104 lines
7.0 KiB
HTML
104 lines
7.0 KiB
HTML
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<!DOCTYPE html
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PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
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<html lang="en-us" xml:lang="en-us">
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<meta name="DC.Title" content="Market research process" />
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<meta name="abstract" content="The most important factor for every decision is that you know for whom you are designing and developing your applications. To determine the answer to this question, ask yourself and your potential customers these types of questions." />
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<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="./ic.css" />
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<title>Market research process</title>
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</head>
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<body id="rbagsmarketresearch"><a name="rbagsmarketresearch"><!-- --></a>
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<!-- Java sync-link --><script language="Javascript" src="../rzahg/synch.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
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<h1 class="topictitle1">Market research process</h1>
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<div><p>The most important factor for every decision is that you know for
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whom you are designing and developing your applications. To determine the
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answer to this question, ask yourself and your potential customers these types
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of questions.</p>
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<div class="section" id="rbagsmarketresearch__Header_483"><a name="rbagsmarketresearch__Header_483"><!-- --></a><h4 class="sectiontitle">What are my target markets for today and tomorrow?</h4><p>The
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answer to this question makes a significant difference if you define your
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marketplace in different countries or only in the area of your own language,
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or if you decide to include countries speaking other languages. For example,
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if you are coding an application from a Latin-based language, application
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complexity increases when you decide to include countries using non-Latin
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languages such as Hebrew, Chinese, or Japanese. The application complexity
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increases because you need to deal with incompatible characters sets and more
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complex input methods.</p>
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<p>Along with the language problem, there are other
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areas to consider. You need to understand the culture, habits, ways of doing
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business, and laws of the target markets. You need to understand the customers'
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ways of life for you to be accepted as a business partner, to be able to get
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into the market, and to support them in their countries.</p>
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<p>These factors
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can affect:</p>
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<ul><li>The skills that you need (technical, cultural, language, laws)</li>
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<li>The environments to consider</li>
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<li>Your company structure and support organization</li>
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<li>Your relationship to other companies</li>
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<li>The resources that you need (people, time, and money)</li>
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</ul>
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</div>
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<div class="section" id="rbagsmarketresearch__Header_484"><a name="rbagsmarketresearch__Header_484"><!-- --></a><h4 class="sectiontitle">Who are the users of my application?</h4><p>You
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must understand the requirements that future users of your application will
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have. For example, do they want to:</p>
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<ul><li>Work with separate databases for different languages?</li>
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<li>Work with a shared database for all languages?</li>
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<li>Exchange or consolidate data?</li>
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<li>Work with different languages dependent on the user, the
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company, or the company's customers?</li>
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<li>Use end-user database tools to do their own inquiries on the application
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database?</li>
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</ul>
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<p>All these factors affect the design you choose, the way
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your application is able to switch from one language environment to another,
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and how data presentation and conversion take place.</p>
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</div>
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<div class="section" id="rbagsmarketresearch__Header_485"><a name="rbagsmarketresearch__Header_485"><!-- --></a><h4 class="sectiontitle">How much globalization support is needed?</h4><p>After you understand the requirements for your customers and
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their end users, you can decide what kind of cultural-sensitive information
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you need to store and maintain, the type of data presentation, which parts
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you need to translate, and how your application must be able to be integrated
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in the different environments.</p>
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</div>
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<div class="section" id="rbagsmarketresearch__Header_486"><a name="rbagsmarketresearch__Header_486"><!-- --></a><h4 class="sectiontitle">What is the cost of the effort?</h4><p>To
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estimate the expected revenue, analyze the places you have chosen as your
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target market. After you know the requirements, you should be able to determine
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the effort and costs. This amount allows you to compare the costs against
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the expected revenue.</p>
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</div>
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<div class="section" id="rbagsmarketresearch__Header_487"><a name="rbagsmarketresearch__Header_487"><!-- --></a><h4 class="sectiontitle">Which costs more, enabling or retrofitting
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an application?</h4><p>The initial cost of enabling an application for
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national language support might be higher. But consider that the enabling
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steps are based more on normal modular and data-driven design techniques,
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which improve the quality of your application even without NLS enabling. Because
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a good design helps people to understand and describe the application system,
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you will receive a certain return on the investment. A good design helps to
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improve productivity of development and maintenance. You have the additional
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effort of designing and implementing the application only once, even for many
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different language versions. Compared to retrofitting an existing application,
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it is much less expensive to plan and design it from the very beginning.</p>
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</div>
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</div>
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<div>
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<div class="familylinks">
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<div class="parentlink"><strong>Parent topic:</strong> <a href="rbagsdevelopingappsprocess.htm" title="Before you invest your time and money into the development of globalized applications, you will benefit from a planning process that gives you an opportunity to consider how you can efficiently and effectively serve your users. The information in this topic will help you develop such a plan.">Goals and processes</a></div>
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</div>
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</div>
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</body>
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</html>
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