WALDEMAR BOJAR
Uniwersytet Technologiczno-Przyrodniczy im. Jana i JĊdrzeja ĝniadeckich w Bydgoszczy Katedra Informatyki w Zarządzaniu
MARIUSZ TROJAēSKI
Summary
In this paper some objectives and methods of information exploration useful for enterprises intend to market their products in the international markets were pre-sented. There were described fields and sources of information important for macro- and microanalysis of business environment necessary to compete under strong mar-ket pressure. Simultaneously, there was shown a method of assessment of informa-tion searching algorithms let meet strength and weak features of tools used for Inter-net exploration.
Keywords: information exploration, international marketing, data mining methods 1. Introduction
In the times of marketing directed to customer values in a global economy an analysis on macro and micro business environment has more and more important meanings. This let make diagnosis of threatens and occasions enabling definition of strengths and weaknesses of given enterprise competitors, as also ones too. The same enterprise can obtain competitive advantages 1 2
.
Especially essential information concerns foreign markets.
Until quite lately an access to such information was to great extent limited and a usage from traditional information sources required a high financial and time inputs. This can delay the mo-ment of obtaining appropriate data about main competitors and market players.
Internet network created new possibilities in an area of the data explorations concerning for-eign markets. There was appeared a chance for small and medium enterprises which have not enough funds to obtain such information with traditional means of their gathering.
There is important for managers to answer the question – what do we search? – and after-wards – how shall we do it. So, at first we have to define information interesting for businessmen because of their business goals and secondary, show them, how to search and use that information in the most effective way.
1 Kotler P. Marketing : analiza, planowanie, wdraĪanie i kontrola: Felberg SJA, Warszawa 1999. 2 Hague P., Badania marketingowe. Planowanie, metodologia i ocena wyników. LOST SITE 2004.
An analysis of methods used in Internet search engines can be useful for groups of designers dealing with development of such tools, but their possibilities and limits can be especially impor-tant for managers responsible for macro and micro surroundings of enterprises.
2. The scope of foreign markets research
A number of unknowns and a level of uncertainty are essentially bigger in a case of interna-tional marketing than domestic ones. There is especially transparent when a firm enters a new international market, having a small recourse of marketing surroundings knowledge.
Observation and analysis of international markets should include the following issues: • Market development and possibilities of its growth
• Population structure
• Defining stage of economical development • Defining a level of GDP
• Competitors on a local market • Economical environment
• Governmental support, control and legal regulations • Transportation and storing infrastructure
• Interchangeability of currency and exchange regulations • Trade barriers
• Political respects
Primary and secondary research of markets are essentially important in successful activities in the international markets.
2.1. Primary research of markets
Primary market research includes gathering of information directly from a given foreign mar-ket through interviews, questionnaires, contacts with business representatives, intermediaries, distributors, advertising firms or potential trade partners.
An advantage of such type of approach is a possibility to put direct questions and to obtain adequate to decision problem information.
A disadvantage of direct market research program is its time-consuming and high costs related to it.
Information concerning enterprise names, brands and also patents can have a crucial meaning for those firms which wants to enter the foreign markets. A consequence of entering international markets with brands existing already in this market, e.g. at German one, can be litigations and large penalties which can cause even bankruptcy of firms duplicating names or brands.
Checking operations and a reservation of brand can be made through service of advertisement agency. One can use also such services of professional consulting enterprises but bear essentials high costs.
On the other hand thanks to application of advanced methods of searching information through Internet one can essentially decrease costs and time by doing research of markets.
2.2. Secondary market research
In a case of secondary market research the data from available sources including files of proc-essed information is gathered.
Secondary market research is usually cheaper than primary one, because let concentrate sur-veys and studies at strictly defined tasks, what is not easy and not always possible in a case of primary research. Not complete statistical data, deformation of the data caused by wrong gathering tools and too general classification of products or goods are some of shortages of such type of market research.
In spite of their limits, secondary research of markets is valuable method that can be easy ap-plied. This let us make several crucial decisions concerning a field of market entering methods, selection of market niches, or concerning form of co-operation with potential partners.
Making secondary market research one can use simultaneously some methods on the base of observations of events determining international markets (e.g. trade agreements, strategic alli-ances, changes in custom rates or in custom barriers obligated in international commerce). Simul-taneously, a subject of study is statistical and economical data on amount of imports of particular goods, demographic, macro-economical, social and cultural factors. They can help to define mega trends facilitating a clarity of potential market segments and niches. Such information let estimate a market potential of a given country or region.
At the same time one can use advices of specialists, the knowledge and observations obtained during seminars, conferences and trainings and also information coming from embassies, trade and commerce chambers, business associations, branch units, foundations, etc. Polish American Chamber of Commerce of Chicago (PACC) is a case, where such type of activity methods is used at the international markets.
2.3. Stages of market research
The main goal of the first stage of market research is setting criteria of selection of particular countries (e.g. market potential, a level of custom rates, costs of market entering, competition, risk, etc.). Information from different trustworthy sources can be useful for realization of this objective. One source that can be recommend here is one of the biggest international statistical data bases called COMTRADE which is created and hold by UNSD – United Nations Statistics Division. This data base includes the data on exports and imports both in qualitative and value terms as well. The COMTRADE includes the data coming from 160 countries, gathered from 1962 and covering its scope around 90 per cent of official international trade. It is available offline (as CD ROMs) and in online version (through Internet) (http://www.intracen.org/).
Among other important available sources are such, as follows: ITCS (http://www.oecd.org), COMEXT (http://europa.eu.int/eurostat.html), World Trade Atlas (http://www.gtis.com/state/), World Trade Database (http://www.statcan.ca/) or World Trade Analyzer (http://www.tradecompass.com). Valuable can also be data published by Warsaw Main Statistical Office (GUS) – website (http://www.stat.gov.pl/), Department of Commerce of the United States of America (www.doc.gov) or Canadian portal called Strategis (http://strategis.ic.gc.ca). There were also useful statistical data from Food & Agriculture Organization of The United Nations (http://www.fao.org/) and many others.
During second stage it is necessary to combine selected criteria with appropriate variables (e.g. what is the most important variable relating to size of given market?, size of sale unit? or total sale value?)
In the frame of third stage it is necessary to attribute a wage for every variables that means to de-fine its relative meaning.
During fourth stage it is necessary to evaluate every countries and make their classification by means of the following taxonomy: there are possibilities, give hope, no perspectives (using avail-able information and local advisory services).
Realizing fifth stage it is desired to make detail analysis of markets in the countries classified at the highest level.
In methods of estimating of potential of selected local markets it is necessary to identify all poten-tial purchaser at every markets and estimate sizes of their purchase or procurement potenpoten-tial.
It is not difficult when we have our own list of potential purchasers and precise estimations of their shopping. For estimation of market size one can use different methods, between other multi-factor index method.
The databases called PKWiU/SWW, PKD, KĝTi PKOB can be helpful in Poland. One can analyze activities classified according to the European nomenclature of activities (Nomenclatures des Ac-tivites de Communite Europeane – NACE) and websites linked to those activities you may find at http://teleadreson.pl/cgi-bin/ta32.cgi, where information can be easier found through filtering it according to many different criteria.
Next, the database of addresses of selected enterprises should be created together with poten-tial partners who should be started contacts with.
It is necessary to be sure that selected enterprises operate in interested sector and that they are interested in our products (services) or at least in similar to ours category goods. Contact is started at the first phase of searching partners – in Poland can be helpful website of Polish enterprises named TELEADRESON (http://www.teleadreson.pl/).
In a final phase of establishing of a contact it can be recommended to select some of potential partners (usually 3 to 5) for each of selected markets, start personal contacts with them and, if necessary, consider possibility of a meeting.
It should be underlined, that analyses of foreign markets are to great extent determined by the scope and a level of detailed marketing information. In that field there are vital differences be-tween different countries of different economical development and information infrastructure.
For instance in the U.S.A. Postal Code Book and Postal Quarters Book can be excellent tools of promotion of a given brand, because one can obtain the data on a number of inhabitants, median family incomes and other essential indexes from them.
Up to now there is a lack of so detailed marketing information in Poland because any institu-tion does not create and publish crucial informainstitu-tion and data about foreign markets.
Independently from differences occurring in business information potential, one can find much valuable information on international markets and their participants in Internet. However, for effective exploration of huge Internet information resources it is necessary to use more effi-cient methods of the data searching for satisfying needs of the end users.
3. Methods of searching information in the Internet and their evaluation
There are many universal standardized styles of finding of professional information neither one optimal way of Internet recourse exploration. There is only one way of assessment of effec-tiveness of information searching – receiving waited results in the shortest time.
One can known two basic methods of searching of information sources are:
¾ Searching – using keywords or phrases described in the best way searched information in a form of question put in Internet search engine. This method can be effective when we are sure, that given data is in the network or archived and when we will define unequivocal searched information with help of keywords.
¾ Browsing: browsing of content of websites or information sources pointed by hyperlinks in a given subjective directory. It is well method when it can not be defined unequivocal searched information with help of keywords.
Text in a context of searching is considered as complex one and consists of two basic units, namely document (each structured fragment of text as a chapter, subchapter, paragraph, E-mail message, website, computer source code, etc.) and expressions (word, a pair of words, or ex-pression in documents creating text query being criteria of searching which are files of expres-sions).
3.1. Difficulties in evaluation of proficiency and efficiency of searching functions
An issue of assessment of operation of a concrete algorithm for searching technique is how-ever, more complex or subtle during searching procedure operating according to contents. A crucial complicatedness is resulted in a necessity or verification of efficiency of selected method acting with usefulness of searched information by a user.
Hence, efficiency of searching in a context of real world is subjective from its nature (in dis-tinguishing from classification and regression), because searching is an interactive process directed to a human being, what do its objective evaluation a difficult task hardly to generalize it.
That is why it is necessary to make certain simplifications in evaluation of searching accord-ing to its contents. There are as follows:
- for an optional query Q exists a file of binary labels of classification of all objects in the data file indicated which objects are intrinsic and which are not one (binary classification is a simplification, because in practice of a scale of intrinsics does not have to mean the only selec-tion value 0 or 1, but it can be graduated, e.g. 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc.).
- a intrinsics is unconditional (it is not directed for a user – a intrinsics of any object is the same like for each pair of users related to a given query Q.
- all objects were labeled, where a providing of an human opinion can be a task exceeding real possibilities for a huge data files.
- a user defines a class of variables, because he defines query Q – from there those variables can change themselves for each usage (session) of the system.
- a main objective of searching system is not a classification of objects in the database but re-turning to user a file of the most important objects.
3.2. Precision of searching in context of recall
Despite of mentioned above limitations, a general technique of labeling of objects in huge data files as intrinsic or not intrinsic and can be useful method of assessment of different searching algorithms.
Case
Let assume that from the text data files including N objects searching algorithm returned KTobjects
of potential intrinsics. Efficiency of algorithm can be represented in table 1, where: N= TP+FP+FN+TN – total number of labeled objects
TP+FP=KT – number of objects returned by algorithm
TP+FN – total number of intrinsic objects
Precision – TP/(TP+FP)– fraction of searched objects, which are intrinsic
Recall – TP/(TP+FN) – a relation of searched intrinsic objects to total number of intrinsic objects in whole the data base
There is here a certain natural compromise. The more number of returned objects KT (that
means, when one can increases a threshold and let to algorithm declares more objects as essential) the more expected growth in recall (all objects can be returned in bound, so recall amounts to 1) and precision decreasing (when KT increase it will be difficult return the only intrinsic objects).
Table 1.* Results of operation of perfect searching algorithm – diagonal matrix (FP = FN = 0)
Truth: Intrinsic Truth: Not Intrinsic
Algorithm: Intrinsic Algorithm: Not Intrinsic
TP FN
FP TN
Source: D. Hand, H. Mannila, P. Smyth. Data Mining (Eksploracja danych), Wydawnictwa Na-ukowo-Techniczne, Warszawa 2005.
Explanations:
Columns of table 1 – are relevant to true decisions on a substance of documents Rows of table 1 – are relevant to decisions given by algorithm
TP, FP, FN, TN – are relevant to true positive decision, to false positive decision, to true negative decision and to false negative decision where posi-tive/negative result is relevant to classification by algorithm a docu-ment as essential/not essential. Perfect algorithm would produce di-agonal matrix with FP = FN = 0 called sometimes a matrix of mis-takes
When we run searching algorithm with different values of T bound, we then receive a file of point pairs (recall, precision) (fig. 1). Its graphic expression (chart) presents characteristics of a concrete searching algorithm relating to query Q, defined the data file and labeling the data. In practice one could be estimate an average efficiency of searching related to file of queries and not single query Q.
Hence, curves of recall-precision not necessarily let conclude which algorithm is better or worse from another one.
Fig.1. Characteristics of algorithms searching according relation of precision-recalling * Algorithm A – the highest precision at small recall values
Algorithm B – the highest precision at large recall values Algorithm C – distinctly worse from algorithms A and B
One can not make distinct differentiation between algorithms A and B, probably that one operating with defined recall values. Shown at figure 1 recall-precision sizes are enough typical for current text searching algorithms, e.g. estimating amounts of 50 per cent of precision and 50 per cent of recall are enough for common different applications of searching texts.
Nevertheless, presented methods can provide useful characteristics of relative and absolute efficiency of evaluated searching algorithms in the scope of conditions of their operation. There are several schemes for measuring efficiency described with defined above indexes: precision and recall in a form of single figure, e.g. precision in a given number searched documents, a precision in a point, where recall and precision are equal or averaging of precision for many recall levels. 4. Conclusion
Presented in the paper objectives and methods of information searching for international marketing goals showed that for the end user of business information two things are important. First of all, there is substantial contents of information usefulness for successful development for enterprises operating in global markets. There are internet resources useful for receiving precise, verified and desired information. Secondary, there is evaluation of efficiency of tools destined for searching information earlier defined to obtain trustworthy and relevant information as quickly as possible. Algorithm A Algorithm B Algorithm C P R E C IS IO N RECALL
Bibliography
1. Hague P., Badania marketingowe. Planowanie, metodologia i ocena wyników. LOST SITE 2004.
2. Hand D, Mannila H., Smyth P.. Principles of data mining (Eksploracja danych), Massa-chusetts Institute of Technology (Wydawnictwa Naukowo-Techniczne), Warszawa 2005.
3. Kotler P. Marketing : analiza, planowanie, wdraĪanie i kontrola: Felberg SJA, Warszawa 1999.
4. TrojaĔski M. Economical information and trading contacts (Informacja gospodarcza i kontakty handlowe), MTS & Instytut Gospodarki Regionalnej i Lokalnej, Bydgoszcz 2002.
WALDEMAR BOJAR
Katedra Informatyki w Zarządzaniu
Uniwersytetu Technologiczno-Przyrodniczego e-mail: wald@utp.edu.pl