Thailand

Data collection and market research in Thailand and Bangkok

Our data collection and fieldwork services in Thailand have provided support for market and brand research relating to travel and tourism, the food and beverage, retail, financial and telecommunication industries, including Boon Rawd Breweries and the Tourism Authority of Thailand.

Currently we have 5 senior research supervisors, 3 focus group moderators and a 100 strong research field force, with language skills in Thai, English and German.

All senior research supervisors have been trained in our specialist qualitative and quantitative research methods including brand awareness and brand image testing, brand recognition and recall, as well as our mainstream focus group, street and shopping mall intercepts, telephone interviewing and face to face interviewing, and mail survey techniques using probability and stratified sampling, incidence based sampling, or highly targeted sampling.

Overheads are generally relatively low in Thailand, meaning that field research costs are lower than other markets, but expert translation adds costs that can make research costs in Thailand approaching that of Malaysia. Discretionary income is significantly less than in consumer markets such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, though there are significant pockets of very high affordability, especially in Bangkok. Consumer items such as food and beverage, telecommunication and computing appliances, domestic appliances and furnishing, automobiles and housing related items are presently in high demand, and consumer growth in Thailand outpaced that of all other South East Asian markets in 2002.

Thai is the universal language in Thailand, though English language skills are on the upswing, especially among younger professionals. Accordingly we take our translation services seriously, in translating questionnaires and open-ended responses in questionnaires, interviews and focus groups. Clients have the option of back translation, translation checking, and all translation is conducted by a team of bilingual research experts. It goes without saying that poor translations where the "meaning" of research questions is unclear is a major source of research error when conducting market research in Thailand

Thailand provides a significant industrial and consumer market of over 60,000,000 though the middle and upper classes are highly centralized in Thailand's major city of Bangkok. Chiang Mai, Thailand's second largest city located in the North, as well as Southern cities, are other significant consumer markets.

Commonly, data collection and coding is conducted in Bangkok and analysis and reporting from our head office in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, where high English skills of our Research Directors and staff provide the most effective method of communication direct with clients. In the case of multi-country studies, all analysis, reporting, and communication is centralised from there. One OPC's research directors is resident in Thailand for 10 months a year, providing ongoing training and supervision at the highest level.