I saw this quote a while back and being a Tom Friedman fan it stuck with me. It was attributed to Pankaj Ghemawat, but after reading his book (Redefining Global Strategy) I'm not sure that he ever actually said it precisely that way. The central premise of his book is that the world is only "semiglobalized" and will remain so for some time to come. He sees that perspective as an important way to help companies "resist a variety of delusions derived from visions of the globalization apocalypse: growth fever, the norm of enormity, statelessness, ubiquity, and one-size-fits-all."
At the center of the book is a framework Ghemawat calls CAGE, and acronym built up from the the four kinds of differences he believes companies must consider in their global strategy: Culture, Administrative/Government, Geography, and Economy. These differences mean that global ventures pretty much mandate a country-by-country strategy both for selecting countries for expansion and configuring operations within those countries.
Doing research globally is no different. There is a strong tendency to use the same research methods elsewhere in the world that we use here in the US. Online is a clear example. Despite low Internet penetration, well-known biases in Internet use, and uncertain impacts of culture on survey response there are online panels growing up in countries like China and Russia with no shortage of research companies using them. We tend to ask the same questions, use the same scales, and present the same kinds of exercises that have become commonplace in the US and assume they will work the same in other countries. I'm not sure that anyone knows how well we as an industry are doing or how useful the insights are that we are delivering. Our own experience tells us that it's tough work and for all of the reasons Ghemawat suggests.
Clients have enormous interest in emerging markets, and that interest is driving a dramatic increase is research in Asia and in Latin America, the two fastest growing regions for MR. Expect this trend to not just continue, but intensify. We had better get our act together.