Challenges of conducting marketing research in international trade

When conduct the marketing research internationally there must be several challenges which any research my come across with internationally, therefore the following are the challenges of conduct the marketing research internationally/ international trade.

• ·         Cultural

Conducting market research in an international market requires a great deal of new learning. From a managerial perspective, this includes a more comprehensive understanding of native culture. Cultural elements such as social institutions, gender roles, language, religion, aesthetics, education, and time orientation are closely tangled with national culture (Javalgi & White, 2002), and have a major impact on the acceptability and adoption of new products and services.

The effect of culture is multifaceted in the sense that cultural values that are important to one group of people may mean little to another. Cultural differences deeply affect adoption of products and services and other forms of market behavior. Clearly, cultural forces have taken on strategic importance that cannot be ignored when marketing new and/or existing products and services.

• ·         High level of Education and research skills.

Market research specialists demand certain levels of educational and research skills. Although a country may have a huge population, only a small segment of that population may be equipped with the knowledge necessary to employ research tools either at work or at home. So it became difficult on conducting marketing research especially in international trade which demand high level of education and research skills

• ·         Regulations and laws.

 As a marketing researcher always when conducting research in international trade one of the challenge which you could face is the regulations and the laws of the particular country you are conducting the research. For instance some countries have their own guidelines and laws on data privacy corrections therefore for the marketing researcher to conduct the research in international trade will face the challenge of not having the access of collecting data easily because of the regulations and laws on data collection privacy in those countries.

• ·         Substantial resources

Conducting marketing research in international trade needs large resources and become a challenge especial for those small firms. Naturally, resources affect market research decisions including the cost of conducting the research, reaching the target markets and collecting the data. So for those will have poor resources with low quality will fall to conduct researches in international trade.

• ·         Geographical position.

It is one of the challenges when conducting marketing research simply because when doing research some areas are not easy to be reached. Some places are very interior to the extent that there is no transportation available to reach to the place where research is intended to be conducted .for example a place like Antarctica is not reachable due to the absence of transportation the thing that makes the research to take a lot of time until completed

• ·         Language

It is also one among the challenges when conduct a research because language of places differ from one another. You may find a researcher master English language and at the same time want to conduct a research at the place where people do not know English. For example a person conduct a research by using English in China where people speak Chinese the thing that makes the research uneasy to complete.

BACHUBIRA ZAITUNI