Discuss the below in detail:
Q1. I think there are times when we don't want to avoid or ignore the cultural bias that comes with market research. You can look at the famous "marketing fail" story behind the Chevy "NOVA" in Mexico. No Va translates to "no go" and was a disaster once it hit the market. As we're doing market research, we've got to account for these biases and take them into account in marketing plans. If cultural bias is eliminated or ignored, that could be an issue in examples like this one. As companies expand and more and more go global, the room for error is expanded. A small company with no marketing dept could be missing major markets with their online sales if they're missing small cues within the different cultures they serve.
Q2. A form of cultural survey bias occurs when participants of different nationalities respond in ways that are influenced by cultural factors. Now more than ever B2B firms are faced with reaching a more global market, meaning a more culturally diverse audience. These firms must be aware of the cultural biases so that decisions are not made based on biased data, but knowledge.
Latin American respondents tend to be more extreme, with a high acceptance toward the interviewer or surveyor. These countries score the highest in most global satisfaction and loyalty surveys. In contrast, respondents from Singapore exhibit low levels of inclination and acceptance of the surveyor, which results in lower aggregate scores. These responses mirror the cultural biases at play in consumer research, Latin and Central America tend to be very happy countries.
Survey language and methods can reduce cultural bias, but it is nearly impossible to eliminate. Companies should accept cultural bias as inevitable and take actions in analyzing and interpreting the data to "level the playing field". Ways to do this are:
1. Avoid broad sweeping benchmarks. Marketing benchmarks are generally based off of Westernized countries such as the US, UK or Germany. Although these are large benchmarks, they are not appropriate for Japan. Benchmarks should be set locally.
2. Compare apples to apples: use trend data within particular countries. Compare year over year within countries, versus comparing Country A to Country B
3. Online marketing research has been an effective approach in marketing research. It is fast and inexpensive. Besides, online surveys may reduce data entry errors. However, some problems may happen during online marketing research, for instance, cultural bias. A business should try to avoid cultural bias in marketing research online and get better outcomes.
People have tendency to assume that everyone sees the world the same way and hold similar values. However, as researchers, they can never make the assumption that all the respondents hold the same values. During the online marketing research, researchers should move toward cultural relativism by showing unconditional positive regard to minizine cultural bias. Researchers should consider the distinction between personal and cultural knowledge and avoid those questions with directivity of culture. Besides, respondents are sensitive to questions involve culture. Thus, researchers should avoid show sensitive questions in the survey.