The Handbook of Mobile Market Research: Tools and Techniques for Market Researchers

14 International Mobile Research

INTRODUCTION

International market research is a category of research that many consider to be a discipline in its own right. Countries differ in many ways including language, culture, affluence, and technology, and these differences create issues, problems, and opportunities for market researchers. International research requires special skills and knowledge, in addition to those required to conduct research within a researcher's home market. In a field like mobile market research, which is still developing and evolving, the challenges of conducting international projects can be even greater.

The term ‘international research’ used in this book includes: research conducted in a country other than the researcher's home country, research conducted in two or more countries, and research that is conducted in multiple countries.

This chapter focuses on the use of mobile market research in conducting global or multi-country mobile market research. The reason for this focus is that these are the harder cases, i.e. the cases where differences are more likely to create issues. A mobile market research project in, say, the USA and Canada is international, it will throw up some interesting issues (such as the need to support English and French in Canada), but the project is less complex than a study with, say, ten very different countries, in regions as different as Asia, Africa, and Europe.

AN OVERVIEW OF MULTI-COUNTRY RESEARCH STUDIES

Before looking ...