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".
Summary
Four major elements are involved in undertaking marketing research. The first element if a preliminary investigation. This initial study permits the researcher to determine the purpose and scope of his
research as well as to identify tentative questions.
Creating a research design to test the questions is the most important and most complicated aspect of marketing research. It commences with the selection of the approach to be taken. The three most commonly used are the experimental, the observational, and the survey approaches. Any given project may use one or more of the three.
It is also necessary to deter mine the types of data that will be needed to solve the marketing
problem and to locate sources where this information can be obtained. Data sources are generally
classified as either primary or secondary. Secondary data are made up of previously collected information and are obtained from historical records, publications, government documents, and the like.
Primary data are gathered for the first time. The survey method is probably the most frequently used
method for collecting primary data. Data are by gathered by mail, by telephone, by personal interviewing, and online.
Another critical aspect of most marketing research projects is the selection of the sample. A
probability sample involves the selection of respondents in such a way that every unit in the pool has
the same chance of being selected. One method of drawing a probability sample is by the use of a
table of random digits. A non probability sample is drawn on a judgmental basis; the respondents are
selected because they are considered to be representative of the group from which they are drawn.
The final aspect of the research design is the anticipation of the results and the decision as to
how the data will be summarized and reported. It is becoming more and more common in large marketing research projects to make use of a computer for the processing and tabulation of the research
results. Some problems usually arise, however, and careful supervision and control of the data-collection activities are important. It is particularly critical to guard against various kinds of survey bias
that can creep into a project.