Introduction
In our increasingly global society, many companies cannot afford to live with the illusion that their domestic markets will always be strong. Therefore, companies choose to market overseas as well. This then makes the international marketer’s task more complicated as he now has to deal with two levels of uncontrollable uncertainty instead of one. Besides the uncontrollable elements of the domestic environment, he has to deal with each foreign country’s unique uncontrollable factors as well.
Fig 1.
Although the research process and methods are basically the same whether applied in Johannesburg, Mozambique or Transkei, International marketing research involves two additional complications:
1. Information will need to be communicated across cultural boundaries.
2. The environments within which the research tools are applied are often different in foreign markets.
We can divide our research required, into 3 areas:
• General – regarding the country, area, market
• Information regarding future forecasts anticipated through economic, consumer,
industry trends within particular markets/countries.
• Precise market information, to develop the product, promotion, distribution or pricing decisions.
An extensive scope is needed for foreign research, due to higher levels of uncertainty associated with it. A country’s political stability, cultural attributes, and geographical characteristics, are not ordinary types of information gathered for the domestic market, but are essential for a sound assessment of foreign markets.
The following are a few ...