Quality of work, data security and cultural differences are the key concerns for companies offshoring their market research activities. This is one of the findings of a research study by ValueNotes titled, “Market Research Outsourcing – Buyer Survey”.

Quality of work and data security are concerns for all services that are being offshored, including data collection, data processing, data analysis & analytics, report writing, panel services and project management.
Interestingly, a discussion with a senior manager of a global market research firm revealed an interesting fact echoed by other full service research companies and field work and tabulation companies. According to him, clients prefer to outsource data collection work to local companies.

To illustrate, a Singaporean client would get skeptical about offshoring his Computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) process to a company in India who would be calling guys in Singapore and Hong Kong for information on their shopping preferences.

A very simple, yet a largely important reason is cultural difference and language aversion. According to the Director of a full service research agency in Australia, the majority of the local people are against the idea of getting telemarketing calls from outside of Australia. The colloquial verbiage and local lingo used by Australians make it uncomfortable for them to converse with telemarketers who are not on the same page. Largely associated with cultural preferences for specific geographies, people get defensive with the idea of a person calling from India or the Philippines asking about their eating habits or more sensitive data like their insurance details.

Intensive lingo-training and cultural brainwash does help to a certain extent for telemarketers to understand and converse with the locals; however it does not always sell. Its like when you don’t like a drink, no matter how it is re-packaged and advertised with promotional offers, you will never like it. Though there are Market Research Outsourcing (MRO) vendors in India offering data collection and CATI related services, India is being viewed as a country with expertise for high-end analytical services.

To conclude, it looks like Indian MRO vendors would look at providing services higher up the value chain (which they are) and also look inside to a relatively small (less profitable) domestic market to offer end-to-end services from data collection to report writing.