Market Research Near-Shoring
Posted by Vaughn Mordecai on Mon, Oct 12, 2009 @ 02:00 PM
About two years ago, Discovery Research took a trip to India. A number of our clients had asked us to come up with a cost-effective offshoring solution for the market research data we collect. India was all the rage at the time (might still be). It seemed like many customer service organizations & some market research companies were sending calls out of India. DRG hopped on a plane and headed on what was one of the longest flights on earth. It took MANY hours to get there and when we arrived...what a culture shock. After a week of traveling around the country, seeing elephants in the streets, a number of onsite visits, meetings with local organizations, being threatened by a street vendor (and threatened in one of our business meetings...contact actually said "How are you going to keep us (speaking of India) from taking over everything that you do and replacing you?"), being food poisoned on a local curry dish, and a grueling flight back, we felt like we'd truly seen it all (a travel companion actually touched a cobra). I haven't eaten Indian food since.
The million dollar question for us was...does India seem appropriate for the market research we conduct...and did an office in India seem like it would meet our business needs and the needs of our clients? I wasn't convinced.
A few months later, DRG took its first trip (of many) to Costa Rica. Talk about a tale of two locations and two experiences. While in Costa Rica (San Jose) we stayed at a local Marriott that had been converted from a coffee plantation, had watermelon juice for breakfast, were treated exceptionally well by our hosts and the businesses we met with (no threats from the locals), and had one of the best dinners...in one of the best locations I've ever been. To top it off, we found out how bilingual (and educated) the residents of Costa Rica were, that Costa Rica is in the central timezone (sometimes mountain), and that it doesn't take two days to fly there...what a delight (and a relief).
Discovery Research has been operating a call center in Costa Rica for about two years. The people and the culture are awesome. Our office there is an exciting and expanding part of our business. And, we've learned a lot about conducting Hispanic research. Now, we even have a Hispanic-focused market research product called fuente.
I got to thinking about this experience because the Marketing Research Association (MRA) is about to hold their First Outlook Conference & Expo in San Diego in November. They have an entire educational track devoted to Hispanic Research. I'm psyched about it. So here are a couple of questions I'm interested in knowing:
1. Have you had an experience like ours?
2. What did you see that changed your mind?
3. Did something positive come out of it?