Market Research

Systematic collection and analysis of data relating to sale and

distribution of financial products and services. Market research is an
early step in the marketing process, and includes an analysis of market
demand for a new product, or for existing products, as well as
appropriate methods of distributing those products. Techniques in
market research include telephone polling and focus group interviews to
determine customer attitudes, pricing sensitivity, and willingness to use
delivery alternatives. Most large banks have their own market research
departments that evaluate not only products, but their Brick and
Mortar branch banking networks through which most banking
products are sold.

Market Research

The term market research encompasses a number of activities that are

designed to connect marketers to consumers through information
gathering and evaluation. Market research provides businesses with
information about their customers, their competitors, and their overall
industry. It is commonly used to identify marketing problems and
opportunities, as well as to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of
marketing strategies. Small business owners, because of their usually
limited financial resources, have a particular need for adequate,
accurate, and current information to aid them in making decisions.
Market research can help entrepreneurs evaluate the feasibility of a
start-up venture before investing a great deal of time and capital, for
example, as well as assist them in effectively marketing their goods and
services. Employing such marketing strategies as market segmentation
and product differentiation would be nearly impossible without first
conducting market research.

Although market research can be costly, it is often even more costly to

make erroneous decisions based upon bad or inadequate information.
In fact, an average business spends between 25 and 50 percent of its
annual marketing budget on research activities. Conducting large-scale
market research in-house is not possible for many small businesses,
since it requires a comprehensive understanding of the problem to be
addressed, the market, and the application of research procedures. But
there is a great deal of helpful information available to entrepreneurs
who know where to look, and there are many consultants, advertising
firms, and market research specialists who offer their services to small
businesses for a fee.

The information gathered through market re-search can be divided into

two main categories. The first category—primary information—
generally does not exist in a coherent form before the marketer gathers
it in response to a particular question or problem. The most common
methods of gathering primary market research information are through
direct mail, telemarketing, and personal interviews. The other category
—secondary information—has already been compiled and organized by
a source other than the marketer. Rather than looking at a specific
marketing problem faced by an individual company, secondary
information generally tracks trends within a market, an industry, a
demographic group, or a geographic region. A great deal of valuable
secondary information is available to small business owners at little or
no cost. Some possible sources of secondary market research
information include government reports, trade association records,
newspaper and magazine surveys, university-sponsored research, local
chamber of commerce records, on-line services, and competitors'
annual reports.

Market research can provide small business owners with the

information they need to answer a wide range of questions, including:
Who are my customers? Where are they located? How much and how
often will they buy? and What product attributes do they prefer? Given
the importance of market research—and its potential cost—experts
recommend that businesses follow a step-by-step approach in order to
gain the most benefits from their research activieties.

The first step in the market research process is to define the marketing
problem to be addressed. Next, a marketer should determine what
information is needed to solve the problem, as well as what sources
should be used to acquire the information. Many businesses make a
preliminary investigation at this early stage in order to give their
definition of the problem more focus and to develop tentative answers
that can be tested during the next stage of the process. The third step
involves planning the research. This step includes selecting the
techniques to be used for gathering data and deciding on an appropriate
group, or sample, to be included in the research. Fourth, a marketer
actually gathers the necessary data. The fifth step involves analyzing
and interpreting the information that has been gathered. Finally, the
marketer reaches a conclusion about the marketing problem and
translates the findings into changes in the firm's overall marketing
strategy.

There are three general types of market research suppliers that can
assist small businesses with one or more steps in the above process.
Some firms specialize in conducting overall market research that they
release to a variety of clients for a fee. This type of firm includes
syndicated services such as A.C. Nielsen and Company, which provides
viewership ratings for national television programs. There are also
custom market research firms that handle all aspects of the process,
from defining the marketing problem and designing research
techniques to evaluating results and formulating new marketing
strategies. In contrast, smaller, specialty line suppliers usually
concentrate on one aspect of the process. Marketers who wish to secure
the services of a market research firm usually obtain bids from a
number of suppliers. The following sections provide more information
about the various types of market research that such suppliers perform.

Types of Market Research

AUDIENCE RESEARCH. Research on who is listening, watching, and
reading is important to marketers of television and radio programs and
print publications—as well as to advertisers who wish to reach a certain
target audience with their message. Television and radio ratings
demonstrate the popularity of shows and determine how much stations
can charge for advertising spots during broadcasts. Publication
subscription lists, which are audited by tabulating companies to ensure
their veracity, are important in determining the per page rate for
advertising.

PRODUCT RESEARCH. Product research includes simple, in-person

research such as taste tests conducted in malls and in the aisles of
grocery stores, as well as elaborate, long-term "beta testing" of high-
tech products by selected, experienced users. The objective of product
research can be simple; for example, a company may tweak the taste of
an existing product, then measure consumers' reactions to see if there is
room in the market for a variation. It can also be more extensive, as
when a company develops prototypes of proposed new products that
may be intended for market introduction months down the road.

In product research, as in all market research, there is a danger to

paying too much attention to the wrong things. For instance, the
introduction of New Coke was based on the outcome of taste tests that
showed the public wanted a sweeter product. But later an angry public,
outraged that Coca-Cola was planning to change the familiar formula,
forced the company to ignore its taste tests and leave the original Coke
on the market. The company had put too much stock in the results of
the taste test studies, and had failed to factor in research that showed
consumers were happy with the product as it was.

BRAND RESEARCH. Brands, the named products that advertising

pushes and for which manufacturers can charge consumers the most
money, are always being studied. Advertisers want to know if
consumers have strong brand loyalty ("I'd never buy another brand,
even if they gave me a coupon"); if the brand has any emotional appeal
("My dear mother used only that brand"); and what the consumer
thinks could be improved about the brand ("If only it came in a
refillable container").

Brand research, too, has its perils. Campbell's Soup once convened a
focus group comprised of its best soup customers. One of the findings
was that those customers saw no need for a low-salt alternative soup
Campbell's wanted to market. Concerned that the general public
seemed to want low-sodium products, Campbell's retested groups other
than their best customers. This research found a market interested in a
low-sodium soup. The loyal Campbell's customers loved the saltier
product, while a larger group of potential customers preferred the low-
salt alternative.

PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH. Perhaps the most controversial type

of market research is psychological research. This type of research tries
to determine why people buy certain products based on a profile of the
way the consumers live their lives. One company has divided all
Americans into more than 60 psychological profiles. This company
contends the lifestyles these people have established, based upon their
past buying habits and their cultural upbringing, influences their
buying decisions so strongly that individual differences can sometimes
be negated.

Psychological research is controversial because it measures attitudes

about buying rather than the buying itself. Critics point to conflicting
information uncovered through other market research studies. In one
series of research projects, researchers asked people what they were
planning to buy before they entered a store. After the people surveyed
left the store, the same researcher examined what was actually in their
shopping carts. Only 30 percent of the people bought what they had said
they planned to buy just a half hour earlier.

SCANNER RESEARCH. In contrast, there is no fooling the checkout

scanner at the supermarket or the department store: it records what
was actually purchased. This is valuable information an advertiser can
use to help plan an ongoing marketing strategy. Scanner technology has
changed the way advertisers track the sale of consumer products.
Before scanners, advertisers received sales information only when
retailers reordered stock, generally every two weeks. This meant that
the advertisers had no way to quickly measure the effect of national
advertising, in-store sales promotions, or the couponing of similar
products by their competitors. Now, computer technology can send
scanner information to advertisers within days or even hours.

DATABASE RESEARCH. Virtually every type of consumer—credit

card holders, smokers, drinkers, car buyers, video buyers—shows up on
thousands of lists and databases that are regularly cross-referenced to
mine nuggets of marketing research. Database research is growing in
popularity among marketers because the raw data has already been
contributed by the purchaser. All the marketer has to do is develop a
computer program to look for common buying patterns.

Database research can be thought of as the ultimate tool in market

segmentation research. For example, from zip code lists, marketers may
determine where the wealthy people live in a city. That list can be
merged with a list of licensed drivers. The resulting list can be merged
with another list of owners of cars of a certain make older than a certain
year. The resulting list can be merged with another list of subscribers to
car enthusiast magazines. The final list will deliver a potential market
for a new luxury car soon to be introduced and profiled in the car
magazines. The people on the potential buyers' list could then be mailed
an invitation to come see the new car.

Database research also allows companies to build personal relationships

with people who have proven from past purchases that they are
potential customers. For example, a motorcycle manufacturer such as
Harley Davidson may discover from database research that a family
with a motorcycle has a teenage son. That son is a potential new
customer for everything from clothes to a new motorcycle of his own.
Maintaining a personal relationship with customers also provides
businesses with a basis for more detailed and economical market
research than might be possible through random sampling.

POST-SALES OR CUSTOMER SATISFACTION RESEARCH. Most

companies no longer believe that a sale ends their relationship with a
customer. Nearly one-third of the research revenues generated by the
leading American market research firms concern customer satisfaction.
Many companies now wait a few days or weeks, then contact customers
with survey questionnaires or telephone calls. Companies want
reassurance that the customer enjoyed the buying experience and that
the product or service has met the buyer's expectations.

The reason behind post-sales research is to ensure that current

customers are happy, will consider themselves future customers, and
will spread positive word-of-mouth messages about the product and
company. One study found that 70 percent of customers believed it was
important for companies to stay in contact with them, but less than one-
third of those same customers reported that they had heard from
companies whose products they purchased. Nearly 90 percent of those
surveyed said they would be more likely to choose a company's products
if it stayed in touch with them and sought their satisfaction.

Personal Research Methods

CLOSED-END QUESTIONNAIRE :- A closed-end questionnaire is the

type of market research most people have experienced. It includes such
common activities as filling out a comment card at a restaurant or
responding to a telephone survey. In closed-end questionnaires, the
person being surveyed cannot expound on their answers. Such surveys
usually ask for "yes" or "no" responses or for measures of multiple
choice opinion (e.g., "extremely interested, " "somewhat interested, "
"not interested"). This type of market research is generally conducted
to elicit the opinions and beliefs of the public. It is commonly used for
political polling and to determine the awareness or popularity of a
product or service.

The inherent problem with multiple-choice questionnaires that ask for

clear-cut answers is that many people do not think in a clear-cut
fashion. If not carefully prepared, closed-ended questions may elicit
answers that do not provide a clear view of the person being surveyed.
Sometimes, the company conducting the survey may intentionally or
inadvertently write questions that elicit the answers it wants to receive,
rather than answers that provide a true picture of what is happening in
the marketplace.

OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONNAIRE: - over time, market researchers

have grown increasingly aware that people often have opinions that do
not fit into a multiple-choice questionnaire. To capture these opinions
and try to analyze them, researchers are shifting toward open-ended
research—asking people to say exactly what is on their minds. For
example, manufacturers are giving customers plenty of space on
questionnaires to explain their likes and dislikes about products and
services, and telephone researchers will frequently mix closed-end and
open-end questions on the same survey to try to delve deeper. A "no"
response to whether a person watches a particular cable television
station may trigger a follow-up question of "Why not?, " for instance,
and the answer will be taken down word for word.

A problem with both closed- and open-ended questionnaire research,

particularly when conducted over the telephone, is that people
gradually become bored or annoyed and stop providing their true
opinions. In addition, some studies have shown that a large percentage
of Americans refuse to answer marketing research surveys.

FOCUS GROUPS. In-person, sit-down discussions around a table with

groups of consumers, would-be consumers, never-buyers, or any other
demographic group a company wishes to bring together are called focus
groups. This can be the least expensive type of market research when
handled on a local basis by a small business wanting to get a handle on
its customers. Or, it can be one of the most expensive if a major
corporation wants to test its plans in various sections of the country.
Small, local businesses may invite a focus group to a neighborhood
home to sit around the dinner table and discuss how the company can
develop new markets. In contrast, most major corporations conduct
their focus groups in a controlled environment, usually with a one-way
mirror at one end of the room. This allows executives to observe the
proceedings unobtrusively or to videotape the session for further study.

The key to gathering good information from a focus group is for the
moderator to keep the conversation flowing freely without taking a side.
The moderator's job is to involve everyone in the discussion and prevent
any individuals from dominating the conversation. Most market
research experts agree that focus group research should be
accompanied by other types of research and not be the sole basis for
launching new products. The reason is that opinions expressed among
strangers may not always reflect the way people would react when
alone. For example, a focus group discussing low-fat foods may garner
an enthusiastic response from people who want to be publicly perceived
as being concerned about their health. The same people, however, might
say they never buy low-fat products if questioned during an anonymous
phone interview.

Further Reading:

The Entrepreneur Magazine Small Business Advisor. Wiley, 1995.

Haim, Alexander, and Charles D. Schewe. The Portable MBA in

Marketing. Wiley, 1992.

Lehmann, Donald R. Marketing Research and Analysis. 3rd Ed. Irwin,

1988.

Lury, Giles. "Market Research Cannot Cover for the 'Vision Thing.' "
Marketing. November 9, 2000.

"Market Research Is Accessible, Rewarding to Small Retailers."

Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News. January 19, 2000.

Stevens, Mark. The Macmillan Small Business Handbook. Macmillan,

1988.
Westfall, Tina Cook. "Market Research: Nothing Is as Convincing as
Hard Numbers." Atlanta Business Chronicle. August 29, 1998.

See also: Focus Groups

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: market research

Study of the requirements of specific markets, the acceptability of

products, and methods of developing and exploiting new markets.
Various strategies are used for market research: past sales may be
projected forward; surveys may be made of consumer attitudes and
product preferences; and new or altered products may be introduced
experimentally into designated test-market areas. Formal market
research dates back to the 1920s in Germany and the 1930s in Sweden
and France. After World War II, U.S. firms led in the use and
refinement of market-research techniques, which spread throughout
much of Western Europe and Japan.

For more information on market research, visit Britannica.com.

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US History Encyclopedia: Marketing Research

Marketing Research evolved as the U.S. economy shifted from a

production-driven one to a market-driven one. As the American
production of goods and services, plus imports, was beginning to satiate
American demand, marketers needed to learn how to tailor their
products to the needs and likes of an increasingly discerning public.
This tailoring resulted in increased market demand and, for successful
companies, increased market share.

Formal marketing research was initiated in 1911 when the Curtis

Publishing Company appointed its first director of commercial
research. Early practitioners were inspired by the efforts of Frederick
W. Taylor, famous for his time and motion studies, and others to
employ disciplines of "scientific management" to improve business
processes and thereby improve results. Marketing research has evolved
into an industry consisting of large and small firms worldwide as well as
dedicated market research departments in all large and many small
companies. Expenditures for marketing research in the United States
exceeded $1 billion in 2000.

The American Marketing Association defines marketing research as

"the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the
marketer through … information used to identify and define marketing
opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing
actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding
of marketing as a process." Marketing research "specifies the
information required to address these issues, designs the method for
collecting information, manages and implements the data collection
process, analyzes the results, and communicates the findings and their
implications."

Marketing research consists of gaining consumer input and data. It is

the lifeline between companies and customers, and it allows the
application of scientific methods to gain knowledge about consumers,
buyers, competitors, markets, and marketing.

In general terms, marketing research is either primary research or

secondary research. Primary research is either qualitative or
quantitative. Qualitative research explores, defines, and describes. It
involves in-depth studies of limited samples of people. Use of focus
groups is a popular tool of qualitative research. In this format,
participants are prescreened to assure that they match the
sociodemographic profile of the brand or company performing the
research (that is, they are either customers or potential target
customers). Once screened, groups of eight to twelve customers
participate in a group discussion, with a company-hired moderator, to
discuss the topic at hand: new products, reaction to advertising or
packaging, or assessment of goods or services. Use of one-on-one
interviews is another popular tool of qualitative research. Often these
are conducted in shopping malls (mall intercepts), where shoppers are
approached, screened to match a predetermined sociodemographic
profile, and escorted to a facility for a thirty-minute to one-hour
interview.

Quantitative research measures, estimates, and quantifies. It generally

involves polling of a broad sample of people. This choice is necessary
when statistically significant results are required. Large companies and
well-known packaged-goods brands use this type of research when they
want to be certain that consumer opinions are representative of the
population at large. In the last decade especially, political opinion polls
have become popular for U.S. presidents and others to assure that they
are taking the public's point of view into consideration in policymaking
and that they remain popular among their constituents.

Specific research objectives may require a mix of qualitative and

quantitative research. Examples include awareness and attitude
surveys, brand image surveys, advertising tracking, promotion testing,
media mix evaluation, new products research, marketing optimization
research, and customer loyalty evaluation.

Secondary research entails gathering information from already

published data and sources. Some applications for secondary research
include competitive intelligence (where one company wants to monitor
its competitors, their spending, their new product introductions, their
staffing, or their financial performance) and trend assessment. As an
example, Albing International Marketing, a global home furnishings
consultancy, used secondary research data to prepare a market study,
Windows on the Millennium—Across the Threshold to the New Century
(2001), which cited ten key trends expected to shape and impact the
home furnishings industry in the subsequent decade. The trends were
listed under the following headings: Home and Family, Leisure, The
Aging Population, The Ethnic Influence, The Spiritual Search,
Information and Technology, The Environment, The Wealth Effect,
Globalization and Nationalism, and The Value Mentality.
New methodologies and new technologies are continually being adopted
by the marketing research industry. New research techniques provide
deeper insight into buyer behavior, even using predictive models of how
their behavior will change under alternative scenarios. The computer
has been integrated into nearly every phase of research, from computer-
assisted telephone and personal interviews to disk-by-mail data
collection to Internet sampling. The Internet has become the key portal
for gathering secondary research. In addition to access to public library
databases, several sites exist exclusively to sell market research reports
on a broad variety of subjects (for example, Profound, Factiva, Market
Research.com). It is only a matter of Time until Web-based survey
research becomes an industry norm.

Bibliography

Mendelsohn, Susan. "In Search of Market Research." Information

World Review (March 2002).

Neal, William D. "Getting Serious about Marketing Research."

Marketing Research (Summer 2002).

Thomas, Jerry W. "Marketing Research." Executive Excellence

(November 2001).

Wade, A. Kenneth. "Focus Groups Research Role is Shifting."

Marketing News (4 March 2002).

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Columbia Encyclopedia: market research,
organized use of sample surveys, polls, focus groups, and other
techniques to study market characteristics (e.g., ages and incomes of
consumers; consumer attitudes) and improve the efficiency of sales and
distribution. Development of new products, opening of new markets,
measurement of advertising effectiveness, and knowledge of business
competitors are among its basic aims. Developed in the United States in
the early 20th cent., the field expanded rapidly after World War II,
spreading to Europe and Japan.
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Business Research and incubation Understand / Service / Retail
consumers,markets...
www.inqb8.net Marketing research
Wikipedia: marketing research Marketing strategy
Marketing management
Promotional content
Advertising / Branding
Direct marketing / Personal Sales
Product placement / Public relations
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here. For the product review Out-of-home / Internet marketing
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Reports. Digital marketing / In-game
Word of mouth
Research is the scholarly or
scientific practice of gathering
existing or new information in order to enhance one's knowledge of a
specific area. Research has many categories, from medicine to
literature. Marketing research, or market research, is a form of
business research and is generally divided into two categories:
consumer market research and business-to-business (B2B) market
research, which was previously known as industrial marketing research.
Consumer marketing research studies the buying habits of individual
people while business-to-business marketing research investigates the
markets for products sold by one business to another.

Consumer marketing research is a form of applied sociology that

concentrates on understanding the behaviours, whims and preferences,
of consumers in a market-based economy. The field of consumer
marketing research as a statistical science was pioneered by Arthur
Nielsen with the founding of the ACNielsen Company in 1923.

In addition to marketing research, other forms of business research

include:

• Market research is broader in scope and examines all aspects of a

business environment. It asks questions about competitors,
market structure, government regulations, economic trends,
technological advances, and numerous other factors that make up
the business environment. (See Environmental scanning.)
Sometimes the term refers more particularly to the financial
analysis of companies, industries, or sectors. In this case, financial
analysts usually carry out the research and provide the results to
investment advisors and potential investors.

• Product research - This looks at what products can be produced

with available technology, and what new product innovations
near-future technology can develop. (see New Product
Development)

• Advertising research - is a specialized form of marketing research

conducted to improve the efficacy of advertising. copy testing, also
known as pre-testing, is a form of customized research that
predicts in-market performance of an ad before it airs by
analyzing audience levels of attention, brand linkage, motivation,
entertainment, and communication, as well as breaking down the
ad’s flow of attention and flow of emotion. Pre-testing is also used
on ads still in rough (ripomatic or animatic) form. (Young, p213)

Types of marketing research

Marketing research techniques come in many forms, including:

• Ad Tracking – periodic or continuous in-market research to

monitor a brand’s performance using measures such as brand
awareness, brand preference, and product usage. (Young, 2005)

• Advertising Research – used to predict copy testing or track the

efficacy of advertisements for any medium, measured by the ad’s
ability to get attention, communicate the message, build the
 brand’s image, and motivate the consumer to purchase the
product or service. (Young, 2005)

• Brand equity research - how favorably do consumers view the

brand?

• Brand name testing - what do consumers feel about the names of

the products?

• Commercial eye tracking research - examine advertisements,

package designs, websites, etc by analyzing visual behavior of the
consumer

• Concept testing - to test the acceptance of a concept by target

consumers

• Coolhunting - to make observations and predictions in changes of

new or existing cultural trends in areas such as fashion, music,
films, television, youth culture and lifestyle

• consumer decision process research - to determine what motivates

people to buy and what decision-making process they use

• Copy testing – predicts in-market performance of an ad before it

airs by analyzing audience levels of attention, brand linkage,
motivation, entertainment, and communication, as well as
breaking down the ad’s flow of attention and flow of emotion.
(Young, p 213)

• Customer satisfaction studies - exit interviews or surveys that

determine a customer's level of satisfaction with the quality of the
transaction

• Demand estimation - to determine the approximate level of

demand for the product

• Distribution channel audits - to assess distributors’ and retailers’

attitudes toward a product, brand, or company

• Internet strategic intelligence - searching for customer opinions in

the Internet: chats, forums, web pages, blogs... where people
 express freely about their experiences with products, becoming
strong "opinion formers"

• Marketing effectiveness and analytics - Building models and

measuring results to determine the effectiveness of individual
marketing activities.

• mystery shopping - An employee or representative of the market

research firm anonymously contacts a salesperson and indicates
he or she is shopping for a product. The shopper then records the
entire experience. This method is often used for quality control or
for researching competitors' products.

• Positioning research - how does the target market see the brand
relative to competitors? - what does the brand stand for?

• Price elasticity testing - to determine how sensitive customers are

to price changes

• Sales forecasting - to determine the expected level of sales given

the level of demand. With respect to other factors like Advertising
expenditure, sales promotion etc.

• Segmentation research - to determine the demographic,

psychographic, and behavioural characteristics of potential
buyers

• Online panel - a group of individual who accepted to respond to

marketing research online

• Store audit - to measure the sales of a product or product line at a

statistically selected store sample in order to determine market
share, or to determine whether a retail store provides adequate
service

• Test marketing - a small-scale product launch used to determine

the likely acceptance of the product when it is introduced into a
wider market

• Viral Marketing Research - refers to marketing research designed

to estimate the probability that specific communications will be
 transmitted throughout an individuals Social Network. Estimates
of Social Networking Potential (SNP) are combined with estimates
of selling effectiveness to estimate ROI on specific combinations of
messages and media.

All of these forms of marketing research can be classified as either

problem-identification research or as problem-solving research.

A company collects primary research by gathering original data.

Secondary research is conducted on data published previously and
usually by someone else. Secondary research costs far less than primary
research, but seldom comes in a form that exactly meets the needs of the
researcher.

A similar distinction exists between exploratory research and conclusive

research. Exploratory research provides insights into and
comprehension of an issue or situation. It should draw definitive
conclusions only with extreme caution. Conclusive research draws
conclusions: the results of the study can be generalized to the whole
population.

Exploratory research is conducted to explore a problem to get some

basic idea about the solution at the preliminary stages of research. It
may serve as the input to conclusive research. Exploratory research
information is collected by focus group interviews, reviewing literature
or books, discussing with experts, etc. This is unstructured and
qualitative in nature. If a secondary source of data is unable to serve the
purpose, a convenience sample of small size can be collected. Conclusive
research is conducted to draw some conclusion about the problem. It is
essentially, structured and quantitative research, and the output of this
research is the input to management information systems (MIS).

Exploratory research is also conducted to simplify the findings of the

conclusive or descriptive research, if the findings are very hard to
interpret for the marketing manager.

Marketing research methods

Methodologically, marketing research uses the following types of

research designs:[1]
Based on questioning:

• Qualitative marketing research - generally used for exploratory

purposes - small number of respondents - not generalizable to the
whole population - statistical significance and confidence not
calculated - examples include focus groups, in-depth interviews,
and projective techniques
• Quantitative marketing research - generally used to draw
conclusions - tests a specific hypothesis - uses random sampling
techniques so as to infer from the sample to the population -
involves a large number of respondents - examples include
surveys and questionnaires

Based on observations:

• Ethnographic studies -, by nature qualitative, the researcher

observes social phenomena in their natural setting - observations
can occur cross-sectionally (observations made at one time) or
longitudinally (observations occur over several time-periods) -
examples include product-use analysis and computer cookie
traces
• Experimental techniques -, by nature quantitative, the researcher
creates a quasi-artificial environment to try to control spurious
factors, then manipulates at least one of the variables - examples
include purchase laboratories and test markets

Researchers often use more than one research design. They may start
with secondary research to get background information, then conduct a
focus group (qualitative research design) to explore the issues. Finally
they might do a full nation-wide survey (quantitative research design) in
order to devise specific recommendations for the client.

Business to business market research

Business to business (B2B) research is inevitably more complicated than

consumer research. The researchers need to know what type of multi-
faceted approach will answer the objectives, since seldom is it possible
to find the answers using just one method. Finding the right
respondents is crucial in B2B research since they are often busy, and
may not want to participate. Encouraging them to “open up” is yet
another skill required of the B2B researcher. Last, but not least, most
business research leads to strategic decisions and this means that the
business researcher must have expertise in developing strategies that
are strongly rooted in the research findings and acceptable to the client.

There are four key factors that make B2B market research special and
different to consumer markets:[2]

• The decision making unit is far more complex in B2B markets

than in consumer markets
• B2B products and their applications are more complex than
consumer products
• B2B marketers address a much smaller number of customers who
are very much larger in their consumption of products than is the
case in consumer markets
• Personal relationships are of critical importance in B2B markets.

Most of B2B market research today is done online, using online panels.

Commonly used marketing research terms

Market research techniques resemble those used in political polling and

social science research. Meta-analysis (also called the Schmidt-Hunter
technique) refers to a statistical method of combining data from
multiple studies or from several types of studies. Conceptualization
means the process of converting vague mental images into definable
concepts. Operationalization is the process of converting concepts into
specific observable behaviors that a researcher can measure. Precision
refers to the exactness of any given measure. Reliability refers to the
likelihood that a given operationalized construct will yield the same
results if re-measured. Validity refers to the extent to which a measure
provides data that captures the meaning of the operationalized
construct as defined in the study. It asks, “Are we measuring what we
intended to measure?”

Applied research sets out to prove a specific hypothesis of value to the

clients paying for the research. For example, a cigarette company might
commission research that attempts to show that cigarettes are good for
one's health. Many researchers have ethical misgivings about doing
applied research.
Sugging (or selling under the guise of market research) forms a sales
technique in which sales people pretend to conduct marketing research,
but with the real purpose of obtaining buyer motivation and buyer
decision-making information to be used in a subsequent sales call.

Frugging comprises the practice of soliciting funds under the pretense

of being a research organization.

References

Marketing research

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Marketing

Consumer market research is a form of applied sociology that

concentrates on understanding the behaviours, whims and preferences,
of consumers in a market-based economy, and aims to understand the
effects and comparative success of marketing campaigns. The field of
consumer marketing research as a statistical science was pioneered by
Arthur Nielsen with the founding of the ACNielsen Company in 1923
and later the A.C. Nielsen Center for Marketing Research. For more
information about behavior graphics visit Experian Consumer
Research, a subsidiary company of Experian [1]. Experian Consumer
Research takes a comprehensive look at today’s consumers by collecting
data on many variables such as demographics, lifestyles, opinions, and
behaviors.

Other forms of business research include:

• Market research is broader in scope and examines all aspects of a

business environment. It asks questions about competitors,
market structure, government regulations, economic trends,
technological advances, and numerous other factors that make up
the business environment (see environmental scanning).
Sometimes the term refers more particularly to the financial
analysis of companies, industries, or sectors. In this case, financial
analysts usually carry out the research and provide the results to
investment advisors and potential investors.

• Product research - This looks at what products can be produced

with available technology, and what new product innovations
 near-future technology can develop (see new product
development).

• Advertising research - is a specialized form of marketing research

conducted to improve the efficacy of advertising. Copy testing,
also known as "pre-testing," is a form of customized research that
predicts in-market performance of an ad before it airs, by
analyzing audience levels of attention, brand linkage, motivation,
entertainment, and communication, as well as breaking down the
ad’s flow of attention and flow of emotion. Pre-testing is also used
on ads still in rough (ripomatic or animatic) form. (Young, pg.
213)

Research is the scholarly or scientific practice of gathering existing or

new information in order to enhance one's knowledge of a specific area.
Research has many categories, from medicine to literature. Marketing
research, or market research, is a form of business research and is
generally divided into two categories: consumer market research and
business-to-business (B2B) market research, which was previously
known as industrial marketing research. Consumer marketing research
studies the buying habits of individual people while business-to-business
marketing research investigates the markets for products sold by one
business to another.

Contents

[hide]

• 1 Types of marketing research

• 2 Marketing research methods
• 3 Business to business market research
• 4 Marketing Research in Small Business and Nonprofit
Organizations
• 5 International Marketing Research
• 6 Commonly used marketing research terms
• 7 See also
• 8 Notes

• 9 References

[edit] Types of marketing research

Marketing research techniques come in many forms, including:

• Ad Tracking – periodic or continuous in-market research to

monitor a brand’s performance using measures such as brand
awareness, brand preference, and product usage. (Young, 2005)

• Advertising Research – used to predict copy testing or track the

efficacy of advertisements for any medium, measured by the ad’s
ability to get attention, communicate the message, build the
brand’s image, and motivate the consumer to purchase the
product or service. (Young, 2005)

YEADS

• Brand equity research - how favorably do consumers view the

brand?

• Brand name testing - what do consumers feel about the names of

the products?

• Commercial eye tracking research - examine advertisements,

package designs, websites, etc by analyzing visual behavior of the
consumer

• Concept testing - to test the acceptance of a concept by target

consumers

• Coolhunting - to make observations and predictions in changes of

new or existing cultural trends in areas such as fashion, music,
films, television, youth culture and lifestyle

• Buyer decision processes research - to determine what motivates

people to buy and what decision-making process they use

• Copy testing – predicts in-market performance of an ad before it

airs by analyzing audience levels of attention, brand linkage,
motivation, entertainment, and communication, as well as
breaking down the ad’s flow of attention and flow of emotion.
(Young, p 213)
• Customer satisfaction research - quantitative or qualitative
studies that yields an understanding of a customer's of satisfaction
with a transaction

• Demand estimation - to determine the approximate level of

demand for the product

• Distribution channel audits - to assess distributors’ and retailers’

attitudes toward a product, brand, or company

• Internet strategic intelligence - searching for customer opinions in

the Internet: chats, forums, web pages, blogs... where people
express freely about their experiences with products, becoming
strong "opinion formers"

• Marketing effectiveness and analytics - Building models and

measuring results to determine the effectiveness of individual
marketing activities.

• Mystery Consumer or Mystery shopping - An employee or

representative of the market research firm anonymously contacts
a salesperson and indicates he or she is shopping for a product.
The shopper then records the entire experience. This method is
often used for quality control or for researching competitors'
products.

• Positioning research - how does the target market see the brand
relative to competitors? - what does the brand stand for?

• Price elasticity testing - to determine how sensitive customers are

to price changes

• Sales forecasting - to determine the expected level of sales given

the level of demand. With respect to other factors like Advertising
expenditure, sales promotion etc.

• Segmentation research - to determine the demographic,

psychographic, and behavioural characteristics of potential
buyers
 • Online panel - a group of individual who accepted to respond to
marketing research online

• Store audit - to measure the sales of a product or product line at a

statistically selected store sample in order to determine market
share, or to determine whether a retail store provides adequate
service

• Test marketing - a small-scale product launch used to determine

the likely acceptance of the product when it is introduced into a
wider market

• Viral Marketing Research - refers to marketing research designed

to estimate the probability that specific communications will be
transmitted throughout an individuals Social Network. Estimates
of Social Networking Potential (SNP) are combined with estimates
of selling effectiveness to estimate ROI on specific combinations of
messages and media.

All of these forms of marketing research can be classified as either

problem-identification research or as problem-solving research.

A company collects primary research by gathering original data.

Secondary research is conducted on data published previously and
usually by someone else. Secondary research costs far less than primary
research, but seldom comes in a form that exactly meets the needs of the
researcher.

A similar distinction exists between exploratory research and conclusive

research. Exploratory research provides insights into and
comprehension of an issue or situation. It should draw definitive
conclusions only with extreme caution. Conclusive research draws
conclusions: the results of the study can be generalized to the whole
population.

Exploratory research is conducted to explore a problem to get some

basic idea about the solution at the preliminary stages of research. It
may serve as the input to conclusive research. Exploratory research
information is collected by focus group interviews, reviewing literature
or books, discussing with experts, etc. This is unstructured and
qualitative in nature. If a secondary source of data is unable to serve the
purpose, a convenience sample of small size can be collected. Conclusive
research is conducted to draw some conclusion about the problem. It is
essentially, structured and quantitative research, and the output of this
research is the input to management information systems (MIS).

Exploratory research is also conducted to simplify the findings of the

conclusive or descriptive research, if the findings are very hard to
interpret for the marketing manager.

[edit] Marketing research methods

Methodologically, marketing research uses the following types of

research designs:[1]

Based on questioning:

• Qualitative marketing research - generally used for exploratory

purposes - small number of respondents - not generalizable to the
whole population - statistical significance and confidence not
calculated - examples include focus groups, in-depth interviews,
and projective techniques
• Quantitative marketing research - generally used to draw
conclusions - tests a specific hypothesis - uses random sampling
techniques so as to infer from the sample to the population -
involves a large number of respondents - examples include
surveys and questionnaires. Techniques include choice modelling,
maximum difference preference scaling, and covariance analysis.

Based on observations:

• Ethnographic studies -, by nature qualitative, the researcher

observes social phenomena in their natural setting - observations
can occur cross-sectionally (observations made at one time) or
longitudinally (observations occur over several time-periods) -
examples include product-use analysis and computer cookie
traces. See also Ethnography and Observational techniques.
• Experimental techniques -, by nature quantitative, the researcher
creates a quasi-artificial environment to try to control spurious
factors, then manipulates at least one of the variables - examples
include purchase laboratories and test markets
Researchers often use more than one research design. They may start
with secondary research to get background information, then conduct a
focus group (qualitative research design) to explore the issues. Finally
they might do a full nation-wide survey (quantitative research design) in
order to devise specific recommendations for the client.

[edit] Business to business market research

Business to business (B2B) research is inevitably more complicated than

consumer research. The researchers need to know what type of multi-
faceted approach will answer the objectives, since seldom is it possible
to find the answers using just one method. Finding the right
respondents is crucial in B2B research since they are often busy, and
may not want to participate. Encouraging them to “open up” is yet
another skill required of the B2B researcher. Last, but not least, most
business research leads to strategic decisions and this means that the
business researcher must have expertise in developing strategies that
are strongly rooted in the research findings and acceptable to the client.

There are four key factors that make B2B market research special and
different to consumer markets:[2]

• The decision making unit is far more complex in B2B markets

than in consumer markets
• B2B products and their applications are more complex than
consumer products
• B2B marketers address a much smaller number of customers who
are very much larger in their consumption of products than is the
case in consumer markets
• Personal relationships are of critical importance in B2B markets.

Most of B2B market research today is done online, using online panels.

[edit] Marketing Research in Small Business and Nonprofit

Organizations

Marketing research does not only occur in huge corporations with many
employees and a large budget. Marketing information can be derived by
observing the environment of their location and the competitions
location. Small scale surveys and focus groups are low cost ways to
gather information from potential and existing customers. Most
secondary data (statistics, demographics, etc.) is available to the public
in libraries or on the internet and can be easily accessed by a small
business owner.

[edit] International Marketing Research

International Marketing Research follows the same path as domestic

research, but there are a few more problems that may arise. Customers
in international markets may have very different customs, cultures, and
expectations from the same company. In this case, secondary
information must be collected from each separate country and then
combined, or compared. This is time consuming and can be confusing.
International Marketing Research relies more on primary data rather
than secondary information. Gathering the primary data can be
hindered by language, literacy and access to technology.

[edit] Commonly used marketing research terms

Market research techniques resemble those used in political polling and

social science research. Meta-analysis (also called the Schmidt-Hunter
technique) refers to a statistical method of combining data from
multiple studies or from several types of studies. Conceptualization
means the process of converting vague mental images into definable
concepts. Operationalization is the process of converting concepts into
specific observable behaviors that a researcher can measure. Precision
refers to the exactness of any given measure. Reliability refers to the
likelihood that a given operationalized construct will yield the same
results if re-measured. Validity refers to the extent to which a measure
provides data that captures the meaning of the operationalized
construct as defined in the study. It asks, “Are we measuring what we
intended to measure?”

Applied research sets out to prove a specific hypothesis of value to the

clients paying for the research. For example, a cigarette company might
commission research that attempts to show that cigarettes are good for
one's health. Many researchers have ethical misgivings about doing
applied research.

Sugging (or selling under the guise of l.market research) forms a sales
technique in which sales people pretend to conduct marketing research,
but with the real purpose of obtaining buyer motivation and buyer
decision-making information to be used in a subsequent sales call.

Frugging comprises the practice of soliciting funds under the pretense

of being a research organization.