Interactions - July/August 2008

[ 3] Bell, Genevieve. “Insights into Asia: 19 Cities, 7 Countries, 2 Years— What People Really Want from Technology.” Technology@Intel Magazine (2004).

[ 4] Doole, I. and R. Lowe. International Marketing Strategy. 3rd ed. London: Thomson Learning, 2001.

kets tend to expose their limitations: the biases and assumptions built in to the design of the surveys. As ethnographer and anthropologist Genevieve Bell says, there are “things people don’t even know how to tell you, things you don’t know how to ask about,” that get missed in interviews [ 3].

Would a Western marketer ever have conceived of a problem like the one Raju’s family faced? Probably not. But more even than content orientation, research methods need to be adapted to the very different styles of communication in the cultures of emerging markets.

Failing to Ask
the Million-dollar Question

It’s easy for researchers to be misled if they don’t make their subjects comfortable enough to give honest, unguarded answers. For instance, with greater sensitivity to hierarchy and subtext, Asian users generally require more context in communication. They can also be particularly averse to making negative comments. But if companies fail to get the proper information, they may fail to launch.

With marketing research indicating that a shift in taste is

leading Japanese to add Western foods into their diet, French food-manufacturing conglomerate BSN targeted Japan as a priority market for its line of yogurt. After conducting a market survey, BSN invested in an expensive product launch, only to find that sales were well below expectations. BSN conducted a follow-up study in an effort to identify the problem. It discovered that the questions on the survey were not nuanced or “Japanese” enough for the Japanese. Too simplistic, they failed to garner accurate responses. The Japanese were also reluctant to answer “no” to any question, or to tell the interviewers that they didn’t like eating with a Western spoon because that wouldn’t have been polite.

BSN couldn’t get inside the heads (or taste buds) of its “users,” so the data on the size and potential of the Japanese market on which BSN spent so much money was completely invalid [ 4].

Fomabo Buildings, a Dutch company, targeted the expanding, industrializing Malaysian market to expand its line of European-style, prefabricated housing. Test showings got a

very positive response. However, post-launch sales were, again, disappointing. There were several factors behind the failure; one turned out to be the design of the product. Once the Malaysians moved in, they found out that unlike their traditional wood houses, these houses needed boring tools for the hanging of pictures or other decorations on the reinforced concrete walls. More tellingly, the general “ feeling” of the new homes wasn’t as comfortable to the Malaysians as that of the more culturally resonant Malay wood houses. The failure of initial surveys and interviews to elicit that critical response from test users was a big reason why Fomabo was forced out of the Malaysian market [ 5].

July + August 2008

[ 5] Dalgic, Tevfik and Ruud Heijblom. “Educator Insights: International Marketing Blunders Revisited-Some Lessons for Managers.” Journal of International Marketing, 4, no. 1 (1996): 81-91.

Shooting the Culture Gap

The dichotomy between cultural ideals and cultural practices can be intensely complex. If culture can be likened to a river, then dominant-culture communication barriers and hidden, coun-ter-cultural urges form eddies that make emerging-market launches a challenging ride.