Marketing Research

- theory
Marketing Research
1. To help in marketing decisions, companies develop systematic procedures for
gathering, recording and analyzing new information.
This is called Marketing Research.
2. Information gathered about particular market and market segment is called
Market Research.

Marketing Research Helps to

 Identify consumer needs and Market segment
 Provides the information necessary for developing new products and devising market
strategies
 Access the effectiveness of marketing programs and promotional activities.
 Financial planning, economic forecasting and quality control
Three Rs of Marketing
Research helps to gather different types of information which are summed as
three Rs of Marketing
Recruiting new customers
Retaining current customers
Regaining lost customers
Definition – Marketing Research
Marketing Research is a scientific approach commonly used to identify
problems and their causes, collect relevant information, analyze and
present this information within the management decision making process.

Green and Tull1 have defined marketing research as follows:

“Marketing research is the systematic and objective search for, and
analysis of, information relevant to the identification and solution of any
problem in the field of marketing.”
General research procedures are examined, including
experimental design, test marketing, data collection
sources and procedures, internet data banks,
questionnaire design, measurement scales, sampling and
various statistical techniques, used for information
analysis. Also, ethical issues, models and cases associated
with the practice of marketing research will be
considered.
 Research is an important tool, it helps organisations to discover what is happening in their marketing
environment. There are many examples of organisations failing because they did not respond to changes in
their marketing environment. Organisations need to be proactive and change in line with their marketing
environment.

Examples of questions that research aims to answer include

o How are customer needs changing
o Can you meet changing customer needs
o What do customers think about existing products and services
o How are competitors performing?
o Do you need to change because of competitor activity
o How are macro and micro environmental activity influencing your organisation?
Market and Marketing Research:
The Difference
Market Research: Involves researching specific industries or markets. For
example researching the computer industry to discover the number of
competitors and their market share is market research.

Marketing Research: Marketing Research goes further. The aim of marketing

research is to find a solution to a problem or to decide how to use a marketing
opportunity. It can involve researching how to implement the whole marketing
process from initial data collection through to product launch and post launch
process. Or it could concentrate on a specific element of marketing for
example how to advertise a product and improve declining sales
Role of Marketing Research
Provide Management with
 Relevant
 Accurate
 Reliable
 Valid, and
 Current Market Information

Competitive marketing environment 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.