Marketing Research: Reading 3
The roles of marketing research
Marketing research
The function that 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
Market research
Collection and analysis of information about markets, organisations and people to support better business decisions
What kind of information can research provide?
Behavioural
Attitudinal
Product development
Policy development, implementation and evaluation
Public consultation
Communications
PR
Market measurement
Process of marketing research
Stage 1: Research Planning = defining issues to research, research brief and proposal, initial research design
Stage 2: Exploratory Research = exploration of secondary research, piloting of primary research
Stage 3: Refining the research design = adjustment of research design informed by exploratory research
Stage 4: Main research collection
Stage 5: Analysis and interpretation
Stage 6: Reporting of findings
Types of data collection
Organisational records: collected as part of an organisations activities
Marketing research: collected directly for the purpose in hand = primary research, or have been conducted for other purposes but be relevant for the purpose in hand - secondary research
Marketing intelligence: external, includes publicly available information
Quantitative data: numerical data
Qualitative data: textual or verbal data
Ethics
Ethical issues of privacy, protecting research participants from any harm and the use the findings are put to
Unscrupulous companies may exaggarate or edit the data to meet their needs
There are a variety of practices and guidelines to ensure this doesn't happen