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What is Marketing Research?
Marketing research is a continuous exercise of collecting and analyzing customer, competitor, and industry information to mitigate risk when making marketing decisions. Executives, marketing managers, and business owners are each faced with important decisions that must be addressed regarding products (new and existing), pricing, promotional tactics, and distribution channels in a complex marketing environment. General economic conditions, technological factors, competitor activities, and political conditions can affect the outcome of everyday marketing decisions. Today’s dynamic marketplace requires marketing research in order for companies to capture a clear picture of the marketplace. When done properly, market research should provide managers with:
- Customer information (e.g., demographics, buying behavior, motivations)
- Competitive information (e.g., identity and image, relative superiority, scale of operations)
- Product information (e.g., customers’ perceptions and word-of-mouth behavior, usage rates, technology impacts, and service quality gaps)
- Competitive opportunities (e.g., identification of under-served consumer segments or unmet consumer needs)
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“Marketing management is accomplished by carrying out marketing research, planning, implementation, and control. Meaningful marketing and strategic planning rely on management’s ability to develop and maintain a marketing information system and have the skills to carry out sound marketing research.”
-Philip Kotler
Artemis Crane Approach and Methods
Artemis Crane researchers use approaches marketing research studies using the ‘DECIDE’ method:
D- Define the marketing problem or opportunity being researched and the specific research objectives and constraints.
E- Enumerate the controllable and uncontrollable factors that affect marketing decision making.
C- Collect relevant information based on the given problem or opportunity being considered.
I- Identify the best alternative on the basis of chosen success criteria.
D- Develop and implement a marketing plan (upon request from our clients).
E- Evaluate the decisions against results and examine the decision making process. Combining the ‘DECIDE’ method with our six step approach to marketing research allows us to deliver comprehensive and statistically accurate data.
Types of Marketing Research
Primary marketing research can be qualitative market research intended to identify customer motivations, views, opinions and beliefs. Qualitative marketing research is typically conducted with depth interviews, focus groups and projective techniques. Primary marketing research can also be quantitative, such as studies employing through surveys, field tests, and other observations. Primary marketing research yields current, relevant, and specific information. Although slightly more expensive than secondary marketing research, primary marketing research can add much greater value to your organization.
Secondary marketing research is done using previously collected data and published resources related to the research question. Numerous resources such as government and industry publications, news from the press, Internet, and competitor publicity materials are available for desk research. Though easier and less expensive to obtain, secondary marketing research information can be out of date or not specific enough to answer the marketing research question.
Quantitative marketing research is performed in the course of empirical (numeric) assessment of consumer attitudes, behavior, and/or performance. Quantitative marketing research is often conducted to measure factors such as product acceptance and consumer purchase intentions.
Qualitative marketing research yields information that cannot be quantified or analyzed quantitatively. Qualitative market research data requires more subjective analysis, although statistically valid approaches to ensuring appropriate interpretation of results have been developed. Focus groups, interviews, and open-ended questions are all forms of qualitative marketing research. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Artemis Crane specializes in several key areas of marketing research. Please click on the links below for more information regarding a specific type of marketing research study:
