Monday, March 17, 2014

MARKETING RESEARCH- INTRODUCTION

The increasing complexity of business makes it very difficult for an entrepreneur to remain in business and prosper in the highly competitive environment of business demands, entrepreneurial flair and skills.  It is necessary for a marketer to interpret market requirements, relate them to available resources and assume responsibilities of the enterprise.  Above all, the customer holds the key position in all circumstances and needs to be motivated to purchase the maximum of the firm’s products and services.
A manufacturer, retailer, or supplier of any goods and services needs access to certain information so as to meet customers’ needs and wants and wants.  This information may concern the target market, products/services, price, distribution and promotion of the company as well as the competitors.  Some of the basic questions that need to be answered in this context are: What are the constituents of the market? What does the market buy? Who participates in the business? How does the market buy? When does the market buy? Where does the market buy?

These and any such questions can only be answered through regular contact and feedback from the consumer or the end users.  However, majority of the companies lose their customer due to lack of the information needed.  So, business and other organizations have no choice but to resort to marketing research to obtain the information they need for decision-making.

It is a hybrid of marketing and research.  
Research can be classified in two categories: 
 (i)  Basic research 
(ii) Applied research

Basic research addresses more the fundamental questions and not the problems with quick solutions. Applied research is, however, concerned more with the solutions of routine and immediate problems. Marketing research is not directly concerned with the fundamental problems in marketing but with those of immediate short-term concern.  In practice, marketing research is concerned with applied research. Marketing research is the study of problems, techniques and other aspects of marketing and related decision-making and their implementation.  It studies an economic unit in respect of its various constituents such as consumers, buyers and sellers.  It studies their response pattern towards price, promotion, purchasing power and loyalty towards specific brands and similar other marketing activities.  It also tries to determine the contribution of other relevant factors such as habits, customs and preferences to decision-making.

Marketing research may be described as the systematic collection, recording and analyzing of data problems concerning the marketing of goods and services under essentially non-recurring conditions. It has to do with the collection, processing, analysis, storage and dissemination of information to facilitate and improve decision-making. It is the branch of marketing intelligence that conducts specific enquiries into problems in order to guide decisions and a function which connects the marketer to the customer, consumer, and the general public through information.  This information is used to identify and define marketing opportunities and threats, refine and evaluate marketing activities, monitor marketing performance and improve understanding of marketing.  Marketing research specifies the information needed to address the issues like designing the method for data collection, manage and impalement the process of data collection analyze the results and communicate the findings and their implications.

These definitions of marketing research emphasize the need for evaluating the problem and information in a more comprehensive way.  Thus, marketing research is a systematic and objective process of identifying and formulating the marketing considerations, set research objectives and methods of data collection, editing, coding, tabulating, evaluating, analyzing and interpreting the data to identify solutions for research problems.

With the change from a seller’s market to buyer’s market, it was deemed necessary to acquire information on the needs, preferences and evaluation of the consumer. The most relevant requirement was to ensure that the right product reaches the right person at the right place at the right price.  Besides, it was also necessary to get feedback from the customers as to whether they are getting optimum satisfaction and thus continue to make changes in the marketing mix so that consumers remain loyal to the product.  In turn, the whole task requires entrepreneurial flair and skill, which ultimately calls for marketing research. Thus, marketing research is a very useful tool in enhancing the decision-making ability of the marketer in the dynamic environment of today. Marketing Research is the function that links the consumer with the organization through information and involves systematic and objective search for and analysis of information that can be used for evolving some marketing decisions.  Any research study must clearly state the issues being investigated and apply a systematic and formal procedure in collection and analysis of information and must communicate the study findings in a manner, which could help in arriving at some marketing decisions.

The main objectives of Marketing Research: 

1. To gain awareness about a phenomenon or to achieve new insights into it.  The academic object of marketing research is the acquisition of knowledge and the thirst for knowledge coupled with curiosity that has been the guiding force behind a rich variety of research work. 
2 The primary goal of marketing research is to understand the marketing culture, marketing environment and marketing decision process and thereby gain a greater measure of marketing control. 
3  It may be used to determine the frequency with which a certain thing occurs or with which it is associated with something else. 
4   It helps in testing a hypothesis or a casual relationship between variables to determine the cause and effect impacts. 
5  It helps in providing information regarding manufacturers, retailers, suppliers of all kinds of services.
6   It helps in providing solutions of marketing problems of business and industry.
Both marketing and motivational research are thought crucial and their results assist in more than one way, in taking business decisions.
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