Marketing Research: An Aid to Decision Making
Read this chapter. The American Marketing Association defines marketing research this way: "Marketing research is 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. Marketing research specifies the information required to address these issues, designs the methods for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, and analyzes and communicates the findings and their implications".
Conducting the Research
The attention devoted in the previous paragraphs to the design of the research plan might
leave the impression that once a marketing research project has been carefully designed,
the job is almost done. Clearly, this is not the case. The implementation of a research plan
is seldom an easy task. Often a research program requires extra effort from already-busy
personnel in the company. In other cases, outsiders must be recruited, hired, and trained.
In either situation, carrying out a marketing research plan is difficult and requires very close
supervision and control. To the extent that the plan has been well conceived, supervision
and control are restricted to making sure that the research activities called for in the plan
are carried out according to schedule and in the manner prescribed.