Editor’s note: Tiago Sobreira is communication and business manager at Brazil Field, a Sao Paulo research firm.
When a market research study is being conducted, information about consumers’ opinions, habits, attitudes, usage, consumption behavior or preferences is being sought. Depending on the scope of information you’re after, a mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches can be used.
What cannot be overlooked, however, is a further understanding about how culture, local praxis or collective behavior deeply influence individuals when they are playing the role of consumers.
Brazil is known as the country whose people are body-built and fit, tanned and outspoken. Rarely, or very seldom, will you run into a Brazilian citizen who is withdrawn or totally unwilling to talk. This archetypical image of the Brazilians was exhaustively studied by some scholars who, for many years, tried to understand why the “ordinary Brazilian” is characterized by these behaviors.
One of these scholars was Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, father of the also-known musician Chico Buarque. Sérgio, in an avant-garde analysis of the commonplace Brazilian, stated that people born and brought up in Brazil environments are generally regarded as being driven mostly by personal affection and individualism and are averse to hierarchy, aloof to strict discipline, disobedient to social rules and accustomed to paternalism and cronyism. That is explained by a heritage from the Portuguese settlers, enhanced by traces of black and indigenous cultures.
Foreign marketers or research professionals, when conducting a study in Brazil, are subject to some challenges that are brought up by local culture. Occasionally – but not often – methodologies applied for studies in foreign countries do not suit Brazil and the lingering question remains: Why?
It may not be the main reason but the so-called “aloofness to strict discipline” partially explains why studies conducted with respondents who must perform tasks, complete diaries in a long-term study or use products for an extended period of time are commonly troublesome.
If you’re recruiting individuals for a focus group or in-depth interview, very often recruited participants will tell you about their interest in participating but at the date and time set for the study they do not show up. That may be partially explained by the “personal affection” behavior. If the recruiter does not try to “get affectionately close” to the possible participant, in a kind of precarious form of friendship, absent participants afterwards will tell you something such as, “I was contacted; I liked the person who invited me to the study but he/she did not call me for a couple days to remind me or ask about me and so I forgot that I had been committed to attending the study. I’m sorry.”
Brazilians are somewhat driven by the underlying idea that their opinion, all in all, is something that cannot be traded to enhance somebody else’s profit and, unless they get fully compensated for sharing their information, no 30-minute-or-longer face-to-face interview with a paper questionnaire would be possible. That too may be chalked up to the individualistic behavior that assumes that releasing personal information is something requiring the payment of an incentive.
Culture, especially when we’re addressing the Brazilian consumer, determines the outcomes and even the progress of the study. That’s why it is important to ask local researchers about the most appropriate methodology for a study, not only in terms of cost efficiencies but especially how the results may come out if you decide on one methodology versus another. Culture determines not only the way of getting information in Brazil but also the content and accuracy of the information you’re seeking.