced approach. 

Language isn’t just what we say but how we say it. And local variations within international markets – think Swiss German or Quebecois French, but the list is endless – further complicate the issue. 

You’ll need the nuance: go regional.

Understanding local culture and language are essential in its own right. They’re also the gateway to getting out of the big cities and understanding the whole market. Tokyo is a true megacity – but it doesn’t reflect all of Japan. Paris is iconic – but its citizens have very different values to those in Marseilles, let alone rural France.

Here’s where you need to understand geography and supply chains. If you’re moving into a new international market in a limited way – or if the distribution is going to be impractical outside conurbations, say – then researching inside big city bubbles might work just fine. But for national penetration and in markets where businesses or consumers are more evenly distributed, understanding attitudes and behaviors across the country is a must.

For brands with an existing presence, existing assets on the ground are a hugely valuable resource for understanding these nuances. That could be local-office marketers or salespeople. Distributors and major customers can also offer insights. We love to work with chief marketing officers (CMOs) who have a helicopter view of a region and are clear about strategic objectives. But triangulating between them, their local marketing teams, and our local research teams in the field tends to generate better results.

Decide on the most effective methodology.

Another significant benefit of having local teams in place like ours is that they have expertise in the best methodologies to use in different markets. This is sometimes a subset of culture, but in other markets, it’s driven by the levels of technology adoption, geography, or working practices. Some examples:

  • In Indonesia, face-to-face research is considered the norm; telephone in-depth interviews tend to deliver a poor hit rate.
  • In Japan, groups respond better to moderators of the same gender, and people are more likely to undertake qual work at the weekends.
  • It’s not acceptable for researchers to interview women in the home one-on-one in Saudi Arabia. And across the Middle East – and many other regions – mixed-sex focus groups tend to be a no-no.

You can read about others in our guide to conducting online market research in Asia.

This is also why more open briefing processes can be valuable in international research. It’s too easy to apply a blanket methodology across a whole region and end up struggling to execute the research. Better to frame the key questions the organization needs to answer and tailor the research study to each key market.

Calibrate your responses.

Cultural and language shape the way you ask questions, and they’re huge factors in interpreting any research results, too. A keyword search on a crude translation of responses could mean missing crucial insights – or, worse, coming to incorrect conclusions.

And don’t think this only applies to qualitative, descriptive research where local idiom, slang, or cultural references might catch you out. International quantitative research also has to be calibrated by analysts with an appreciation for local nuance.

Respondents in some markets are more likely to agree with statements than others. For instance, you’re more likely to see people agree with statements in India than in Japan. Even the way you phrase questions – not just translate them, but the nuance in the question itself – will affect the consistency in scores you can achieve between different cultures.

That’s particularly important for big global brands with a very set idea about how they do their brand equity or NPS studies. The alternative is to develop a more organic approach so that the questions allow you to reflect local nuance. It might be as simple as using a four-point rather than a five-point scale in markets where respondents are most likely to sit on the fence.

Use market research as a tactical, not just strategic, lever.

It can be tempting to seek broad answers from international market research: “Will this product work in this market?” Or: “How should we tweak the service offering to meet this country’s needs?” These will help brands decide on strategic issues. But the more nuanced the approach, the more likely it is that the research will feed into local tactics for a brand, making its international investments work even harder.

That’s a common theme in research: properly granular insights ought to help with several decisions. It’s not just a ‘go/no-go’ binary, but research should inform everything from pricing to choice of distribution channel, support for local sales operations, to targeted advertising.

A new era for international research

We’ve moved on from an earlier era when global brands assumed continent-scale uniformity. Even if a business sees an opportunity in ‘Latin America,’ has an ‘Asian strategy’ or issues financial reports for ‘EMEA,’ serious decision-makers know they need to go, at the very least, to the country level for insights that will help their plans succeed. And they understand that it can be counter-productive to seek out ‘apples to apples’ comparisons between markets when a little nuance can go a long way.

More recently, one factor that’s complicated the picture is the global Covid-19 pandemic. Because so much commercial activity is managed remotely, there’s a temptation to run multi-market studies with a uniform online methodology. If everyone in the world is attending focus groups via the same videoconferencing app, what’s the difference?

The risk here is that the vast advantages of technological solutions are watered down in the hunt for low-cost, ‘big picture’ regional results. Online research can be conducted quickly and flexibly. And clients can immerse themselves in research projects more easily, gaining their own insights into consumer reactions on the other side of the world.

But research that is tailored, for example, to local respondents’ cultural norms will yield much better results. You can quickly adapt a methodology to a market when you have local research expertise and a clear idea of the brand’s mission. For instance, recognizing that in India, you’ll need to avoid any methodologies that rely on lengthy video inputs, and instead, combining text, image-based and short video tasks will get you the insights you need.

The most successful companies understand that an international project is more complex than handing a research agency a questionnaire and generating uniform results across every territory.

You know your product or service better than anyone. We know the right questions and methodologies to get you where you need to go. Our local teams understand the cultural norms, and good translations – culturally and linguistically – can bring it all together. Find out about the regions where we can conduct international market research or get in touch to speak to us about an international project

Have you heard the story about Steve Jobs dismissing consumer market research as a tool to shape new products? The driving force behind the Mac, the iPod and the iPhone famously said in a 1985 Playboy interview, “We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren’t going to go out and do market research.”

It is, of course, one of the most widely debunked stories in business. Apple does conduct consumer market research – and is, arguably, in its pre-eminent position precisely because it innovates using insights generated by analysing in incredible detail its consumers’ behaviours and the market appetite for its products. (There’s video of a young Jobs extolling the virtues of market research for these purposes – it’s 90 seconds well spent.)

The fact is, most new products are very similar to things people have seen before. For every genre-busting innovation there are tens of thousands of new iterations of existing ideas, tweaks to brands and updates to proven sellers. In most cases, some kind of market research will have shaped the new iteration and how it was conceptualised; helped stand up the business case for it; framed the marketing; and guided its introduction to consumers. So how does market research help businesses design and launch successful new products?

Using market research for product development at each stage of the innovation funnel

There are lots of different ways to describe the innovation process, broadly broken down into three phases: ideas, concepts and creation. It’s not a science with a standard formula, however, but there are some common steps.  For example, some experts recommend breaking the process into 5Cs:

  • Capture intelligence about market gaps and organisational potential.
  • Connect opportunities to capabilities.
  • Convert ideas and available resources into concepts for products.
  • Confirm these products are viable in the market.
  • Conclude by executing a market entry plan for them.

Another way of thinking about it is a series of questions that need to be asked at each stage of the product development process. Market research can help answer them all.

1: What’s the opportunity?

Desk research, analysis of existing customer data and some qualitative investigation can help frame likely areas for innovation. In many cases, an organisation will face an internal problem – overcapacity, falling margins, consumer appetites shifting away from existing products – that also frame the need for new products. The output here is an extrapolation of big trends to identify emerging needs, changing behaviours and whitespace for innovation.

2: What ideas might thrive there?

In some organisations, internal R&D will have a ready supply of potential innovations that might be applied to the opportunity. More likely, R&D and marketing teams will benefit from a brief developed from the ‘opportunity’ phase to direct R&D in more concrete areas. This process might include brainstorming inside the organisation or more formal ideation sessions with an external research agency. At this point surveys can be harnessed to give more shape to the ideation process. In the search for an iterative new product (rather than a genuine technological innovation) there might be 30 broad ideas that can be tested in quantitative surveys to thin down the field.

3: What concepts deliver on those ideas?

In the next stage, focus groups and market analysis can clarify which concepts ought to progress further by exploring the strengths and weaknesses of each idea. This is also where the innovation and R&D efforts of the business are properly moulded around consumer and market insights – and some iteration takes place to align the two. Note that research here isn’t just among consumers in the core market. Channel partners, consumers and suppliers in adjacent industries are all valuable sources of insight and inspiration. For example, when Kadence worked with an airline to develop new first and business class seats, we looked to bedding experts, audiophiles and high-end restaurant maîtres d’hôtel to shape the concepts.

4: How might those concepts perform in the market?

By this point, an organisation should have narrowed its ideas down to a small number of solid concepts. At this stage, a large-scale quantitative survey can be used to identify the concept with most potential to take forward, as well as the size of the potential customer base.

5: What’s the investment case for launch?

The insights gained from market and concept testing will allow numbers to be attached to the product at this point. What might revenues be? What’s the cost to produce the product or service? With research around pricing, what’s the margin likely to be? Does this justify retooling a factory or investment in marketing? This is the “go/no go” point for a new product.

6: What should the final product look like?

Using the research on market potential and consumer attitudes to the new idea, a business can shape decisions on final feature set, ancillary products or services (again, both quant and qual market research will illustrate the need or potential for these), packaging, marketing and pricing.

7: How do we get it out to market?

Research can also highlight optimum product launch strategies, including distribution, adverting and partnerships to make the most of both existing markets and potential follow-ons – whether that’s mass-market adoption for a product designed initially for a niche or early adopters; new demographic segments; or launch into different international markets.

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The known unknowns for new products

There are broadly two types of business keen to answer these questions. First there’s the radical innovators, the people who come up with brand new ideas and product concepts and want to understand whether they stand a chance in the market. This group are interested in ‘unknown unknowns’, the broader trends in consumer behaviour that might hint at acceptance of a brand new idea. We’ll come on to these Steve Jobs types later.

The second, much larger, group understands the innovation funnel in more detail and seeks data to optimise a pipeline of new products. They are interested in ‘known unknowns’ and using the answers to justify, shape and execute a launch.

For this group, the challenge is modelling the potential performance of a new product against a number of variables already visible in the market. These organisations often have a sophisticated process in place to test new ideas and are keen to benchmark any new product in order to validate investment. They will have an algorithm for product development. The more variables they can pin down using market research, the higher the confidence in making those investments.

‘Benchmarking’ in this case might be looking at the performance of products within the target market; or evaluating consumer attitudes to particular features or benefits. This makes it a largely quantitative methodology.

This kind of quantitative approach is often applied with good reason. Standardised questionnaires and clear, consistent methodologies can help ensure that the market research process is more reliable and easier to interpret. And for many larger organisations with a wide portfolio of potential innovations, a fixed investment budget and the need for reliable returns, this rigour can be highly valuable.

But beyond simply looking at the “go / no go” result, it’s important to dig into the reasons why products didn’t pass this hurdle. This can provide valuable insights to inform future development.

Competitor analysis can also reveal opportunities for developing successful product iterations. Research might include:

  • Rivals’ marketing strategies – what’s their targeting and messaging; what are they missing?
  • Customer satisfaction with competitor products– where are there discontents that might be satisfied by your product?
  • Other gaps in the market – such as different price points or localised versions for international consumers.
  • Other competitor strengths and weaknesses – consider brand halo effects or financial status.
  • Early-adopter behaviours – in similar markets or using new technologies that might be adapted to your own target markets.

A word of warning – New Coke and the importance of taking the right approach to market research for new product development

But it’s not always done right. There’s no shortage of case studies of new product launches that didn’t go well. And often that’s not because an organisation didn’t do any market research. It’s because they didn’t use it deftly enough.

New Coke is a great example. Coca Cola is an innovative business and wields one of the greatest brands in history. In the 1980s, management decided to rebuild its dominant position with a new formula. Clearly this was a huge decision, and as a market research powerhouse, it took no risks. It spent $4m on development and conducted over 200,000 taste tests across the US to research how consumers would score the new flavour against rival Pepsi. And based on those tests, New Coke was going to be a hit.

But management made a series of errors. In a classic case of confirmation bias, they tended to put more weight behind positive views expressed in focus groups, ignoring those who warned a change would turn them off the brand. They discounted emotional feedback on their brand. And they over-focused on differentiation with Pepsi, which had long marketed itself as the sweeter product.

One big mistake was conducting sip tests instead of researching how consumers would feel drinking a whole can of the sweeter formulation. But narrowing down their research focus – ignoring the context for consumption – they ended up launching a product that turned consumers off the brand altogether.

The error, then, was not failure to conduct market research. It was failure to treat research objectively and apply appropriate methodologies. Management sought justification for their decision – not confidence that it was the right one.

The impact of market research on new product development – giving you the confidence to guide a product launch

The key word here is ‘confidence’. Even iterating an existing product entails risks. Using market research for product development helps reveal and manage that risk – and allows decision-makers to test rigorously against hypotheses for new products, rather than head off down potentially blind alleys.

Note that qualitative research plays a crucial role in helping product developers fine-tune their approach and create innovations more suited to particular audiences. And as the New Coke example shows, qual research can capture the emotional components of product change much better than quantitative analysis might. Every new product launch is a balance between gains and losses for the consumer and understanding that balance is vital.

When it comes to qualitative research, organisations shouldn’t just ask themselves whether to conduct it, but how to conduct it. Whilst central location testing for instance, allows you to ensure the product is experienced in a consistent way during the testing process  pandemic lockdowns have obviously accelerated this shift towards at-home testing. New technologies are helping. Augmented reality (AR), for example, is an ideal way to help consumers visualise new products even at the concept stage. Using their mobile phones, they can ‘see’ products in their own home or a work setting, providing valuable depth to qualitative studies at even earlier stages. This is something we’ve piloted with Asahi to test their London Pride packaging and are seeing a number of benefits, such as respondents using AR organically noticing and commenting on small visual details that aren’t picked up by other respondents assessing a 2D concept.

Using market research to guide blue-sky thinking

So we can test against quantitative benchmarks to validate new product development. And we have qualitative studies to test emotional reaction to new products and shape their evolution in ways that will make them more successful. There’s also a third way of using market research for product development: coming up with new ideas in the first place.

This is often called ‘ideation’ and it’s an area where market research has played a key role since the birth of the industry – regardless of what Steve Jobs said. He was right that consumers are typically quite poor at predicting what might define or satisfy meet their own future needs. But understanding how R&D and human appetites come together is core to the market research offering.

Take a dairy business, as an example, that’s facing a slow decline in consumption. One solution would be to increase the appeal of organic products. How might they craft a brief to their own product development team?

Working with Kadence, the company use a structured approach to frame where this innovation might gain some traction in the market. Using proven research techniques, they also explored possible options for further innovation. These can be tweaked and repositioned using further research.

This approach can be further optimised if like us, the research agency has an in-house creative team that can quickly visualise concepts based on consumer feedback. We worked with a global beverage brands wanting to relaunch its range to make this happen. Based on focus groups, we were able to redesign the packaging in a matter of hours in a way that capitalised on insights from the research.  

One other process to consider: the ideation sprint. Rather than gradually piecing together some R&D, market analysis and internal feedback before gradually building out a new product for consumer testing, this involves getting all the stakeholders into a project group together to develop new ideas within a short timeframe.

Kadence has conducted these sprints with food manufacturers – where that combination of chefs, technicians, marketing experts, salespeople and researchers working in concentrated bursts over a couple of days can see a menu of ideas created,  tested with consumers and refined incredibly quickly. And because these sprints are cross-departmental, buy-in for the new product internally is much greater.

Concluding thoughts

Product development is risky even when you’re not launching a category-busting innovation or changing the world. New flavours, revived branding, tweaked feature-sets or version updates can upset existing product performance or result in costly investment in ideas that might not fly.

Far from stifling product development, market research can deliver reassurance and confidence at every stage, helping inform the choice of new products to pursue, their key attributes, how they might be marketed and what contribution they make to a business operationally and financially.

This is an area where Kadence has extensive expertise. Find out more about our product development research services or get in touch with us to discuss a brief.