B2B research: opinion leaders in news, 22 markets

We were commissioned by a US-based research agency, on behalf of the end client, a global technology company which is heavily involved in the distribution of news online. The research objective was to learn about the perspectives of two groups:

1. News industry professionals. The targets included people working as editors and in business functions such as strategy and distribution, but not people who only worked as journalists
2. Key opinion leaders with an interest in the news industry and the activities of technology companies in the publishing sector. Here the targets include academics, government employees (in countries where this is permitted) or former government employees, lobbyists and people working for relevant think tanks, and people working for private companies in government relations.

This was the third year that FieldworkHub ran this research but this programme was by far the largest to date and the first to incorporate research with key opinion leaders from outside the new industry.

The project consisted of online and in-person focus group discussions in most countries, and individual depth interviews in countries where FieldworkHub felt that the participants would not be open to sharing their views in a group environment (for example, Japan and Taiwan). In total we recruited and individually screened 248 news publishing executives and decision makers and 249 key opinion leaders to take part across the 22 countries over a five-month period.

The research countries covered a wide range of levels of development and news industry maturity and a great deal of ingenuity was required to recruit everyone who took part.  

As well as recruitment and scheduling activities, the FieldworkHub team was also responsible for arranging moderators in all markets apart from the UK, USA and Canada (where our client did their own moderation), arranging simultaneous translation of the sessions and translation of the research materials, booking facilities for the face-to-face sessions, and overall management of the fieldwork process with daily client updates and a formal progress meeting with the client each week.

The success of this extensive international research project can be attributed to the detailed plans we put in place and the dedication of our project management teams to coordinate research across ten different time zones. 

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