Global Companies in Local Markets

Related projects

Related courses
Research and Demo - Planning
Strategic Design Research

Mission

Companies that are strong in their home market often find it difficult to succeed in new markets that are culturally unfamiliar. These companies often underestimate differences in the patterns of daily life in the new markets. This can make it difficult to develop products and services that fit peoples� lives, to extend their brand, and manage culturally diverse teams.

To address this problem, companies generally conduct general anthropological studies of a cultural or demographic group and specific reviews of new product concepts. However, general anthropological research is normally too broad to provide insights that address the specific needs of product development team, and focus groups seldom get to the deeper and informal cultural patterns that effect how people act and what they believe.

The Global Companies in Local Markets project will conduct research that observes the activities of daily life that surround a product or service. This type of research gives insights that are more specific than anthropological studies and deeper than focus groups.

Goals

Professor Patrick Whitney is leading this project. He will assemble researchers from leading universities around the world who will use common frameworks and methods to observe the same sets of activities, such as entertaining at home, shopping, remote and mobile working, managing family life, and working at home.

The intent is to attract corporate partners as funders of the research and as contributors to the methods and ideas. Insights from this work will help companies in three ways:

* Planning products and services for culturally divergent markets
* Managing their brand across cultures
* Create and managing teams of culturally diverse employees.

Phase 1

The initial one-year phase of the project was launched with seed funding from Gold Peak Industries Ltd. (HK). The first partner institution is Tsinghua University, where a team will be lead by Professor Liu Jikun. We are now seeking additional companies to help fund the first phase of the project and to help give it shape.

The work in the first phase includes:

* Conducting observational studies in Chicago and Beijing
* Developing a prototype of the database of patterns of daily life
* Developing a rapid way of teaching the methods to partner universities
* Determining ways to transfer insights and methods into sponsors companies
* Meeting with companies and universities to grow the project