Question

2. Why should global marketing research be conducted? Describe the reasons for global marketing research being broader in scope than domestic marketing? Why companies should use ‘secondary research’ and the limitations of these information?

Answer 1

A global marketing research should be conducted to understand the consumer behavior across the globe. Globalization and development in the field of online marketing made it possible to sell the products to different customers irrespective of the location. Marketing research involves the process of gathering and interpreting data and using the same in developing, implementing and monitoring the firm’s marketing plans. The data would be different for different parts of the world based on the culture, geography and many other factors which affect the customer needs and buying behavior and developing a global plan would be difficult. A global marketing research would help to treat the world as a single market, gather and analyze the data and develop a marketing plan with a global perspective.

The global marketing research is broader in scope than domestic marketing because domestic marketing tries to influence the local customers for whom the preferences are already known. But in the case of global marketing research the consumer behavior is different and not known which leads to high level of uncertainty while conducting the research.

Secondary data is the data already collected for some other purpose by other organizations and it helps the organization to conduct their research without much difficulties and time delay. It may be difficult to conduct primary research using methods like surveys and gather required data. In the case of global marketing research primary research would be practically impossible. Hence the organizations should use the secondary research to develop better plans by utilizing the data which is already available. The main limitation is that the data may not fit the purpose or possess the required quality as the data is collected for some other purpose. The researchers may have to conduct additional research in some cases. Sometimes the secondary data may be out of date as the trends keep on changing. Another limitation is that the data may be present in different categories and it would be a tedious process to gather the required data from various sources. The data also might be gathered in different time periods which makes it difficult to compare.