Tips for Overcoming Market Research Challenges in Developing Regions

Are you a global market research professional who has overseen fieldwork in regions outside of yours? Perhaps the experience went better than expected and you found the perfect research partners and interviewees. Or, maybe more likely, there were research challenges – differences and nuance you needed to overcome, some of which were potentially struggles at the time.

We’ve worked in developing markets and have also gained insights from some of our research partners as well, which is why we decided to create a white paper around this very topic. Our team is excited to unveil our newest white paper, “Overcoming Common Challenges in Global B2B Market Research.” It addresses some of the challenges global market research firms face when managing projects and conducting fieldwork in developing countries.

While there is a great demand for market research in developing countries — particularly market research in Latin America and Africa – there are also particular issues around identifying suppliers, communication and cultural differences, concerns over language and more. Our full white paper provides concrete solutions to help your team maximize its potential in those markets and deliver more efficient, lower stress and on-time market research projects.

We thought we’d share a little excerpt with you:

Many market research firms who do business in developing regions find some challenges along the way. The challenges begin during the RFQ stage and finding the suppliers to send requests to. Oftentimes, researchers need to give an answer to the client on whether they can cover a region or not even before they’ve developed detailed quotes. If that’s the case, you’ll want to do a quick assessment of the region to determine if you can successfully deliver data from that region.

 

Additional challenges occur during the fieldwork stage. While many research around the world endorse and abide by the ESOMAR Code of Conduct, many practical aspects of project quoting, commissioning and fieldwork vary a lot, influenced by local culture and business realities. As a global research firm, we have experienced some of the challenges firsthand along with other international research partners.

Want to learn about how we tackle those challenges? Again, you can download the full white paper here. Simply share your email with us and it’s yours!