Name : sua Shin yao 15723 2. According to the Marketing Research Association(2000), Marketing Research is defined as follows: "Marketing Research is the function which links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information, 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 methods for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, analyzes, and ommunicates the findings and their implications. As a whole, marketing research is about researching the whole of a company's marketing process.
Marketing research is a $1. 3-billion-dollar-a-year industry. The industry is growing at over 10 percent a year, with profits running at a similar level.Marketing Research provides, analyzes, and interprets information for manufacturers on how consumers view their products and services and on how they can better meet consumer needs. The ultimate goal is to please the consumer in order to get, or keep, the consumer's business.
Marketing research is systematic. Thus systematic planning is required at all the stages of the marketing research process. The procedures followed at each stage are methodologically sound, well documented and as much as possible, planned in advance. Marketing research uses the scientific method in that data are collected and analyzed to test prior notions or hypotheses.Marketing research is objective.
It attempts to provide accurate information that reflects a true state of affairs. It should be conducted impartially. While research is always influenced by the researcher's research philosophy, it should be free from the personal or political iases of the researcher or the management. The basic purpose of marketing research is to reduce uncertainty or error in decision-making.
The information collected by conducting marketing research is used for problem solving and decision making in various areas of marketing.By using the marketing research process, it can reduce uncertainty or error in a decision-making. Marketing research process involve define the problem and research objectives, developing the research plan for collecting information, implementing the research plan which collecting and nalyzing the data and finally interpreting and reporting the findings, which all this steps can help to reduce error or uncertainty in making decision. The marketing research process is the systematic identification, collection, analysis and distribution of information for the purpose of knowledge development and decision making.
The purpose of marketing research or the first step of marketing research process is to define the problem In defining the problem, the researcher should take into account the purpose of the study, the relevant background information, what information is eeded, or identify opportunity and how it will be used in decision making. Problem definition involves discussion with the decision makers, interviews with industry experts, analysis ot secondary data, and, perhaps, some qualitative research, such as focus groups. Once the problem has been precisely defined, the research can be designed and conducted properly.For example, "The Body Shop" has facing a declining sales. Once the problem has been clearly defined, the researcher must specify the objectives of the proposed research and develop a specific list of information needs.
A marketing research project might have one of three types of objective, the three type of objective is exploratory, descriptive and causal. Research objectives answer the question "Why is this project being conducted? " The answer could be as broad as the determination of the amount of effort needed to increase the company's market share by 5 percent .Only when the researcher knows the problem that management wants to solve can the research project be designed to provide the pertinent information. The difficult part of establishing research objectives is the conflict that often exists between the value of information and the esearch budget. Since each piece of information has some cost associated with it, whether it is the cost of the account manager's travel expenses or the cost of having an outside agency perform a telephone survey, each piece must be evaluated in terms of its value with respect to the needed decision.Secondly is to developing the research plan for collecting information.
This process call for determining the information needed, developing a plan for gathering it efficiently and presenting the research design to marketing management in the form of a plan. The plan outline ources of secondary data and spells out the specific research approaches, contact methods, sampling plans and instruments that researchers will use to gather primary data. Research objectives must be translated into specific information needs. Research process is establishing the need for marketing research information.The researcher must thoroughly understand why the information is needed.
The manager is responsible for explaining the situation surrounding the request for information and establishing that the research information will assist in the decision- making process. Establishing the need for research information is a critical and difficult phase of the research process. Too often the importance of this initial step is overlooked, which results in research findings that are not decision-oriented. For example, consumer attitudes towards the new product, will the consumers accept the new products of "The Body Shop".The next step in the research process is to design the formal research project and identify the appropriate sources of data for the study.
A research design is the framework that specifies the type of information to be collected, the sources of the data, and the data-collection procedures. Although there are many different ways to classify designs, one that gives a clear overview of the various procedures is research approaches, which id based on three methods of generating primary data: experimentation, observation, and survey.Experimentation involves establishing a controlled experiment or model that simulates the real-world marketing situation being investigated. In the observation method, the primary data result from observing the respondents doing something.
The survey method involves collecting the primary data by questioning a certain number of people. These are the most widely used methods of obtaining primary data To meet a manager's information needs, the researchers can gather secondary data, primary data or both.Secondary data consist of information that already exists somewhere, having been collected tor another purpose and is can obtained easily at low cost. Primary data consist of information collected foe the specific purpose at hand. Gathering information can be obtained through internal resources, government publications, periodicals and book and commercial data. Focus groups are often used to collect primary data.
A focus group consists of a discussion, usually lasting one and a half to two hours, with eight to twelve individuals and a moderator who is intent on encouraging in-depth discussion of a topic or product.The discussion allows for flexibility and provides broad, in-depth knowledge that cannot be obtained through any other research method. Besides that, information can be collected by contact methods through mail, telephone or personal interview. When research is being conducted, it is important to determine the appropriate target population of the research, the group of people possessing characteristics relevant to the research roblem from whom information will be obtained.Although this may appear to be easy, it is often one of the most difficult tasks in a marketing research project because of the wide variety of factors entering into the determination.
For example, it might be important that only recent users of the product be surveyed. Or perhaps the purchasers of the product, not the users, should be the focus of the research. Once the target population is determined, a decision is needed on how best to represent this population within the time and cost constraints of the research budget.Because there are many different methods used to draw this sample, the group of units composed of nonoverlapping elements that are representative of the population from which it is drawn, the best one needs to be chosen for the specific research project.
At this stage, the marketing researchers should summarise the plan in a written proposal. The proposal should cover the management problems addressed and the research objectives, the information to be obtained, the sources of secondary data or method to collecting primary data and the ways the results will help management decision making.It is continue with implementing the research plan which collecting and analysis the data and include research costs. A written research plan is to make sure that the marketing manager and research have considered all the important aspects. The researcher next put the marketing research plan into action. There may often be a need to carry out exploratory research before committing funds to larger-scale research such as quantitative studies.
Putting the plan into action involves collecting, processing and analyzing the information. Data collection may be carried out by the organisation's marketing esearch stall or by outside firm.The data collection phase of the marketing research process is generally the most expensive and the most subject to error. The researcher must make sure the plan is correctly implemented. The collected data must be processed and analysed to isolate important information and finding. Data from questionnaires are checked for accuracy and completeness and coded for computer analysis.
The researcher then applied third-party supplied computer software to tabulate the results and to compute averages and other statistical measures. Finally is interpreting and reporting the findings.The researcher interpret the findings, draw conclusions and report them to management. The researcher should present major finding that are useful in the main decision faced by management. There are many different ways to interpret the findings and discussion between researchers and managers will help point to the best interpretations. Managers need to check that the research project was properly carried out and necessary analysis was completed.
Finally, the manager is the one who must make the final decision what action the research suggest be taken. Marketing research also helps in identifying the trends that affect sales and profitability.In order to map these changing trends, it is necessary to track the population shifts, legal developments, and the local economic situation. This helps in quickly identifying the problems and opportunities.
Marketing Research also serves the purpose of keeping up with competitors' market strategies. Marketing research is important to a company because the task of marketing research is to provide management with relevant, accurate, reliable, valid, and current information. Competitive marketing nvironment and the ever-increasing costs attributed to poor decision making require that marketing research provide sound information.Sound decisions are not based on gut feeling, intuition, or even pure Judgment. Due to the rapid change of marketing environment, the marketing research has become important to a company in order to get the rapid change of marketing environment and also importance of research as integral part of better operation.
Besides that, a company's marketing managers make numerous strategic and tactical decisions in the process of identifying and satisfying customer needs. They make decisions about potential opportunities, target market selection, market segmentation, planning and implementing marketing programs, marketing performance, and control.These decisions are complicated by interactions between the controllable marketing variables of product, pricing, promotion, and distribution. Further complications are added by uncontrollable environmental factors such as general economic conditions, technology, public policies and laws, political environment, competition, and social and cultural changes. So, the marketing research has play a large role in helping a company to make decisions. Another factor why the marketing process is important to a company because of the complexity of consumers.
Marketing research helps the marketing manager in a company link the marketing variables with the environment and the consumers. It helps remove some of the uncertainty by providing relevant information about the marketing variables, environment, and consumers. In the absence of relevant information, consumers' response to marketing programs cannot be predicted reliably or accurately. Ongoing marketing research programs provide information on controllable and non-controllable factors and consumers; this nformation enhances the effectiveness of decisions made by marketing managers.Thus, the marketing research will help the company to reduce the company's uncertainty and risk.
Small business owners operate on limited budgets and need to make every penny provide a return on investment. So marketing research is important to a company to assure that the company will get the best return on marketing investments. From initially researching a product and market, to assuring that a company's marketing campaigns are successful, marketing research affects a company's bottom line and business success.
