Marketing Research
Marketing research is a form of business research and a branch of applied sociology that focuses on understanding the behavior, desires, and preferences of consumers, competitors, and markets in an economy dictated by the market.
 |
| What is Marketing Research in 2024? |
The field of marketing research as a statistical science was initiated by Arthur Nielsen with the founding of the ACNielsen Company in 1923.
Common Marketing Research
- Consumer Survey: Observation and research for specific consumers, purposeful analysis of their purchasing behavior, the evolution of consumer psychology, etc.
- Market observation: Do a comparative analysis for a specific industrial area, and do research from an organized perspective such as economy and technology.
- Product investigation: Research on the development history, design, production, and other related factors of the same product of a certain nature.
- Advertising research: analyze and organize the promotion effect of specific advertisements.
- Community listening: Conduct public opinion analysis and research on the target audience's community discussions and online voices.
May include the following
- Market testing: Provide a certain amount of trial products to designated consumers before the product goes on the market, and study the future market trend of the product through their responses.
- Concept Testing: Test whether a new sales idea has a market for a given consumer, using other methods such as questionnaires or telephone interviews.
- Copy Testing: Before the ad airs, predict the effectiveness of the ad based on the responses, feedback, and behavior of respondents.
- Mystery shopping: Arrange researchers who hide their identities to buy specific items or consume specific services, and record the entire shopping process to test products and service attitudes. Also known as mystery shopping or mystery shopping.
- Store audits: Used to determine whether a chain or retail store is providing proper service.
- Demand estimation: It is used to judge the largest demand level of the product to find the main customers.
- Sales forecasting: After finding the level of greatest demand, determine how many products or services can be sold.
- Customer Satisfaction Survey: Use questionnaires or interviews to quantify customer satisfaction with a product.
- Distribution channel audits: Used to determine the attitude of potential retailers and wholesalers towards products, brands, and companies.
- Price elasticity testing: Used to find the first consumers to be affected when prices change.
- Quadrant research (Segmentation research): The consumption behavior and psychological thinking of potential consumers are divided into quadrants using demographics and psychological variables.
- Consumer decision process research: For consumers who are easy to change their minds, analyze what factors influence them to buy this product, and or patterns when he changes their purchase decision.
- Market positioning prediction (Positioning research): study the positioning of this product among competitors, major consumers, and brands, and use this to shape or correct the product image.
- Brand name testing: Studying how consumers feel about new product names.
- Brand equity research: Quantifying consumer preferences for different brands.
- Advertising and Promotional Activities Research: Investigate whether the sales tactics, such as advertising, have achieved the desired benefits, and do people who watch the advertising really understand the message? Are they really buying because of the ad?
The above forms of market research are categorized according to their "problem-solving" approach.
In addition, there are different classifications, such as "exploratory", and "deterministic". The "exploratory" approach focuses more on the decoding and analysis of the problem; it also emphasizes conclusive insights and insights. And so-called "deterministic" studies are often used to extrapolate consumers as a whole.
The above two methods are the so-called first-hand information. Market research companies often use these two methods as the company's main business to conduct large-scale research, which consumes considerable money and time. In contrast, secondary data refers to the analysis after researching these published primary data, which requires less financial resources, but is often not the perfect type that market analysts want.
The phase of Marketing Research
Initiation Phase
- Segmentation research - determines the demographic, psychological, and behavioral characteristics of potential buyers.
- Demand estimation - determines the approximate level of demand for a given product.
- Forecasting sales - determines the expected level of sales at a given level of demand.
- Consumer decision process research - identifies people's purchase motivation and decision process used by buyers
- Positioning research - how does the target market see the brand about competitors? What does the brand mean to the consumer?
Development phase
- Price elasticity testing - determines how sensitive consumers are to price changes.
- Concept testing - to assess how consumers perceive a particular concept.
- Brand name testing - what consumers feel about the brand name.
- Brand equity testing - how well consumers see the brand.
Pilot production and testing phase
- Test marketing is a small, limited product launch used to determine if a product is likely to be accepted when launched into a wider market.
- Usability testing - determines whether users will be able to intuitively use and navigate the site or software.
- Testing advertising and promotion of goods - how effective advertising is and whether it affects consumer behavior when buying.
The phase of industrial production and distribution
- Mystery shopper - a representative of a research company makes a visit, call, or another appeal to the service center under the guise of an ordinary client. Based on the results of the procedure, he records his impressions (assessment of the internal condition of the premises, compliance with certain standards of service by the staff of the outlet, time spent, etc.) in a special checklist (questionnaire).
- Store audit - determines whether retail stores provide an adequate service.
- Customer satisfaction study - interviews or surveys that determine the level of customer satisfaction with the quality of a product/service.
- bb - evaluates the attitude of the distributor and retailer towards the product, brand, or company.
- Identification of portraits of buyers by sales history.
All of these forms of marketing research can be classified as either problem definition research or problem-solving research.
A similar distinction exists between exploratory and conclusive research. Cognitive inquiry gets to the heart of a problem or situation. It should receive final decisions only with extreme caution. A problem-solving study provides a conclusion: the result of the study can be generalized to the entire population.
Both cognitive inquiry and problem-solving inquiry are examples of primary inquiry. The company conducts and collects primary research for its own purposes. This is in contrast to secondary research: research published earlier and usually done by someone else. Secondary research costs much less than primary research, but secondary research rarely comes in a form that exactly meets the requirements of the researcher.
The methodological basis of marketing research is made up of general scientific, analytical, and prognostic methods and methodological techniques borrowed from other areas of knowledge.
General scientific methods:
- system analysis allows us to consider any market situation as an object for study with a wide range of internal and external cause-and-effect relationships;
- an integrated approach is used in the study of the market situation, considering it as an object that has a different manifestation. If we take the market of a certain product, then it must be considered from the point of view of demand, supply, price, and product life cycle;
- program-target planning is widely used in the development and implementation of marketing strategies and tactics. Moreover, we can say that marketing is a program-targeted approach to the market sphere, based on which all planned marketing activities at an enterprise are built.
Analytical and predictive methods:
- linear programming as a mathematical method for choosing the most favorable solution is used in marketing when choosing a more profitable assortment in conditions of limited resources, calculating the optimal amount of inventory, and planning routes for marketing agents;
- correlation-regression analysis is used in modeling and forecasting demand through autoregressive moving average models, trend models, etc.;
- cluster analysis is used in the analysis and segmentation of the market;
- artificial neural networks serve as a tool for visualization of market segments and a way to predict complex non-linear marketing processes;
- dispersion-covariance analysis is necessary when checking the effectiveness of marketing activities;
- factor analysis and the method of principal components as a tool for positioning products or firms in the market;
- discriminant analysis for consumer classification;
- collaborative analysis and multidimensional scaling for product development;
- queuing theory is used in solving problems of choosing the order of customer service and other similar tasks that allow us to study the emerging patterns associated with the presence of a flow of requests for service and observe the necessary order of their execution;
- the theory of communication, which considers the "feedback" mechanism, makes it possible to obtain signal information about processes that go beyond the established parameters. The application of the theory of communication in the organizational structures of marketing activities helps to improve the connection of the enterprise with the market, increases the efficiency of using the data received;
- the theory of probability helps to make decisions that come down to determining the value of the probabilities of the occurrence of certain events and choosing from the possible actions the most preferable planning for the production of goods;
- the method of business games is used to determine the best strategy or to find a winning variant of codes and answers;
- network planning makes it possible to regulate the sequence and interconnection of certain types of work within the framework of any program (development of a program for the production of a new product);
- Functional cost analysis is used to comprehensively solve problems associated with improving the quality of products, and at the same time saving material and labor resources. The use of functional cost analysis allows enterprises to search for rational solutions in the field of design, technology, organization of production, and maintenance of products that will ensure its increased competitiveness;
- economic and mathematical modeling makes it possible, taking into account the existing factors of market capacity, to determine the most rational marketing strategies and possible steps of competitors, to estimate the optimal costs to obtain the required profit;
- methods of expert assessments ("Delphi", "Brainstorming") allow you to quickly get an answer about the possible processes of development of a particular event on the market, identify the strengths and weaknesses of the enterprise, evaluate the effectiveness of certain marketing activities.
In marketing research and development, methodological techniques borrowed from other areas of knowledge are actively used. The largest part can be traced to such sciences as sociology and psychology since special attention is paid to the motivation of consumer behavior in the market and the factors influencing it. Methods of sociology allow us to study the processes of dissemination of information in the market, to identify the attitude of consumers to innovations. Anthropological methods have also been applied, which make it possible to better study the market environment based on knowledge of national cultures and the standard of living of different peoples. Anthropological changes are also used in modeling several consumer goods (clothes, shoes, furniture).
Types of Marketing Research
Market research researchers often use a combination of the following four methods. They may first obtain some background knowledge from second-hand information, and then conduct interviews with target consumer groups (qualitative research design) to explore more questions. Specific requirements and further large-scale nationwide surveys (quantitative).
Technically speaking, market research has the following four methods:
1. Qualitative Market Research
Most commonly used. To put it simply, it is to analyze the digital responses of the respondents, not for the entire population, nor to do large-scale statistics.
Common examples: focus groups, in-depth interviews, project conducting, etc.
2. Quantitative Market Research
Taking the form of a hypothesis, using arbitrary sampling, and inferring results from the number of samples, this technique is often used in large-scale studies such as censuses and economic surveys.
Common examples: large questionnaires, questionnaires, etc.
3. Observation technique
The researcher observes social phenomena and sets the cross method by himself, that is, horizontal comparison (usually temporal comparison), and vertical comparison (comparison with different societies or different phenomena at the same time).
Common examples: product usage analysis, and browser cookie analysis.
4. Test design
A semi-artificial environment was created by researchers to test users. This semi-artificial environment can control some impact factors that researchers want to control.
Example: Including the purchase laboratory, and test sales venue.
Terms commonly used in Marketing Research
Since politics has been involved in market research, because it is necessary to fairly know how much support the candidate has before the election, which ones are popular and which ones are criticized in terms of political views, the knowledge of market research has developed many specialties. Terminology and Theory.
- Mata- analysis (or Schmidt-Hunter technique): The final statistics should be done from multiple and multiple types of research concepts.
- Conceptualization: To convert metaphorical mental images into clear concepts.
- Operationalization: A way for researchers to translate specific and apparent consumer behavior into concepts.
- Precision: Comparison of the precision measured for any market adjustment method.
- Reliability: Whether the results of the data analysis after the market survey conform to the original plan, if not, it needs to be re-adjusted.
- ValTorder to determine whether the design and measurement of the market survey process, time, place, and person, are too complicated or have strayed from the original theme, market researchers often have to ask themselves, "are they currently working on it to obtain valid data?" What about measuring the data that was originally intended to be measured?”.
- Applied Research: To come up with concrete and valuable hypotheses to satisfy clients who pay for research, for example, a well-funded cigarette company may commission a market research firm to conduct a survey to try to prove the health benefits of cigarettes, many researchers are doing this type of applied research and therefore often face a degree of ethical concern.
- Sugging: Primarily refers to a controversial selling technique. Some salespeople will pretend to be market researchers and conduct research on the surface, but in fact, they are sales promotions. This happens most often during phone interviews, where the interviewee feels that the other party is constantly strengthening sales intentions and trying to elicit the interview. willingness to buy. SUG is an acronym for Selling Under the Guise of market research.
- Frugging: As a controversial fundraising act, some new companies will pretend to be market research companies and open fake cases to get a lot of money. FRUG is an acronym for Fund-Raising Under the Guise of market research.
Trade-in ready-made marketing research
Trade in ready-made Marketing Research
In the West, a system for selling ready-made marketing research has been developed, which greatly facilitates the process of market research for organizations that do not have sufficient funds or personnel to conduct their own research. The most famous companies are American Market research and Roy Morgan Online Store.
We are talking not only about the giants of various business areas - large companies for which the use of ready-made market research has long become a matter of course - but also about small firms that are just planning to enter the market and therefore carefully study its features.
