This article presents the first-hand experience of undertaking qualitative research in China for both mass market and luxury products. It shows, in particular, the power of projective techniques and the methods of in-depth analysis commonly used in France to deal with Chinese consumers and markets.
In this paper we describe various examples of the common practises of customising imported concepts or creative ideas to Asian markets. We see that many efforts are aimed to enable the target only to borrow these ideas. We argue that the essential objectives for customisation is to drive the target's ownership, making these ideas a personalised and important part of their life. This leads to the thinking that uniformity in brand positioning across continents may not be something for which to strive.
With an increasing globalisation of brands, there is a need to communicate similar brand images and values to consumers all over the world. While this is necessary, it is also important to recognise, understand and interpret the cultural context of different markets and reflect them in communication. Often, it is difficult to pick out these cultural nuances and reflect (or eliminate) them in advertising. The Culture Filter (TCF) is a technique that seeks to provide a framework that identifies these elements and aids marketers in the development of communication that thinks global and acts local.
This paper describes the variety of cultural differences present across the Spanish-speaking countries around the globe, derived from a ground- level qualitative research study encompassing fourteen Spanish- speaking countries, territories and regions in Europe, and the North, Central, and South Americas. The study will cite cultural similarities and differences encountered in Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela, and in four Spanish-dominant metropolitan areas in the United States: Dallas, Texas; Los Angeles, California; Miami, Florida; and New York City, and in the United States' territory of Puerto Rico, thus making this the largest single-language yet multi-cultural study ever undertaken by Research International.
As cross-cultural marketing becomes more important, the need for tools and perspectives to understand the global consumer becomes more pronounced. This paper offers practical advice on using ethnographic methods as a foundation for consumer analysis and strategic marketing. Ethnography is a research approach that emphasizes the experience of cultural immersion. Through the use of interviewing and observational tools, ethnography provides a way to compare and contrast the behaviors, meanings and tools that are grounded in national consumer cultures. As long as various cautions and limitations are respected, this approach can offer an expanded understanding of both product usage and buying motivations.
This paper examines some nine qualitative procedures intended to increase the meaningfulness of qualitative data obtained from diverse cultures. These devices are not new or unfamiliar. This paper makes a case for using these tools more deliberately and actively, so that practitioners think differently about when and why to apply them in multi-country research. Each procedure is briefly described, its usefulness examined, and suggestions made about when and why to use it. The contents of this paper have been based on observations at the receiving end of several multicultural projects in three countries of south and south east Asia. More importantly they are based on an insider's view of what it means to be Asian today, at a time of cultural change and transforming influences from the westâ.
This paper is based on a completed study conducted in 1996 and 1997 in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The general objectives are to identify similarities and differences among the countries and to locate the key dimensions of socio-cultural change. The research focus is on the evolution and differentiation of lifestyles within different social milieus in the four countries. The qualitative methods used are: 100 in-depth face-to-face interviews in each of the four countries, photo documentation of the respondentsâ everyday surroundings and a semiotic analysis of the visual documentation.
This paper focuses on the question of semiotics of brand communication. Lotman'sâ concept of semiosphere and three types of semiotic relations between imagined our brand and other brands, hindering the brand's acceptance in particular market, are introduced in this paper: non-semiotic relation; alien-semiotic relation; and different-semiotic relation. We would like to point out that in operating in culturally heterogeneous and fast developing eastern European markets, the marketer must note the context of emergence of self-awareness of consumer identities which entails prioritising uniqueness of the self and sharper opposition to others. Thereby the brand discourse turns to alien-semiotic rather often but this is a somewhat logical path leading to more tolerant different- semiotic which is a good basis for creation of the we-semiotic between the symbolic self of the communicated brand and the social self of the consumer.
In countries such as India, where about 70% of the people live in rural areas, the rural market holds a lot of marketing potential. There is a wide difference in the standard of living between urban and rural India. In order to launch products in the rural market and develop advertising that reflects the rural ethos, there is a need to understand both the rural context and consumer. This paper details how a social research technique known as the participatory rural appraisal (PRA) was adapted to commercial research and used along with conventional focus groups to yield rich data for marketing and communication development.
This paper proposes that advertising work, and therefore testing, be viewed from a new theoretical perspective; that of modern semiology. This perspective gives new insight into the constructive nature of meaning, the system of signification, the dominant role of the signifier over the signified, and the active participation of the individual in receiving and constructing messages. Within this framework, it is proposed that a clear understanding of advertising work/effectiveness arises when investigation of the form, i.e. the system through which the content/message of an ad is constructed, gains primary importance in the research process. Utilising a constructive approach to advertising work allows for a reliable understanding of the relationships which produce meaning, as these are constructed by the consumer and utilised in defining sense of social and self-identity.