Marketing Research and Its types. MBA marketing study material

Undoubtedly hard topic for MBA marketing students, this blog comprises meaning of marketing research and its types/methodologies.

Marketing Research:

Marketing research is a set of a systematic process of investigating, collect, analyze the information which links to producers, customers, end users, competitors to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems and refine marketing action accordingly.

In short, marketing research is a process of collecting information to refine decisions to solve marketing problems.

The process often concentrates on understanding the “Customer” (purchasers, consumers, influencers), the “Company” (product, promotion, pricing, service, sales), and can also be stretched to the situation to include “Competitors” (how their market offerings interact in the market environs).

1. Primary/ Qualitative/ Exploratory marketing research process:

It also is known as field research. This is the firsthand gathering of new data from a primary source such as survey, interviews, newsroom etc. to directing analysis. Primary research helps the organization to know the customers need or what customers want and what the problem is. But this method of research is only to show the problems instead of how to solve it and it’s comparatively expensive than others. Let’s check out its types:

 Focus group: It is a process of producing a qualitative data from specific target audience (most often 5 to 10 in person) by essentially learning their feeling and views about product and company.

One-to-one Interviews: As the name itself this method is used for collecting and analyzing data by interviewing each consumer one by one.

Survey: In this process, company form a questioner and taking a survey of the market by asking questions. It can be done through phone calls or internet. 

Test Market: A test market is a group of individuals or sample size used in marketing research to represent a larger target audience.



2. Secondary/ Quantitative/ Descriptive marketing research process:

It also is known as Desk Research. It is a process of using and analyzing the data or information which is already collected and stored by someone else. Here someone else can be government statistics, publications, private research firm etc. This process is comparatively useful to quickly understand the problem with a solution to it. It may appear in following forms:

Sales data: This is an easily accessible source of collecting data which is available in the company itself. This will help not only to analyze profit and target segment but to discover a market trend.

Government publications and statistics: There are many publication or books, government legal websites and statistics are available where a company can find readymade data for their marketing research.

Commercial Organisations: Company can buy a data and information by establishing market research organization such as Mintel and IBISWorld to help to improve marketing research.

3. Causal Research:

It also is known as Experimental marketing research. This method is based on cause-effect relationship. It focuses on “If…Then...” phrases in which company is trying to solve the problem by analyzing the effect of manipulation independent variable on the dependent variable. In short, it’s an experimental technique to overcome the problem.