MARKETING RESEARCH

Marketing Research

Marketing Research

Marketing research is the systematic gathering, recording, analyzing, and interpretation of data related to marketing problems. Successful planning, implementation, control of marketing strategies, and solving marketing problems requires information about current and potential customers and is a crucial element of successful marketing strategy. However, because of cost and time constraints, most managers often rely on their intuitions in making marketing decisions. Although smaller firms conduct very little marketing research, many large corporations have their marketing research teams or rely on major marketing research firms or syndicated services that continuously supply marketing research data.

Marketing research steps include the following:

Problem definition

Situation analysis

Research design

Data gathering

Proccessing data

Analysis

Reporting

Problem definition is one of the most important steps in marketing research, because it provides direction to the kind of research to be conducted and the type and quantity of data to be gathered. One needs to be careful not to define the symptom of a problem, but to identify the possible causes of a problem. Therefore, decision makers often make educated guesses of formal hypotheses that need to be tested.

The second step, situation analysis, involves gathering of secondary data or informally talking to people who can provide information relating to the problem. Secondary data is information that is already available inside or outside the company. For example, company records and reports as well as knowledgeable people within an organization can be good sources. Similarly, the Internet, public and university libraries, government agencies, and marketing research and advertising firms all provide secondary data. The major advantages of using secondary data are that they are readily available and are not as expensive as primary data. However, secondary data may not be appropriate for solving specific problems. One should use secondary data with caution because of possible data reliability and validity problems. Sometimes, marketing problems are solved through gathering secondary data only and the marketing research process ends with the interpretation of these data.

If the marketing problem is not solved through gathering secondary data, the next step is research design. Before designing a formal marketing research study, organizations should define information needed to solve the problem(s) and decide on the type of data needed. This process often determines the type of study needed to gather data and is explained together with data-gathering methods. There are two major types of data: qualitative and quantitative.

Qualitative data do not contain any numbers and include focus group interviews, in-depth personal interviews, and in-depth, open-ended responses in surveys. Sometimes qualitative data gathering is also performed in the situation analysis stage, because the goal might be developing hypotheses to be tested. In qualitative research, the number of respondents is usually small, and it is difficult to conduct statistical analysis of the responses. However, qualitative data usually cost less, can be gathered in a short period of time, and can be as valuable as quantitative data.

Gathering quantitative data involves the use of structured questions that allow analysis and reporting in numbers. Questions are designed in such a way that responses may explain ...