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What is Market Research?
Market research briefly is "listening to the customers". Thus marketing research is he information that links the marketing managers to the target market and the marketplace. In order to make effective marketing mixes managers need information about the potential target markets.
Managers are in need of market research according to the below the points:
Marketing problems and opportunities identification
Competitors' strategy analysis
Consumer behaviour evaluation and prediction
Testing the performance of existing products and package designs and assess the potential of new ones
Price, promotion, and distribution plans development
On the whole marketing research is applied to answer the questions such as Who are our customers? What do they need? What do they purchase nowadays? What do they like? And so on.
Marketing research is more than information collection. As well as the information collection researchers are due to design how to collect the information, interpret the results, and communicate the results to managers for their use in decision making.
Researchers may encounter with both internal and external data. Internal data are collected within an organisation while external data are generated outside the company. There are some information providers which are supplying external data to the public. Namely these are State Institute of Statistics, State Planning Organisation, trade associations, chambers of commerce, and so on.
In addition to the published data, marketing researchers also obtain information via conducting observations and surveys. There are two methods of data collection:
Secondary Data Collection:
Secondary data collection, namely desk research, as mentioned above is the collection of information through resources of published data. Types of secondary information include census reports, trade magazines and journals, newspapers and clipping services, libraries and resource centres, books on the industry and published reports and studies.
Primary Data Collection:
Primary data collection is conducted upon specific purposes. Primary tends to be more costly and time consuming and generally incorporates: questionnaires, talking to customers, interviews, conducting focus groups, observations of competitors, hiring consultants and advisers or using mentors.
Primary and secondary data resources both supply information. Learning how to interpret, evaluate and use information from various sources is a marketing and business challenge. Depending on your business issue, managers are confronted to choose a mix of information sources that according to your needs.
There are three main data collection approaches, which are described in detail below, including the benefits and drawbacks of each, and the types of survey for which each approach is most appropriate. All of these approaches can be successfully applied to one off, ad hoc surveys and continuous surveys (those, which are repeated over time to track results).
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