Editor’s note: Susan Devlin is founding principal of The Artemis Group, a Green Brook, N.J.-based research firm.  Gary Nicholas is client services manager at NetReflector, Inc., a Seattle research firm.

Over the past few years, trends toward globalization have led international corporations to conduct more cross-cultural survey research to validate overseas business opportunities in today’s highly competitive global market. When time, budget and resources are no object, a company can afford the best that international research has to offer. However, today’s economic downturn has compelled many businesses to face the harsh reality of shriveling timelines, slashed budgets and limited resources, therefore limiting their international research choices.

Having said that, making concessions and trade-offs doesn’t necessarily mean that enterprises have to compromise the quality of their international research in the process. In the context of the legitimate constraints caused by today’s economy, this article is aimed at providing market researchers with best practices in identifying the pitfalls of country comparisons while highlighting the need for a delicate balance between design uniformity and cultural customization, and showing the outcome and implications of cultural calibration on research results.

Companies with a worldwide presence must conduct research across all their global markets, present a combined corporate view, and contrast these markets to identify hot spots for special initiatives or new ventures. They need methods to minimize cultural effects and adjust results to differentiate response pattern differences due to language or cultural norms affecting surveys from real differences in performance or perceptions due to products, services or market conditions.

Although literature abounds about cultural differences1, little practical work exists about how to tackle cross-culture calibr...