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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING RESEARCH CHALLENGES
Challenges in International Research In this era of globalization, international marketing of services has drawn much discourse from governments, private institutions, academicians among others. According to Christian (1961) businesses are going into the global market faster especially to the developing countries where they raise trade and create national wealth through investments. The convergence of tastes and preferences of consumers across the globe is raising the demand for global brands and services. This has been made possible by the technological advancements especially in information technology that is virtually eliminating borders between countries. Nations now are becoming more interdependent creating a powerful economic force that’s forcing goods and services to adapt to a new international order. This has given rise a variety of challenges to the marketers for their products (Christian, 1961). The Collection of consumer information of companies that are growing their opportunities to new geographical frontiers makes it a challenge in broader and more diverse markets especially in distant and unfamiliar markets like the Far East, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa. The collection of reliable and accurate data on existing behavior becomes a challenge in terms of cost, prediction of the response to new and unfamiliar stimuli and how they will respond to it (Craig & Douglas, 2001). Obtaining a representative sample in densely populated country is a daunting task for researchers for example doing a research in china that has 1.2 billion population. Also the legal framework in different countries can prove to be a constraint to the researchers as they are bound by not only the laws of their country of origin but also the country they are conducting research on (Young & Javalgi 2007). Technological development especially in Africa and parts of Asia is more concentrated in the basic Infrastructural development like roads, electricity, running water among others. Electricity is a critical element in IT as it powers up devices and runs communication so it becomes a major hindrance if it is does not exist or if it is unreliable. Electricity enables businesses like retail store to refrigerate foods and hence affects the supply of consumer goods. There has been a dramatic change in the global environment; technological advances in data collection, data analysis and hoe its disseminated needs the researcher to broaden their capabilities to interpret the data in the 21st century. This is in order to match the markets needs and complexities of gathering and interpreting data (Young & Javalgi 2007). The difference in cultural elements such as family, religion, language, education, gender, family structure, and time among others make another challenge in harmonizing global marketing as what seems right in one country may be totally offending in another country. These elements though they may appear similar, are held in different levels of importance in different communities in a country or even in different countries. Effective marketing needs the marketer to understand the individual similarities so as to design a crosscutting marketing program (Carrigan, Marinova & Szmigin, 2005). Craig & Douglas (2001) says that it is a challenge to formulate measurement scales used in obtaining data from different countries in terms of the constructs, the concepts and equivalence of the samples similar in the countries being studied. These factors determine the consistency over time and the validity of the instruments under use. In conclusion, International marketing research provides information about foreign consumers and critical information regarding the global market place Therefore countries that plan to become global must develop an expertise in not only conducting global marketing but also on how to translate it into a competitive advantage (Young & Javalgi 2007). REFERENCE LIST Carrigan, M., Marinova, S., & Szmigin, I. (2005). Ethics and international marketing: Research background and challenges.International Marketing Review, 22(5), 481-493. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/224327748?accountid=45049 Christian, R. C. (1961). Challenges of Global Marketing. Journal of Marketing, 25(4), 72-74. Craig, C. S., & Douglas, S. P. (2001). Conducting international marketing research in the twenty-first century. International Marketing Review, 18(1), 80-90. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/224320273?accountid=45049 Young, R. B., & Javalgi, R. G. (2007). International marketing research: A global project management perspective. Business Horizons, 50(2), 113-122. doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2006.08.003
