Process of Marketing Research

Marketing Research

Step 1: Define the problem and Research Objective

• What is to be researched?
• Why is it to be research?

Working on this two question will be define research objective/problems. Purpose of research is to generating meaningful information, which will help in taking effective decision.

Step 2: Develop the research plan

Next step to generating required information. 

Data Source: Gather secondary data, primary data or both. Secondary data are data that were collected for another purpose, and already exist somewhere. Primary data are freshly gathered data for a specific purpose or for a specific research project.

Primary Data collected by:

• Observational Research: collect fresh data by observing the as the they shop or they consume product, hold informal interview sessions.
• Focus Group Research: Called five to ten people to discuss about product, service, organization spend few hours on discussion, under skilled moderator.
• Survey Research: This is one of the best descriptive research. Company conduct surveys to learn about people's knowledge, beliefs, preferences, and satisfaction. it required development of a survey instrument, usually a questionnaire, which the respondents are asked to fill up.
• Experimental Research: Most scientifically valid research. Purpose of doing experimental research is to capture cause-and-effect relationship by eliminating competing explanations of the observed findings.

Research Instruments:

• Questionnaires: Most common instrument for collect primary data. It's consists of a set of questions presented to respondents.
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• Qualitative measures: Qualitative research techniques are relatively unstructured measurement approaches that permit a range of possible responds. Their variety is limited only by creativity of the marking researcher.

Sampling Plan:

Research must design a sampling plan.  

• Sampling unit: Who should we survey?
• Sample Size: How many people we survey?
• Sampling Procedure: How should we choose the respondents?

Step 3: Collect the information

The data collection phase of marketing research is generally the most expensive and the most prone to error. Four major problem arise in survey. Some responded refuse to co-operate, Some give dishonest answer, some will not be at home and must be contacted again or replaced, some will be biased.

Step 4: Analyze the information

Researcher test different hypotheses and theories, applying sensitivity analysis to test assumption and the strength of the conclusions.

Step 5: Present the Findings

At last, researcher presents findings relevant to the major marketing decisions facing management. they are also considering ways to present research findings in as understandable and compelling a fashion as possible.

Step 6: make Decision

Research findings only provide additional information and insight the mangers. Depending on their confidence in the findings, mangers decide to use it, discard it or carry out more search.



Source: Marketing Management by Philip Kotler