Bigger Picture Issues: Ethics & International Research

MAR 6648: Marketing ResearchFebruary 15, 2011

Overview

• Writing a Final Report—what do I say?• International Marketing Research—what do I

do where?• Ethics in Marketing Research—what shouldn’t

I do?

Writing your report

• Hopefully, after all of your planning and data collection, you’ll have something interesting to report!– Even if you don’t, you still have to report what

happened

• There are certain things you need to be sure to report

Your final report• I. Cover page• II. Executive summary• III. Table of contents• IV. Introduction• V. Methods• VI. Findings• VII. Limitations• VIII. Conclusions and recommendations• IX. Appendices

Other notes• Use headings to your advantage– Make it easy for execs to find the info they need– Make sure that your headings give hints of what’s to

come• Keep your writing lively and readable– Use the present tense– Use the active voice

• Use graphs and charts– Images and tables make your data easier to

understand• Use quotes from participants when appropriate

Key Points

• Writing a research report is like writing any paper– Make it clear, concise, and thorough– Be sure your client can learn what they need to

know from your report, either in short form or long form

– Illustrate your points whenever possible

International Marketing Research Firms

Organization Country # of Countries with branches/subsidiaries

Nielsen US 108

IMS Health US 76

Taylor Nelson Sofres UK 80

GfK Germany 63

Kantar Group UK 61

Ipsos Group France 56

Synovate UK 57

IRI US 8

Westat US 1

Arbitron US 2

What’s that word?

Blame Canada!

• Almost 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border– Easy, right?

• Canada isn’t US Lite– Costs are higher: taxes, transportation,

distribution– Bilingual labels– Laws are different– Metric system!

Standing out or blending in?

• “The squeaky wheel gets the grease”• Versus

• “The nail that stands up gets pounded down”

• Ps at SFO filled out a questionnaire; as a thank you, they were offered 1 pen out of a group of 5:– 1 of one kind, 4 of another– 2 of one kind, 3 of another

Standing out or blending in?

Kim & Markus, 1999

The interdependent self

SelfSelf OtherOther

West: Independent self

SelfSelf OtherOther

East: Interdependent self

Culture and language

• The differences in interdependence even show up in language– American moms use twice as many object labels with

their babies as Japanese moms– Japanese moms use twice as many politeness routines

with their babies as American moms• American babies learn about a world full of objects,

Japanese babies learn about a world full of relationships

• Verbs are more important in Eastern languages, while nouns are more important in Western languages

Cognition and language

Cognition and language

Cognition and language

Masuda & Nisbett, 2001

Cultural superstitions

Superstitions and purchases

How do we avoid problems?

• Try as hard as you can to get to know your potential customers– How do they and don’t they meet your existing

beliefs about them?– Use a variety of techniques to learn their

customs, preferences, etc.• Hire locals– They can help you with language, customs, and

acceptable costs and methods– They can also help you cut through red tape

Making sure things are the same

How do you translate materials?

• Back translation– Have a bilingual person (whose main language is

the second language) translate from the original language into the other language

– Then a bilingual person (whose main language is the first language) retranslate back into the original language

– Keep going until there’s a match• Parallel translation– A committee does all the translation at once, and

works out disagreements amongst themselves

Key Points

• International marketing research doesn’t just require a different language– It can require a different way of thinking• Don’t make assumptions--you know what they say

about that

– Get all the help you can—hire local!• They can help you make sure you’re investigating the

right things in the right ways

Push polling

Sugging and frugging and mugging

Unethical marketing research

• Some obvious examples:– Personal agendas of the client or researcher• Biased or inaccurate reporting or design

– Using other clients’ materials without their permission

– Using materials you know are poorly designed– Disrespecting the privacy or anonymity of

respondents– Making respondents uncomfortable or stressed– Discarding unsatisfactory responses

Unethical marketing research

• Some less obvious examples:– Formulating a research design better suited to the

researcher’s talents than the client’s needs– Using inapplicable secondary data to flesh out a

research project– Designing overly long questionnaires– Designing overly sensitive questions– Using inappropriate sampling procedures– Using inappropriate statistical techniques

The Marketing Research Process

Clients can be unethical, too

• Personal agendas Getting external proposals with the intention of

using them internally Getting unfair concessions from the researcher Misrepresenting research findings

Milgram, 1965

Hard to to recognize trouble spots?

Hard to recognize trouble spots?

Chose to assign self and other Chose to flip a coin

Desire to come to a decision…

• Can lead to rationalization of wrongdoing

What to do?

• Recognize the problem• Think about the consequences• Don’t be afraid to dissent

• Anything else you can do?

Key Points

• Ethical dilemmas can arise at any point in the marketing research process– They can be difficult to avoid or even recognize– Be sure to think through your decisions– Don’t be afraid to say no or to question

Summary

• Marketing research is not just the day-to-day stuff we’ve talked about before– Sometimes you need to talk about the bigger

picture of what you did– Sometimes you need to think about a bigger

picture, globally– Sometimes you need to think about the ethical

bigger picture