Services
Introduction
Zen Research launched in early 2013, just when Myanmar began to open up and re-integrate with the world. It was a time of unprecedented change and growth, and an exciting time to be in the country. Since then, we’ve seen and experienced so much change. Through it all, we’ve grown into who we are today.
The political, economic and consumer landscape has transformed in the past ten years, and so have we. As a result, we are well-positioned to embrace new ideas and move forward with our dynamic and creative approach to each client’s unique requirements.
We have a large, spacious office in Thingangyun Township in Yangon, where we have our own purpose-built focus group facility. Our office is also home to a training facility where we run large-scale in-house CLTs.
Our Culture, Philosophy, and Values
Culture is everything in an organisation, and we’re immensely proud of ours. Our values are reflected in everything we do, from the way we work together, manage our projects, and collect and analyse our data, to how we communicate with our clients and deliver our findings. Our pursuit of excellence knows no bounds, and we are meticulous and uncompromising in our approach to quality control so that we can always provide the very best to our clients.
While professionalism and integrity are paramount, we also ensure Zen is a fun and enjoyable place to work. BBQs, events, team-building days, and Zen holidays have all become part of our culture.
Facilities
Our Facilities
We regularly hold focus groups at our office in Yangon, where we have our own purpose-bult state-of-the-art viewing facilities. Beyond Yangon, we have forget strong relationships with venues Taunggyi, Mandalay, Pathein, Magway, Monywa and Mawlamyoing.
We run focus groups, in-depth F2F interviews, gang surveys, team training, CLTs and client workshops in our office. These days, we host a lot of these activities online as many of our clients are located overseas.
(Central Location Testing)
With many years of experience running CLTs for our clients in Yangon and other cities, we firmly believe Zen offers the best in the industry. CLTs are incredibly involved studies, often requiring weeks of set-up, training, and preparation to ensure we meet all requirements and achieve consistency down to the finest detail. CLTs often involve taste-testing and food preparation, meaning the highest standards of hygiene are imperative. We are fortunate to have a dedicated office building (that is actually younger than Zen Research), providing the ideal environment for testing our client’s products.
Senior Team
Meet The Senior Team At Zen
Our multilingual team is passionate and highly professional, and we all share the same values and a common goal. Together, we give our clients our all, providing them with the absolute best customer service, data, and results.
Richard Clarke
Managing Director
Richard Clarke is the Founder and Managing Director of Zen Research. He is a career market researcher who has spent much of the past 25 years in the Asia Pacific region, having lived in Japan, Malaysia, Australia, India, Thailand, and Myanmar, and worked extensively in China, Hong Kong, Korea, and Indonesia. Much of his research experience is in the pharmaceutical and healthcare arena for companies such as AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals and Ipsos Healthcare.
A certified BHBIA healthcare researcher from the UK, Richard has led and delivered a broad range of landscape studies, market-entry, tracking, adoption and penetration studies, DFUs, and ATU research. However, since arriving in Myanmar a decade ago, he has worked extensively in consumer, social and B2B research.
Richard has delivered a broad range of projects In the social research sector in areas such as migration, human trafficking, forced labour, rural development, and healthcare for clients including the World Bank, Rapid Asia, LIFT, and USAID and UN agencies, including the ILO and IOM, amongst many others.
Richard has a passion for building and mentoring teams in and across different cultures while continuously searching for new, innovative, and local solutions to today’s research challenges.
Su Myat Myint Swe
Research Director
Su Myat is the longest-serving member of the Zen Research team. Throughout her seven-plus years with Zen, she has consistently demonstrated herself to be one of our most valuable assets. After initially heading up our data management team, she soon moved to client servicing and moderation. She is now our most experienced moderator by far and moderates a broad range of focus groups, IDIs, ethnographies, and home visits in FMCG, personal care, pharmaceuticals, alcohol, banking, and social research topics.
In her own words, “I am intrigued by people – their culture, habits, attitudes and behaviours and in particular how they are affected by the fast-changing and volatile world around them. I strive to investigate which roles and storytelling should be played by brands in order to engage consumers and stay meaningful as well as respectful.”
Su Myat successfully completed an advanced moderator course with Firestar Research in Malaysia in 2018. Today, she leads our client servicing team and also oversees our operations team, with responsibility for all research projects.
Khaing Wutyi Thant
Research Manager
Prior to her career in market research, Wutyi was a reporter for MITV where she conducted a broad range of interviews for live television, documentaries, and news stories. When she joined Zen, it was clear she was a natural moderator with the confidence of someone used to presenting on live TV.
Furthermore, Wutyi has an innate ability to connect with respondents in a positive way, quickly gaining their confidence and winning their trust. Since joining Zen in early 2019, she has worked extensively in FMCG, personal care, and home care, as well as social research. Wutyi now runs our Quantitative Research team, delivering brand trackers, U&A studies, home user tests, and other quant studies.
She has travelled extensively since joining the Zen team, regularly working in Katchin, Shan, Kayin, Rakhine, Tanintharyi, Yangon, and Mandalay, training our enumerators and part-time teams throughout the country. She is now also responsible for delivering quant studies in Cambodia and Laos.
Hnin Htet Aung (Jenny)
Research Executive
After studying medicine in Yangon, Jenny had a career in business development within pharmaceutical and SaaS sectors before joining Zen Research. She served as a business development executive at Global Wave Technology, where she oversaw the operations with client pitching, client servicing and project management.
After joining the Zen team, Jenny quickly proved herself as a natural fit for moderation with her ability to effortlessly connect with and build positive rapport with respondents. She now moderates focus groups and consumer immersion interviews in a range of FMCG categories to a very high standard.
With her diverse background combining medicine and business, Jenny undertakes wide range of functions in qualitative research within her role; from client servicing to analysis and report development in FMCG, personal care and home care.
Phoo Thet Che Oo (Vivian)
Research Executive
Vivian’s professional journey reflects her adaptability and unwavering commitment to understanding the intricate dynamics of the consumer landscape. Before embarking on her career in market research, she gained valuable experience in the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector. A graduate of the University of California, San Diego, Vivian returned home in 2019, armed with a solid educational foundation and a hunger for new challenges.
Driven by her innate curiosity, Vivian’s passion lies in deciphering current market trends and unraveling the underlying behaviors of individuals.
This passion led her to Zen Research Asia in early 2023, where she serves as a Research Executive. In this role, Vivian provides essential services to clients, including client servicing, report writing, screener and discussion guide development, simultaneous translation, and transcript translation. Her meticulous approach ensures that the research findings are relevant, accessible, actionable and ultimately valuable to our clients.
Markets
Markets and Industries We Cover
In addition to covering the entirety of Myanmar, we also cover Cambodia and Laos for consumer research, social research, and healthcare research.
Having worked for some of the world’s largest and most prominent market research agencies, our strength lies in our ability to see through the fog and focus on the key issues. We strive to take the typical stress out of fieldwork, providing you with a calm and professional service that delivers meaningful results. Unburdened by bureaucracy, we are able to adapt processes quickly and effectively to meet your research needs.
Our aim is to define a clear path to demonstrable and measurable business value. We take the time to fully understand your needs and business goals, allowing us to provide optimized solutions that are efficient and straightforward. All processes are implemented, managed and monitored in-house to ensure strict quality control. We stand firm in our promise to offer a reliable, accurate and timely resource of local data to support your strategic research needs.
"Richard and his team are the perfect research partners in Myanmar."
Daniel Lundgren
Manging Director, Rapid Asia
