International Marketing Research Challenges - Essay Example

Name: Tutor: Title: International Marketing Research Challenges Course: Date: Introduction Due to the increased expansion of businesses within the international markets, it has become critical for managers to recognize the value of a timely and accurate business marketing research to enhance their decision-making processes. Studies indicate that research to foster decisions made in international marketing has past through stages and must continuously change to support the contemporary firms. As a result, businesses are faced with the challenges of how to develop sustainable strategies that anticipate and effectively respond to the rapid changes across the global markets. This implies that the information needs of various businesses are as well changing that result into complex and diverse business process. Therefore, it becomes clear that more timely and accurate information is required to ensure that adequate basis is maintained for the day-to-day business operations and decision-making. However, the major challenge is faced on how to chart businesses’ processes at a faster pace in a highly turbulent as well as competitive environment (Craig & Douglas 2001). The three major challenges discussed in this study include, it is a requirement that the objectives of international market research must be closely aligned with the emerging opportunities outside the developed countries. The need to develop and conduct a competent research that covers more diversified research environments is yet another requirement that poses great challenges to the contemporary businesses. It is also critical for the international marketing researchers to adopt creative approaches that can investigate the cultural requirements of behavior based on today’s technological advances. The need to align the research efforts and capabilities with the growing market potentials It has been established that expenditures on marketing research often concentrate within the developed countries, particularly those in North America, Japan and Europe that accounts for current size and growth of such markets. Today, it can be argued that a number of countries have developed their potentials, and thus have grown into market economies in other nations such as Asia, Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and Latin America. Therefore, international market researchers should give the focus on their research efforts and strategic capabilities on the growing and future market potentials (Knight, Spreng & Yaprak 2003). It is important to note that firms that operate to become sustainable players in the contemporary global markets are expected to focus their research on a more diversified countries rather than concentrating on the industrialized nations. However, it is quite that for international market researchers to effectively conduct in such regions. It is critical that firms competing on international market to understand and sensitize the variations within the market environment. This will enhance their capability to address the issue of shortage of infrastructure for market research. Arguably, high levels of literacy in developing markets and lack of knowledge with stimuli from the developed markets posses challenges. This indicates that when designing strategies to conduct research, appropriate measures have to be considered on how to make direct research methods that are relevant to industrialized countries (Craig & Douglas 2000). It is worthy to point out that business researchers are expected to think creatively prior to developing research methods that can be clearly understood to avoid incidences of ambiguous interpretation as well as chances of cultural bias. Poorly developed market research infrastructure has also been considered a major obstacle to effective business research within the developing countries. For instance, telephone lines and internet hosts are the main infrastructure highly affected. It is advisable that professional researchers in international markets interpret the results on the basis of local context to analyze the significance of such patterns. However, different researchers from different backgrounds are expected to make interpretation of the data collected broader and stable (Knight, Spreng & Yaprak 2003). Adoption and use of new tools to incorporate technological advances in research approach International marketing researchers face the challenge of how to become creative and imaginative as they plan to adopt new approaches to analyze the changing marketplaces. The researchers need to be informed about qualitative research techniques because it provides promising benefits as it advances. Through qualitative research international marketing researchers are required to understand and interpret various trends within the diverse cultural framework. It is challenging for researchers to conduct a qualitative research that acts as insight into evaluating the consumption as well as purchase context to determine the market behaviors. Most international marketing researchers fail on qualitative research which results in inaccurate interpretation of the results of quantitative research to predict future trends (Bartunek & Seo 2002). International marketing researchers are required to establish focus groups to develop into creativity groups to explore the existing motivation, feelings and opinions about a product or service variable. For instance, the technique of developing focus groups is ideal in screening the new product ideas to develop some new ideas on how to position the product or choose the advertising theme in order to examine the future trends. It has become a challenge to the 21st managers to consider qualitative and quantitative research techniques as being critical as they seek to establish new products that are highly perceived as attractive to the cross-national segments across the globe (Thiesse 2008). The issue of incorporating the technological changes into the research approaches has equally become challenging to contemporary international marketing researchers. Given today’s technological advances, it can be noted that researchers in international markets are required to incorporate or update the newly developed technological changes such as new software applications into their data collection and analysis to disseminate the information for the designed research. It is relevant to argue that technological changes make them more sophisticate d techniques that explain the limitations in the international markets cause by advances in technological infrastructure. This causes sophistication of respondents because some may not be conversant with the newly developed technologies used in the research approach (Thomae 2000). The evolution and advancement of technologies creates new innovative ways to the contemporary stimuli and data collection relevant for issues that require international research. For example, as the evolution of the Internet creates potentials to the rapid change in the manner through which the international marketing research is carried out. The internet has become useful in the collection of data through use of the search engine like Google. This implies that websites are viewed as important tools accessed by many users who can be used as interviewees to gather information on the international sample. Furthermore, behaviors on various sites can be traced to discover interests linked to products and services to provide responses to develop promotional materials. The limiting factors exist where a consideration has to be made on the context to which Internet sampling aspects relates to the respondent populations targeted by the marketers. It important to examine that various surveys must be submitted to widen the sample required for market analysis (Thomae 2000). Developing and implementing a market research that span diverse environments Due to the increased diversity related to socio-cultural as well as economic environment framework through research is conducted. It is apparent that international marketing researchers must be competent enough conduct and co-ordinate a market research that span the current environmental backgrounds to help interpret the research questions more effectively. According to Craig and Douglas (2000) skills and knowledge of developing multi-site studies within the diverse environments is highly considered. This will incorporate attention on creating operations, developing research approaches as well as sampling of data gathered from each location. Implications of the challenges for contemporary managers Given the rapid changes within the global market that is influenced by technological advances, for instance, in gathering data, analyzing it and disseminating the information, it is apparent that managers will be required to train more and become competent in designing, implementing as well as interpreting the current research data. The need to align research efforts as a way to balance markets with the controlling market potentials, it becomes obvious that managers will be expected to develop the relevant skills and capabilities to plan, design and conduct research within such environments. However, on the issue of adopting the new tools so as to incorporate the new technology, it implies that creative approaches must be developed by managers to aid them analyzing behavior at different cultural contexts of international markets. This involve managers to exercise the capability to appropriately interpret and integrate sophisticated or more complex data based on diverse sources and international business environments. As a result, contemporary managers will successfully consider themselves to be well-positioned to render relevant recommendations aimed at achieving sustainable international marketing strategy (Craig & Douglas 2000). Conclusion Increased expansion of businesses in the international markets has become critical for managers to recognize the value of a timely and accurate business marketing research to enhance their decision-making processes. Businesses are faced with the challenges of how to develop sustainable strategies that anticipate and effectively respond to the rapid changes across the global markets. Adopting the new tools to incorporate the new technology requires managers to develop creative approaches to aid them in analyzing behavior at different cultural contexts of international markets. Evolution and advancement of technologies creates new innovative ways to the contemporary stimuli and data collection relevant for issues that require international research. Bibliography Bartunek, J.M. & Seo, M.-G. (2002), “Qualitative research can add new meanings to quantitative research”, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Vol. 23 No. 2, pp. 237-42. Craig, C. S & Douglas, S. P. (2000), International Marketing Research, 2nd Edition. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons. Craig, C.S & Douglas, S.P. (2001), “Conducting international marketing research in the twenty first century”, International Marketing Review, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 80-90. Knight, G.A., Spreng, R.A & Yaprak, A. (2003), “Cross-national development and validation of an international business measurement scale”, International Business Review,Vol. 12 No. 5, pp. 581-99. Thiesse, M. (2008), The latest developments in qualitative research. Research International Qualitatif, Paris. Thomae, M. (2000), "Multimedia in Information Technology: How Can Research Keep Up With the Pace of Change? Brussels, Belgium, pp. 89-101. Read More