Advantages and Disadvantages of Marketing Research

1.

Market research guides your communication with current and potential customers. Once you have your research result, you will have enough knowledge on how to have the best communication with your customers and those potential ones on what their likes and dislikes and this can be a way to attract them with a new product tailored just for them.2. Market research helps you identify opportunities in the marketplace.

Research might make it obvious that a new product you have planned may not be what your market wants or needs. You may then decide to make modifications on what you are going to offer to suit your audience.3. Market research helps you minimize risks.

 Through Market research, you may find all the information you need and avoid the risks in launching your product.4. Market research measures your reputation. It is also a way to know how your product go against your competitor and help you develop your product to change the perception.5.

Market research uncovers and identifies potential problems. You can get consumers’ reaction to your new product and you can still improve it for further development.6. Market research helps you plan ahead. Research can estimate the likely sales of a new product/service and also the advertising expenditure required to achieve maximum profits.7.

Market research can help you establish trends. You’ll find that you have a lot of data to be able to analyse your customers and establish any particular trends.8. Market research helps you establish your market positioning. It’s important to know the position of your business at particular moments in time.

Information from market research helps you benchmark and monitor your progress, which can be useful to make decisions and take action.9. Market research can determine the most persuasive ‘promise’. Every brand needs to make a promise.

It needs to be simple and Market research helps to determine what your Brand Promise is.10.Market research can find that compromise.The team involved in the launch of a new product/service all have their individual perceptions and gut feelings. These certainly should not be ignored, but by going straight to the target audience, you will gain thoughts and opinions from people who may be less biased or less emotionally attached to a new development or service. It helps gain a new angle, hopefully a compromise in just how you are going to go about a new launch, a new brand or a brand repositioning.

In a nutshell, market research is an invaluable tool that, at first, might seem expensive and slow, but it’s nothing more than an investment. As one of our very good clients always says, “Best to measure twice and cut once to maximise your returns”.Disadvantages of Marketing research in a company1. Costly Marketing research needs a lot of money to conduct various research activities. It needs huge funds for salaries, prepare questionnaires, conduct surveys, prepare reports and so on.

It is much more suitable for large companies who can afford such large cost.2. Time ConsumingIt is a lengthy process which needs patients for better results. This process is accompanied by steps and each steps should not be neglected or avoided.

In other words, there are no short cuts so generally it takes more time to solve a marketing problem and it is not applicable in urgent or emergency situation.3. Limited ScopeIt cannot solve all business related problems such as consumer behaviour, income and expenditure relationship. Thus, its scope is limited.

4. Limited Practical Value It is mainly used for hypothetical research therefore it gives theoretical answers so sometimes it does not give realistic solutions to real-life problems.5. Can’t predict Consumer Behaviour Marketing research collects data about consumer behaviour but it’s not accurate because we cannot predict consumer behaviour because all of us have changing attitudes depending on the time and of our moods.

Consumer Behaviour is a very complex part of studying Marketing research because it is affected by factors such as social, culture, personal, psychological and any other factors that are very hard to understand.6. No Accurate resultsMarketing Research is part of social science and it studies consumer behaviour and marketing environment. These factors are very complex and it does not solve a problem 100% accurate so it cannot give a 100% assurance.7. Provides Suggestions not Solutions Marketing research only provides data that can help a Marketing Manager on his problem but it doesn’t give him the solution, it only advises him on what to do.

Therefore, the Marketing Manager solves the Problem and Marketing Research only advises him.8. Non-Availability of Technical staffMarketing Research should be done by highly qualified and experienced staff. They should also be patient, hard-working and honest. However, it is very difficult to find this kind of researcher. Therefore, Marketing Research becomes a costly, time-consuming and unreliable data so it’s really a big problem having no technical staff handling this.

9. Fragmented ApproachMarketing research studies a problem only from a particular angle. It does not take an overall view into consideration. There are many causes for a marketing problem. It does not study all causes. It only studies one or two causes.

10. Can be misusedSometimes Marketing Research is misused by the company and causes the delay of decision-making.11. Non-availability of reliable data The quality of Marketing Research relies on the reliability of collected data.

If the data is complete, up-to-date and reliable then the report will be trustworthy. But sometimes, having so many factors to balance, there is sometimes no availability of reliable data. 12. Resistance of Marketing ManagersSome managers do not rely on marketing research. Primarily they think that these suggestions are impractical to use and secondly they will feel their importance will become less.

So there is a rising conflict between marketing managers and researchers.