Top international market research companies: A guide to finding the best match for your needs
Running the same research in several countries is the simpler part. The harder part is knowing whether a difference between two countries is real, or came from how the work was run. This guide names no firms; antedote is a strategic research and innovation consultancy.
- Settle how countries will be compared
What must match, what should be local, and who runs it.
- A prompt for your AI assistant
Fill it in here, then ask for a longlist with sources.
- Questions for international proposals
And what a useful answer contains.
Settle how the countries will be compared.
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What must match in every country.
The decision, the kind of people you hear from and the core questions should match, so a difference between countries means something.
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What should be local.
Language, examples and brands often need to change, so people in each country answer about their own lives.
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Who runs the work in each country.
Look for moderators and fieldwork partners who live and work in the market, briefed by the team that designed the program.
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Who compares the countries.
One team should see every country’s evidence, and say what is true everywhere and what belongs to one market.
Ask your AI assistant about your countries.
Name the countries, the people you need to hear from and the decision the work has to support.
Ask for sources and for what the assistant doesn’t know. Use a summary with nothing confidential in it, or an AI tool your company has approved for it.
Treat the answer as the start of your own investigation, then meet the people who would do the work.
I lead insights at a [category] company. We need [qualitative / quantitative / qualitative and quantitative] research in [countries] to [choose which markets to enter / adapt a product or message / compare customers across markets].
Using current web sources, suggest research companies that have published work across several of these countries, and link each source. For each, say why it may fit, what it has shown and in which countries, and what we would still need to check, with one question to ask the people who would do the work. Don’t guess who would be assigned or who their local partners are, and don’t invent fees, references or results. If you can’t search the web, help me define selection criteria instead.
What you type stays on this page.
Questions that separate international proposals.
A list of countries covered tells you little. These questions show how a company would keep your countries comparable.
- Which countries does this decision need?
A reason for each one, and a view of what a smaller set would still tell you.
- How will you tell a real difference from one the method made?
How translation, scales and sample sources are handled, and how big a gap must be before it counts.
- Who translates, and who checks the meaning?
People who know the category in that language, checking sense as well as words.
- Who have you worked with in these countries before?
Named local partners, how long they have worked together, and recent work in each market.
- Will we get one recommendation, or a report for each country?
One answer across the markets, with what each country needs done differently.
One decision, across countries.
For a home-working product in the UK and Australia, both markets were read on the same terms, from the same questions, so the team could compare them directly when it set each market’s plan.
- Working out who would buy a new home-working product A profile of the likeliest buyers in each market, with what would persuade them. What happened next The product later launched, and a further engagement followed.
- Weighing where a travel brand’s fleet should go An assessment of deployment options. What happened next Part of the fleet later ran seasons the itinerary research had assessed.
- Shaping one spirits proposition for different palates Recommendations on liquid, pack, name and concept. What happened next The proposition later launched.
Check the team in every country.
Ask who would lead the work across the countries, and who would run it in each one.
Ask how long the central team has worked with its people in each market, and what they have done together that is like your project.
Before you write the brief, our view of what keeps a multi-country research program comparable sets out what to agree first.
Then ask to speak to a client whose work covered several countries, with that client’s permission. A useful question for them: when two countries disagreed, how did the team work out why?
If you are still deciding what kind of partner you need, our guide to choosing a consumer insights company starts there.
If one decision depends on evidence from several countries, that is the work of our international research.