International market research is a key to successful export planning. Start by viewing Research the Global Market Place, the first of five videos in the Plan Your Market Entry Strategy set. Afterwards, you’ll have greater insight into the basic steps of the market research process. As noted in the video, begin by analyzing trade data to get an overview of tariff rates and growth patterns for your product in foreign markets. Also, take a closer look at where your current foreign sales are originating, and the sales potential among the 20 U.S. free trade agreement countries. The Country Commercial Guides, which provide latest market intelligence for more than 140 countries, are an excellent research tool. After evaluating your research, you should have a better idea of the possible market opportunities for your product or service. Soon, you will narrow the selection to the best foreign export markets and develop a market entry strategy.

Countries with extreme responses could be attributed to the fast-paced lifestyle of their people. Countries with midpoint responses could generally explain indecision on most of their countrymen. Lastly, countries with acquiescence responses have people who intend to please other nationalities. Based on this, b2b market research could provide comparisons between the preferences of customers from different countries.

Latin America – Respondents from this region have extreme responses with high acquiescence towards the interviewer. Based on their culture, these people are considered as happy buyers since survey results elucidate that Latin Americans are the happiest people.

China – The results from China clarify that despite their inclination towards high acquiescence, these people’s scores are evenly distributed on the scale that gauges openness of a respondent. Their collaboration with western businesses gives them more perspective on b2b market research.

USA – As a primary b2b research market, the scores of US respondents are distributed evenly. This can be attributed to global-range businesses that commence and grow in this region.

Western Europe – The Western European markets have an almost similar approach to surveys as that of USA, with only a slight difference in their lower acquiescence scores.

Australia – Australians have very low acquiescence bias. They are straightforward buyers who look deep into the quality of products and rate market researches based on their experience with the company’s items.

South East Asia – South East Asian countries differ from the Chinese results due to their inclination to midpoint responses on the scale. Japan and Korea – although rated as having mid-high acquiescence – would still prefer rating products without aggravating companies.

These respondents have strong tendencies towards midpoint responses. They also rate market surveys based on their product experience and not on any company biases.