Marketing research
Marketing research involves conducting research to support marketing activities, and the statistical interpretation of data into information. This information is then used by managers to plan marketing activities, gauge the nature of a firm's marketing environment and attain information from suppliers. Marketing researchers use statistical techniques such as quantitative research, qualitative research, hypothesis tests, Chi-squared tests, linear regression, correlations, frequency distributions, poisson distributions, binomial distributions, etc. to interpret their findings and convert data into information. The marketing research procedure spans a number of stages, including the definition of a problem, creation of a research plan, collection and interpretation of data and disseminating information formally in the form of a report. The task of marketing research is to provide management with pertinent, accurate, dependable, valid, and current information.
A distinction might be made between marketing research and market research. Market research pertains to research in a given market. As an example, a firm may conduct research in a target market, after choosing a suitable market segment. On the other hand, marketing research relates to all research conducted within marketing. Therefore, market research is a subset of marketing research.
Types of marketing research
Marketing research, as a sub-set aspect of marketing activities, can be spling into the following parts:
- * Primary research (also called field research), which involves the conduction and compilation of research for a specific purpose.
- * Secondary research (also alluded to as desk research), initially conducted for one purpose, but usually used to support another purpose or end goal.
By these definitions, an example of main research would be market research conducted into health foods, which is used solely to ascertain the necessitys/wants of the target market for health foods. Secondary research in this case would be research pertaining to health foods, but used by a firm hoping to develop an unrelated product.
Primary research is usually expensive to prepare yourself, collect and interpret from data to information. Nevertheless, while secondary research is comparably inexpensive, it usually can become outdated and outmoded, given that it is used for a purpose other than the one for which it was intended. Primary research can also be broken down into quantitative research and qualitative research, which, as the terms suggest, pertain to numerical and non-numerical research techniques and methods, respectively. The appropriateness of each mode of research depends greatly whether data can be quantified (quantitative research), or whether subjective, non-numeric or abstract concepts are required to be learned (qualitative research).
There also abound additional modes of marketing research, which are:
- * Exploratory research, pertaining to research that investigates an assumption.
- * Descriptive research, which, as the term suggests, describes "what is".
- * Predictive research, meaning research conducted to predict a future occurrence.
- * Conclusive research, in order to deriving a conclusion via a research procedure.