Particularly in recent times, the market research industry has also focused more attention on the teeth of self-regulation: control and compliance. ESOMAR has invested a considerable amount of energy in developing an approach on the international level. But interesting models have also been developed on the national level. In addition to the Market Research Society in the uk, the Rat der Deutschen Markt- und Sozialforschung (Council for German Market and Social Research) has developed its own took-kit for self regulation. The complaints procedure provides for a range of measures and sanctions. Leaders in the market research industry have repeatedly pointed out that the international harmonisation of ways of working is a priority. It is encouraging to note that a pilot project is now also being initiated with leading associations in the various continents to work together to develop national compliance processes that are based on the German model.
Market research leaders, both clients and providers, dispersed in a mood of confidence and optimism at the end of the third and final RELEAS meeting in Geneva. The leaders obtained what they wanted: concrete action to address challenges and opportunities.
The growth in international research fuelled by globalisation, multi-trading, and ICT is well-documented. Levitt's classic thesis on globalisation and market homogenisation has been tempered by increased concern with diversities and cultural differences and people's wishes for personalisation and individualism. But the spread of free market economies throughout the world, the technological ability to conquer time and space, and the fact that all the most valuable brands are marketed internationally, means that international research will continue to expand.
The paper describes the process of standardization adopted in the last three years by the Center for Information about the Media (CIM) to unprove the quality and safety of data exchanges coming from audience surveys. The data are collected by field institutes and then controlled by CIM before being exploited by concession-holders or contributors mainly tor media-planning purposes. UsrConsult, the company in charge of the standardization, selected an original approach combining two specific tools: the ASN.l language to describe structures and the BER rules to encode the data. The paper describes these tools. Some practical examples ore also provided.
ESOMAR has sought ways to help standardise some of the procedures used in market research surveys. This does not in any way imply that we are seeking to treat Europe or any other part of the world as single homogeneous markets. On the contrary, our aim is to look for ways in which the tools we use in research can be made more comparable from one country to another so that the true diversity of the marketplace can be more readily identified. This chapter reports work carried out over a number of years. It represents an attempt to develop a common system for assessing the social and economic standing of the populations in the various countries of Europe. The system is designed for Europe, but we believe that it may also have applications in other parts of the world, either as it stands or in a modified form.
Television is increasingly an international medium that transcends country boundaries. Similarly, for radio there is nowadays a keen interest in being able to compare audiences between markets. The requirement, therefore, for audience systems themselves to be comparable from one country to another has become a priority for both broadcasters themselves and the commercial marketplace. For international advertisers and advertising-funded channels, GGTAM is an attempt to establish an international exchange rate for TV audience measurement systems throughout the world.
Brazil may well be the country with the largest experience of using a uniform socio-economic classification system in the world. It adopted one such system in 1970, as a result of the recommendation proposed by a panel nominated by the National Association of Advertisers (ABA). It has been revised and updated five times since then. The history of the Brazilian experience does not matter as much as the lessons we derive from it, which may be relevant for the future. We summarise here what we think those lessons are, and also explain how a common, uniform criterion was or can be achieved. We also mention the difficulties found in twenty-seven years of experience, from the purely technical to the fieldwork limitations that have an impact on the results of any classification system.
This paper identifies how the tools and languages behind the World Wide Web can be used to standardise the reporting and dissemination process. In particular, the paper shows how one set of standards can be used for live, electronic, and distributed presentations. The paper identifies the technologies which will provide competitive advantages to the companies which master them first.
There is a best planning method for each advertiser across countries, but it must be applied intelligently, adjusting it to the genuine differences between countries. Differences in planning between countries, agencies or companies are mostly undesirable and costly because they can mislead decisions, mainly on budget allocations. In some cases they are genuine, but mostly they are caused by different qualifications or attitudes of the people involved or by more objective differences, mainly in the data provision. The solution is to have multinational agreements on methods of data generation across all partners in the market, and about planning approaches across each agency network or international advertiser. Such agreements will take time. In order to work most efficiently in the meantime, the best planning methods should be applied as far as feasible. Outside manpower may help to overcome mental barriers.
As global business expands, practitioners in this field have desire to control or manipulate their global business strategy. In order to do this, they have to understand the global marketing environment at the same sophisticated level as their strategy control. In reality, however, academic arguments remains only descriptive and abstract, and do not provide guidelines to such a necessity. The author has identified a structure of global marketing environment by the systems and quantitative approach. The structure of the environment is identified as having macro-environment and micro-environment, to which global marketing strategy should respond. In such a framework, the concept of common factor and different factor, which correspond to standardization strategy and adaptation strategy respectively, is introduced to quantitatively analyze the relationship among environmental factors. Common factor means a same phenomenon among countries of similar economic level, having a correlation with GDP per capita of a number of countries. In macro-environment, economic, technological and demographic environments are common factors, whereas cultural, natural and political/legal environments are different factors. Some market demands in micro-environment are common factors, having a correlation with GDP per capita. Some market characteristics such as consumer preference and marketers' behavior are identified as different factors. Recently, common factors are increasingly proliferating, providing global business opportunities. In this framework, such common factors will be systematically identified by examining economic, technological and demographic environmental factors.
This paper sets out to summarise and to invite comment and criticism of the recently published 2nd edition of the EBU guidelines "Towards Harmonization of Television Audience Measurement Systems". It has been a collaborative venture involving representatives of all parties to the broadcast media business, from both the broadcasters themselves and from both the advertising agency and advertiser sectors. The principal emphasis of the paper is on what is new to the 2nd edition: The organisational principles desirable for a national system, to obtain wide-ranging user group participative consultation, methodological transparency and even-handed data access arrangements, Rather more than in the first edition of how to collect reliable and valid TV viewing data, via the peoplemeter as a device for registering the viewing behaviour of individual household members. Rather more than in the first edition on the issues of principle in the data reporting arrangements of a national system, and the low-cost powerful PC-based data access options open to the user. The challenges that lie around the comer. In particular we draw attention to the more immediate issues on which a consensus within the media research community has still to be reached, including: Selection of panel homes - probability procedures v panel controls. Enforced panel turnover. The definition of "viewing" Editing rules. Reporting algorithms. Comprehensiveness of Channel reporting. Access to data, both at an aggregated and disaggregated level. Issues of standardisation in reporting conventions.