Global marketers can also encounter barriers with regard to culture and language when trying to describe characteristics of new products, such as their attributes and benefits or the way they perform, in terms the consumers in other countries can understand. The Chicago-based market research firm Synovate uses a technique for its clients called vocabulary elicitation to identify a list of attributes that consumers use to describe various product qualities in terms that are relevant to their language and culture. One of the company’s clients, a large multinational beverage company, planned to introduce a new product in japan that had recently been introduced in North America. However, the description of some of the product attributes used in ads run in the United States and Canada laced meaning in Japanese culture. To address the problem, Synovate conducted a vocabulary elicitation study to identify characteristics that Japanese consumers lacked a corresponding descriptor for the trait. Synovate’s research found that the term “milk feel” could be used to describe the product characteristic so that it would be understood by Japanese consumers in advertising as well as other marketing communications.