Marketing Research

Marketing research is the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information. Information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; to generate, refine and evaluate marketing actions; to monitor marketing performance; and to improve understanding of the marketing process. Marketing researchers specify the information needed to address marketing issues, design the method for collecting information, manage and implement the data collection process, analyse the results, and communicate the findings and their implications.

Marketing researchers engage in a wide variety of activities, ranging from analyses of market potential and market shares to studies of customer satisfaction and purchase intentions. A company can conduct marketing research in its own research department or have some or all of it done outside.

The marketing research process consists of these four steps;

i.                    Defining the problem and research objectives;

ii.                  Developing the research plan;

iii.                Implementing the research plan; and

iv.                 Interpreting and reporting the findings.

The objective of the research may be exploratory, descriptive or casual. The second step consists of developing the research plan for collecting data from primary and secondary sources. Primary data collection calls for choosing a research approach (observation, survey, experiment); choosing a contact method (mail, telephone, personal); designing a sampling plan (whom to survey, how many to survey and how to choose them); and developing research instruments (questionnaire). The third step consists of implementing the marketing research plan by collecting, processing, and analysing the information. The fourth step consists of interpreting and reporting the findings.