The Importance of the German Market

Conservative but Dynamic

Given the internal contradiction in its philosophy, the German market economy is both conservative and dynamic. It is conservative in the sense that it draws on the part of the German tradition that envisages some state role in the economy and a cautious attitude toward investment and risk-taking. It is dynamic in the sense that it is directed toward growth–even if that growth may be slow and steady rather than spectacular. It tries to combine the virtues of a market system with the virtues of a social welfare system. The German approach to business can be summed up in the phrase really: “Alles in Ordnung”. While it’s often translated as ‘that’s fine’, more accurate reading is ‘everything in order’. This speaks to the cultural preference for clarity, method, and procedure. While relationship-building is important and small talk is welcome, what’s attractive is the culture of speaking in rational arguments that appeal to logic. The word “conservatism” while not sometimes so attractive, has its many advantages combining all the previously mentioned reasoning: a company is unlikely to change suppliers on a whim, since it makes decisions based on medium- and long-term thinking – a sign of professionalism and authenticity that by all means are of utter importance for a company like Sample Solutions – hard work at its core.

Why doing business?

Let’s get straight to the point. Not doing business in Germany has never been an option. Why is this market so important? It is the largest market on our doorstep: too great an opportunity to be overlooked. Germany is Europe’s largest economy and the fourth largest worldwide by nominal GDP, with high purchasing power and strong domestic demand thanks to a domestic population of 81 million people. In contrast to the fortunes of many other Eurozone countries, Germany has low unemployment and rising wages. In 2014, only China and the US exported more goods. Germany invests around 80 billion euros annually in research and development (R&D). Many companies are well on the way to “Industry 4.0”, a project destined in particular to advance digitalization in production engineering and logistics. Above all, The government reported 1.7 percent growth for 2016, above the 1.3 percent average of the last ten years, which would mean that the German economy continues to grow at or above what many analysts consider its long-term potential. What does that mean for a global supplier of the likes of Sample Solutions?  Apart from being a large market in its own right, Germany is also the gateway to many other international markets – so as a strategy to internationalize the business, gaining a foothold in Germany can be an extremely useful first step to selling the products or services into other markets.

The first step first –  When it comes to discussing technical details, Germans are far more comfortable doing so in their own language. That being said, Sample Solutions has acknowledged this need and implemented it fast – in order to be most effective in the market, our sales teams consist of fluent German speakers and all of the sales, marketing, and promotional literature is translated into German – small steps to a far bigger venture than ourselves.

Sample Solutions is a global premier sample provider who believes in the power of CATI.  The abbreviation CATI stands for Computer Assisted Telephone Interview and refers to the support of a telephone interview by a computer. Besides the obvious cost benefit there are way more important advantages of CATI:

• • Fieldwork can be controlled easier at a single location

• • Possible to collect data from outside a country

• • Faster turnaround times

• Mobile populations or slums can be included due to the high level of cell phone coverage

Just in Germany, the development and the number of CATI seats in the German market research institutes from 1995 to 2015 have been significant, as shown below.

That being said, we can also show just how much the industry has formidable recognition and success within Germany. A survey has been conducted about the familiarity of CATI and face-to-face field providers in Germany. The results, as concluded, showed that more than 30 percent of the surveyed industry insiders said that the field provider ACE-International is known to them – a trusted partner of Sample Solutions’ for some time now.

Often when telephonic consumer fieldwork is conducted in Germany, fieldwork agencies make use of RDD sample. Sample Solutions has developed an RDD framework that is representative for entire Germany, the main advantage of RDD being that it includes unlisted numbers as well. And just how is RDD generated for Germany? Since an EPSEM approach is not possible due to the unknown variable number length it is needed to set up the correct proportions for the sample distribution within Germany. A client can also choose its own weighting or use the multi-level proportion setting. When looking at the creation of the RDD sample there is a split based upon the different regions (16 regions) in Germany. A further breakdown is then made based on the different countries. This method ensures that towards the end of a survey the collected data will be representative of the entire population in terms of attributes like area, age, gender, religion and so on. The Phone Format looks like this: Area Code + Exchange Code + Random Number.

Sample Solutions is able to filter RDD sample using a dialer to pulse the raw mobile sample and additionally, we can perform a provider lookup thus checking whether a phone number is actually switched on and within a certain mobile area, viz we can determine whether the phone is currently located within the country.

Clients

We have been present in the German market for some while now and had the pleasure of working with some of the biggest players in their respective market research fields. Having such a dedicated client base has taught us a lot about how things are handled in Germany, how we can improve ourselves and what we can expect for the business in the future. What can the potentials expect from us? In the words of our existing partners: “Sample Solutions has a great variety of services to be offered. One of a kind team of professionals that works round the clock to serve their Clients. Exceptional, trustworthy and reliable. Glad to be partnering with them for all kinds of projects.”