Abstract:

It would appear that the world is in the throes of another age of mass migration. Today, 190 million people live outside the country of their birth. Societies are becoming multicultural in a way that they have never been before. For marketers and researchers, the need to reach and understand the great variety of ethnicities in the developed countries of the world poses issues of considerable delicacy. It is as important to think ‘in-culture’ at the design stage and to understand the role of culture in the analysis stage as it is to be familiar with the effects of question order bias or wording bias. Research in an era of ethnic diversity requires skill, knowledge and sensitivity beyond the norms of yesteryear. But without training in the basic skills of good research combined with intelligent career development, we will struggle to achieve even those results.