Marketing Research and Analytics in a Global Environment

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Schmidt and Hollensen (2006) stated that standardization is another advantage of the online survey. The focus of the data collection in this research lies in the information to get to know different consumer segments of fashion apparel in the UK and China. Compared with personal survey and intercept survey, it is difficult to do this job in different situations (see Appendix). Thus, the same questions are supposed to be created in an online survey which about how to divide the market into meaningful segments according to customers' needs, their past behaviours or their demographic profiles. (Schiffman L. G. and Kanuk L. L.,2004)

Roster et al (2004) illuminated that online survey could save money on questionnaire printing, mailing and recruitments cause the cost for a web survey was 53 percent lower than others survey methods. In another word, online survey cost less than intercept survey and personal survey (see Appendix). In fact, China with a large population over 1.37 billion in 2016, while the UK over 60 million (Mintel, 2016). Using online survey could help survey company save pre-market cost which could decrease loss when they fail into the new market (Keegan, 2017).

Based on the large population of the UK and China, an online survey has the ability to reach most of them because of the usage of internet, while intercept survey and personal survey are difficult to reach it (Wilson and Laskey, 2003). Up to December 2016, Chinese Internet users amounted to 731 million, a figure equivalent to the population of Europe (Statistical Report on Internet Development in China). For the United Kingdom, more than 80% of Britishers have laptops and most of them rely on the social media which cause the information spread more quickly than before (Mintel, 2016).

Although there are many advantages for doing an online survey, there are some disadvantages which should be considered as well. Firstly, online survey towards to the population which were educated and have access to the internet. Based on data from China, most of the population cannot use the computer or the phone to surf online (Mintel, 2017), while the UK over 70% of the population owned computer (see Appendix 5). This situation might lead to the different result of the pre-market research, such as the cloth brand loss the information which it targets to.

From the consumer’s concern, the internet safety is an important feature. Rose, Hair and Clark (2001) expounded that online safety always influences the customers’ choices. Most of the online users will not create and re-set the links to the website because of the safety and custom (Mintel, 2016). Based on the evidence of the Mintel, the trust of the online survey link or email will seriously influence the answer rate.

Conclusion

To conclude that, compared with qualitative research and quantitative research, although qualitative research could provide more details of the respondents, quantitative research is a better choice for fashion pre-market research. At the same time, an online survey has the shortcomings like the level of the respondents’ education and the internet usage, but it could be chosen when the fashion brand wants to enter the China and the UK market because of the timely, spread field and so on. Although there are many advantages of other quantitative research for entering the targeted market, the limitations of them are easy to lead to negative influences, such as higher risk and range of the target customers.

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