Enabling International Research at Scale in Asia with Outset

Recruiting participants globally has become essential for modern research teams. Today’s research rarely stops at national borders. Companies want to understand behaviors, preferences, and product fit across diverse markets. 

To facilitate international recruitment, Outset integrates with platforms like Prolific and User Interviews via API, enabling efficient participant sourcing. These panel partners enable one-click recruitment from over 38 countries, with strong presence in North America, Europe, and certain countries in Latin America and Asia. 

But meeting global needs sometimes requires going further, as each panel varies in its geographic focus. To meet these needs, Outset brings in expert regional partners where coverage may be otherwise limited. 

“We’ve noticed an increasing demand for research, and just general interest, in the APAC region. Expanding recruitment access to those markets is a key part of delivering true global coverage for consumer insights.” - Aaron Cannon, CEO of Outset 

Outset supports 40+ languages, and within just the past 6 months, our customers have run research with Outset in APAC in Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Tagalog, Malay, and English. To meet growing demand for recruitment in Asia, Outset has recently collaborated with GMO-Z.com Research, a leading regional recruitment panel. This collaboration has allowed Outset to confidently support our customers to run studies in the APAC region.

The Challenge: Recruiting in Asia

For many customers, Asia is a significant market of interest, but recruitment here comes with obstacles. Not all global panels have strong representation in Asian countries, cultural dynamics can make some participants harder to engage, interview methodology preferences can influence project success. Outset recognized that solving these challenges requires access to regional expertise.

These challenges translate directly into practical considerations for research design. Certain countries may be more difficult to recruit participants in due to cultural norms. In markets like Korea and Japan, for example, participants may be more hesitant to participate in video studies versus participants from most parts of North America and Europe. Voice interviews may be more effective than video in particular contexts, or text-based interviews could be considered as well. Sensitive topics such as politics, health, or family life also need to be approached with care. Adapting to these nuances ensures participants feel comfortable and enables researchers to gather more authentic, high-quality insights.

Participant Recruitment in Asia with GMO-Z.com Research

GMO-Z.com Research offers one of Asia’s largest research panels, giving Outset customers reliable access to diverse participants across multiple countries. Their panel coverage underscores the breadth of their coverage across countries in the region. Additionally, GMO-Z can support both B2C and B2B topics; their bid request team can provide specialized information on feasibility and recruitment recommendations.

In addition, GMO-Z.com Research has recently launched their AI Interview-Optimized Participant Network, which is “designed to enhance qualitative research by enabling AI-driven interviews with verified participants.” Verified participants have preliminarily opted in for AI-moderated interviews and passed the panel’s quality checks based on prior survey participation.  Their early expansion into APAC hubs such as Japan and Singapore paves the way in building an AI interview-ready participant pool that gives global clients faster, more flexible access to the Asia-Pacific markets. Read more from their recent press release here.

Enabling Multilingual research: Outset × GMO-Z.com Pilot Project

To date, Outset and GMO-Z.com Research have collaborated on several customer projects in addition to a joint pilot project together to refine our collaboration model.

A key strength of this relationship is how our capabilities complement one another. GMO-Z.com Research brings scale and local expertise through its extensive panel coverage, while Outset contributes technology designed to adapt across contexts. For example, our multilingual AI moderator can operate in multiple languages, even adjusting to regional variants such as Traditional vs. Simplified Chinese. This flexibility ensures that studies conducted are both accessible and culturally attuned.

To validate the collaboration, Outset and GMO-Z.com Research ran a joint pilot project focused on health supplement usage in Asia. This pilot project focused on recruitment in both Japan and Singapore, across both AI-moderated text and video methods, in order to understand nuances related to interview methods. GMO-Z.com Research’s panel provided high-quality recruitment, and Outset’s platform moderated and analyzed responses. 

Research teams can set up the interview guide entirely in English, and then easily use our multilingual options to translate the study to the necessary language (in this case, Japanese). Researchers have the option to review translations to make any necessary tweaks (e.g., changing multiple choice option wording) if needed. 

The participant when completing the interview will see the questions written in Japanese (see image below), and they also have the option to have an audio voice-over of the question as well. 

Once interviews are completed, those transcripts can easily be translated back into English or the researcher’s preferred language as they dig into the results. Outset’s multilingual tools, such as transcript translations and default closed captioning, makes it simple for researchers to analyze results and generate insights in a multilingual context. 

Beyond this pilot project, GMO was also able to complete successful recruitment for a large N=400 consumer-focused tech concept testing study for an existing Outset customer. Usage of Outset enabled the research team to conduct qual at scale in both Korea and Japan to gather international insights critical for an upcoming global launch. Previously, the only option available would have been either quant-style surveys that produced lower quality, less nuanced insights, or a smaller-scale qual approach, both with reduced confidence in the results. 

What’s next? 

The Outset × GMO-Z.com Research collaboration has shown how Outset customers can confidently conduct research in Asia, even in markets where recruitment may be more difficult. Our successful pilot project on health supplement usage demonstrated that large-scale, qualitative research in Asia is not only possible but highly effective.

At the same time, we recognize that recruitment in Asia comes with unique challenges—ranging from cultural norms to varying availability across markets. Outset’s platform is built to handle the complexity of running studies in these regions, and working with strong regional panels like GMO ensures customers have reliable options to source the right participants.

Looking ahead, Outset will continue scaling recruitment coverage in Asia to support customers’ research, refining recruitment strategies and stronger language & cultural capabilities. GMO-Z.com Research is a valuable option available to our customers, and we’ve demonstrated that combining Outset’s multilingual functionality with trusted local panels makes research accessible and impactful. For teams exploring projects in Asia, Outset provides a proven pathway to confident, high-quality insights.