Editor's note: Based in Minneapolis, Steven Hansen is head of U.S. client development for research firm Phase 5. He can be reached at 612-208-3847 or at steveh@phase-5.com.

Let’s say your marketing team or research group is on its first or second or third assignment in China. You know what decisions you need to make, the information you need to gather, who you need to talk to and so on. Obviously you’re aware, too, that to some extent in any market you get what you pay for. You don’t expect something for nothing. But are your expectations for China in line with what’s possible in China? Based on years of working in strategic marketing in Beijing, I’ll offer a parable and suggest two China-specific market research roles that can improve your odds of success.

       The parable of the out-of-range masonry bit:
          Chinese saying: Yi fen qian yi fen huo
  Literal translation: One penny, one unit of goods
        Idiomatically: You get what you pay for

In 2009, I’d just moved to Beijing and purchased a low-end electric hammer drill so I could hang some items on my apartment’s rock-hard plaster walls. Bit 1 was included in the drillbox: a masonry bit just the right size for my wall anchors. At purchase time, the saleswoman had surprised me by throwing in, for free, Bit 2, a masonry bit of exactly the same size and shape as Bit 1. “It will be better than the one in the box,” she explained.

Masonry Bit 1

At home, setting aside Bit 2 as a backup, I fitted the original bit from the box into the drill and began work on my first hole. ZZZZZZZZZZ! Lots of noise. But where was my hole? I pressed harder on the drill. Surely the plaster couldn’t be that hard? After a few more seconds, but no progress on the hole, I stopped and inspected. In the plaster there was only a small impression. In the drill, though, the masonry bit was in a sorry state, worn completely through the tip as if I’d been drilling on titanium.

Masonry Bit 2

Dumbfounded and sure now that my walls were infused with granite, I took out the bit the saleswoman had given me. With some leaning on the hammer drill, it began burrowing into the wall and slowly made my first hole. Wow. That was slow and I guess these walls really are hard. But at least I was making progress. I moved on to a second hole, which was even slower. But on the third hole the drill stalled again. No progress. I pulled out the bit to inspect it. Sure enough, the tip was almost gone, worn down to a nub.

Masonry Bit 3

Thinking I’d confront the saleswoman about the epic fail, I boxed up both bits and the drill and went back to the little shop where I’d bought them. The conversation went something like this:

“Well, you said you just wanted to drill a few holes in your walls, that’s why I gave you the free bit!”

“But the one in the box didn’t even make a single hole!”

“What did you expect! That was the one in the box. Do you think they’re going to give you a masonry bit for free? If you want to do a lot of drilling, you have to buy a quality bit!”

Perplexed but with a new paradigm dawning on me, I went home to try the “quality” bit I purchased for 10 yuan, about $1.50. Sure enough, I used that bit the rest of my years in Beijing, drilling holes with abandon in rental apartments all over the city.

And to finish the parable, the paradigm I eventually settled on was “out of range.” Bit Number 2, while of very low quality, was within my expected range of possibility. But bit Number 1, which I now call my out-of-range bit, was simply not within my expectations. Before this incident, I wouldn’t have imagined that it was possible to buy a masonry drill bit incapable of drilling even a single hole. Yet there it was.

In research, as in much else about China, you have to expand your range of the possible to assure solid execution.

Variance is far greater

Executing a research project, especially with new vendors, is a challenge in any market. At the same time, like the out-of-range masonry bit, the variance is far greater in China than what one might expect in other markets. Here are a few of the out-of-range execution incidents I have experienced in working with local market research vendors:

“Flexible” incentive administration. After following up with respondents in a series of qualitative interviews that had not been as informative as expected, I found that the vendor was paying only an average of half to a third of the incentive amount specified in the contract. Confronted, they insisted (correctly, to the letter of the contract) that they were not required to pay this amount and that it was their standard policy to negotiate with each respondent directly the amount of compensation. Needless to say in subsequent vendor interactions, I made incentive requirements specific and implemented an explicit verification policy.

“Friendly” mall intercepts. In a multi-vendor data collection project, one vendor was having particular trouble meeting deadlines, then suddenly produced a slew of respondents – all of whom were high school-age, rather unexpected for the location. Suspecting fraud, we confronted the vendor. He acknowledged having gotten respondents from his friend’s private cram school but insisted the data collection was legitimate because the class was located in the mall, as stipulated in his instructions. We ended up paying for the research but of course eliminating the data, tightening up instructions and contracts and never using that vendor again.

“Unusual” respondent expectations. For a certain series of in-depth interviews we decided not to offer any incentives for fear of potential legal repercussions. The recruiter was instructed to be very clear with potential respondents on this point and we monitored to ensure compliance. Even so, we had to field irate phone calls from multiple respondents after their interviews, complaining that they were not compensated for their time.

“Did the recruiter tell you before the interview that there would be no incentive?”

“Yes, of course they have to say that. I understand. But you can’t just ask someone to interview and not compensate them for their time!”

None of this is meant to imply that unexpected problems don’t pop up in other countries. It’s just that the distribution is a lot fatter in China.

Expect expectations to be wrong

When you’ve worked for years in a particular market, you pride yourself on having a pretty good idea about the costs and challenges of reaching respondents, conducting surveys, leading focus groups, etc. In China, expect those expectations to be wrong. A couple examples:

Incentives to professionals. In the U.S. it will often cost more to reach a specialist than a generalist and the size of the organization the professional is in might make a difference – but a 10x difference? In one of my earliest China studies, for qualitative work we literally paid pennies on the dollar to reach attorneys in small firms versus large firms, all other factors relatively equal. And for some types of specialists, I’ve paid three times what I might have expected to pay for a comparable U.S. professional. So much for the myth of cheap China!

Difficulty of reaching wealthy consumers. Although I have little U.S. experience with which to compare, my China experience is that consumers with the means to make purchases at Beijing’s many luxury malls are extremely leery of market research. Even personal connections cannot entice many to go on the record, let alone any sort of mere financial incentive. Only the most creative recruiting can work and that doesn’t come cheap.

Again it’s the parable of the out-of-range bit: an awareness of variance permits prudent precautions.

Easily go astray

As you might expect, translation is always a challenge. But don’t stop at finding a quality translator with good references. Especially in surveys, even a faithful translation of the content can easily go astray if it does not reflect the goals of the questions, the appropriate cultural context and the expectations of Chinese respondents.

A professional translation agency will propose a cost per Chinese character and you might think paying at the high end of that range would be enough to ensure your translation is solid. But my own experience is that, over the course of time, I’ve reaped benefits by paying in fact much more for translation, by including it as an integral part of interview instrument development and viewing it as a core competency of doing research in China rather than viewing it as an afterthought. I’ll talk about how you can do that in the next section.

Critical to success

To deal with the enormous variance, the differences in expectations, the cultural and language barriers, I’ve found filling the following two roles to be critical to success.

Project manager/educator. Regardless of market, each research project has a manager, of course. But in China, I’ve found that a comparatively more experienced and broad-thinking project manager is worth the extra cost. This person needs to bring to each project not only the requisite skills of project management and execution but they also need to view their role as one of educator. Without being judgmental about the practices that exist in a local vendor’s operation, the project manager/educator needs to be an advocate for your requirements, needs and practices and what is important to you throughout the execution of your project.

Translator/strategist. Over time, I got away even from the idea of “translating” market research questionnaires and surveys. Instead, I developed various people, sometimes project managers, sometimes others, who were both bilingual and able quickly to grasp the essential goals of research projects. In this way the goal was more to re-create an instrument in Chinese than to translate it into Chinese. Be forewarned that this approach in itself can create difficulties when translating back into English for reports. “Why didn’t you ask exactly the same question as in the English instrument?!” But assuming you’ve done your homework, the “re-create” approach will always end up with results that deliver on the goals of the original project.

The two roles above may not keep you from every out-of-range masonry bit but they’ll go a long way towards managing the unexpected.