What is Ifop’s international role?
The international element is a core part of our market research activities. Our main clients are major groups with a global reach whose activities and challenges know no boundaries. We work on their behalf in around 50 countries every year, in both mature and emerging markets, and our current growth is based on this international research segment.
You gained a presence in Shanghai and Hong Kong very early on. What do you take from this presence in the far east?
On the occasion of the Chinese New Year, Ifop celebrates the 25th year of its presence in China. Ifop was the first French institute to establish itself in the Middle Kingdom, opening offices in Shanghai, the economic capital, at a time when information on Chinese lifestyles and consumption patterns was almost non-existent and the research sector was in its infancy.
Very quickly, the Ifop model was adapted to the local market: no opinion polls (due to the political system) and a specialization on sectors in which Western brands, and French in particular, have a particular appeal for local consumers: beauty, luxury, health/wellness and lifestyle brands. After a very first mission entrusted by Coca-Cola China, Ifop has gradually expanded its client portfolio covering main industries.
Today, the Ifop’s 30-member team in Shanghai conducts research in the whole of South East Asia.
How are methods for performing international research changing?
The demand for speed and implementation continues to grow to allow advertisers to take decisions and act in a more coordinated way in different corners of the globe. To meet this demand and reach the daily lives of consumers we join them as they go about day-to-day tasks, notably via mobile phone. We use WhatsApp or WeChat, for example, for Express Quali sessions, which provide an immediate, collaborative, tangible return regarding initiatives relating to communications or product or service offers. The deliverables are designed to be personalized and narrative (using videos, stories, etc.), in order to bring data to life and facilitate country ownership.
At Ifop, we are also noticing a development in two opposite directions, which express two ways of understanding market reality. On the one hand, we are seeing the emergence of hyper-global studies, which look at highly targeted populations regardless of their nationality. This gives rise, for example, to multi-country online communities, generally English-speaking, in which populations with different origins but a lot in common – the aficionados of one brand in particular, a multi-country consumer segment, patients suffering from a specific disorder, etc. – share their experiences and interact among themselves to react to or co-develop new offers. These approaches are now possible thanks to universal access to collaborative technology and the existence of transnational references, notably in certain premium and lifestyle worlds. In parallel, we are also developing “hyper-local” approaches, such as those in which our InCapsule teams take our customers on trend tours to discover highly specific cultural, social or consumption locations that are indicative of the transformations under way in a particular market.
In some cases, hyper-global and hyper-local converge, for example when we work in hub cities such as Dubai or Abu Dhabi, where we capture, in a single location, a highly cosmopolitan population that shows very typical purchasing behaviors.
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