Information for International Market(ing)
Decisions
Export Marketing
Spring 2021
Introduction
• Marketing decision support systems should be able to
provide data that are all of the following:
• Relevant
• Timely
• Flexible
• Accurate
• Exhaustive
• Convenient
Introduction
• Formal systems and informal methods may be used for
developing necessary information on macro environmental
constraints as well as markets and marketing structures
• Larger and more experienced companies can build formal
marketing information systems (MIS).
Introduction
• Process may be carried out internally by an in-house group,
or by an outside research organization.
• Critical step:
• What type of information is needed ?
• Educational, sociological, political-legal and economic.
• Data about the market infrastructure
• Product-specific information
• Marketing Data.
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Sources of Information: Internal and External
• Internal:
• Sales and cost records
• Knowledge of company personnel
• External:
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• Secondary sources alone usually are not sufficient, but often very
useful.
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Sources of information: Primary and
secondary
• Vast databases are available to international marketers on the
Internet.
• Federation of International Trade Association (www.fita.org)
• Asia Society (www.asiasociety.org)
• CultureGram (culturegrams.com)
• Many small- and medium-sized companies gather much of
their information from the following:
• Personal Sources
• Professional Sources
• Documented
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Sources of information: Primary and
secondary
• Information on competitors can be obtained from a number
of sources.
• Formal systematic research is not always done when
identifying foreign market opportunities.
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Assessing market potential
• Secondary data is often used to estimate size of potential markets.
• Techniques of estimating export market size
• Demand Pattern Analysis
• Income Elasticity Measures
• Lead-lag Analysis
• Estimation by Analogy
• Regression Analysis
• Cluster Analysis
Assessing market potential
• Key dimensions:
• Number of possible users of the product.
• Maximum expected purchase rate.
• Market potential
“ It is the amount of product that the market could absorb over some indefinite time period
under optimum conditions of market development”
Assessing market potential
• Market demand
“It is the total volume that would be bought by a defined consumer group in a defined area in a
defined time period in a defined marketing environment under a defined marketing
programme.”
• Market forecast
“It is expected market demand based on the marketing plan developed.”
• Sales forecast
“ It is expected level of sales using a particular marketing plan”
Export marketing research: Marketing
research defined
• Marketing research is the systematic search for, and analysis of, information
relevant to the identification and solution of problems relevant to the firm’s
marketing activity and market decision makers.
• Functions:
• Description and explanation, prediction, evaluation.
• To provide information for planning and control.
• Evaluation.
• Information from both present and potential customers is of particular importance
for customer satisfaction measurement.
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Problem Formulation Evaluate Cost/Value of
Research
Method of Inquiry
The International
Research Design and
(export) Marketing Method
Research Process
Select Data Collection
Technique(s)
Sample Design
Data Collection
Analysis and Interpretation of
Data
Research Report
Export Marketing Research
• Descriptive
• Examine attitudes and behavior within Specific countries
• Comparative:
• Examine differences or similarities between countries
• Contextual
• Examine attributes of a cross-national group.
• Theoretical
• Examine the cross-national generalizability of a theory or model.
Using the Internet and e-mail for data
collection
• The Internet and World Wide Web useful for collecting data from many sources
provide one of the world’s largest libraries of secondary data.
• Most websites are free, but some commercial sites require payment of a fee.
• Google Survey , Google Forms , Survey Monkey etc
• E-mail collection of primary data (using survey techniques) often quicker and less
costly than mail surveys.
• Problems in e-mail surveys:
• Getting valid samples
• Respondent reactions. 15
