Asia Research Interview part 1 of 3

In the latest issue of Asia Research, Alaric Fairbanks, General Manager of B2B International in Beijing, talks about setting up and running a market research company in China.  Over the next three blog posts, we will serialize his interview:

Tell me about B2B International

As the name implies, we work in b2b markets and are international.  We are a specialist business-to-business market research company, with our group headquarters in the United Kingdom and subsidiaries in New York and, of course, Beijing.  Our focus is exclusively b2b, and although we cover all b2b markets, we have particular strengths in chemicals, pharmaceuticals, engineering, construction and financial services.  In terms of services, our main focus is on full service research, covering market assessment, segmentation, customer satisfaction, new product development, competitor analysis and pricing studies, and our major clients are multi-national firms engaged in b2b markets.  In Asia we also complement our full service work with data collection.

What were the main challenges when you first set up the business?

We set up permanently here in 2006 and in many ways the challenges we faced when setting up in China were similar to those that many foreign-invested businesses in China, including some of our clients, face.  These include recruiting staff, adapting and integrating systems and working styles into the local conditions, and on a practical level finding reliable partners or suppliers, particularly in areas such as IT and financial services.  I regard these as important challenges to deal with, but the primary issue from day one was, and remains, generating business and delivering quality work.

Look out for Part 2 of the interview in our next blog post.