Unit 4.4: Market Research

Market Research:

Refers to the marketing activities designed to discover the opinions, beliefs and preferences of potential and existing customers

• Serves to identify wants and needs

Purpose of Market Research

1. Giving up-to-date information → needed in especially fast-paced industries

2. Enabling businesses to improve marketing strats

3. Assessing reaction to products

4. Better understanding of activities from competitors

5. Predict the future 

Ad Hoc Market Research

 'as and when necessary' or one-off basis. The focus of the research is on a specific marketing problem or issue at a particular point in time. 

Continuous Market Research

Regular and on-going basis

Primary Market/ Field/ bespoke Research

 Gathering new and first-hand data for specific purposes 

• Often collected by customers to identify their buying patterns 

  • Considered both qualitative and quantitative data

Methods

1. Surveys

2. Interviews

3. Focus groups 

4. Observation

Surveys

• Types

  • Self-completed: Providing feedback

  • Personal Sruvey: Done face to face like an interview

  • Telephone

  • Online

  • Postal surveys: sent to homes or offices

• Consider

  • Avoidng biases

  • Avoid jargon or technical languages so it’s easy to understand and answer

  • Include closed and open-ended questions 

  • Be trialed first

Interviews

• One-on-one discussions

• Interviews often provide a range of non-quantifiable information that might prove to be difficult to analyse or to make any extrapolations from

Focus groups

• Forming small discussion groups to gain insight - often reused to save time and costs 

• Normally only extroverts participates having biased views

Primary research advs and disadvs

• ADvantages:

  • Relevant to the specific situation

  • Up-to-date 

  • Confidential and unique - no one else can reproduce it or access to it

• Disadvantage:

  • Time consuming 

  • Costs a lot

  • Validity due to inaccurate or lack of thought answers

Secondary/desk Research

 involves the collection of second-hand data and information that already exists.

• Advantages

  • Already exists so cheaper to get

  • Prived insight to changes or trends in the past

  • Huge range 

  • Based on large sample sizes oftentimes

• Disadvantages

  • Might outdated or can become obsolete quick

  • Data might be in the inappropriate formate - eg different account statements 

  • Provides on partial info 

  • Available to competitors 

Collection of secondary research

1. Internal Sources

2. External Sources

Internal Sources

Have already been gathered by the organization itself, such as company annual reports and sales records.

External Sources

come from outside the business

1. Market Analyses

   • Expensive to pay for these services

2. Academic Journals; Periodical publications from educational institutions

• Very reliable and tend to be up-to date 

• Not always relevant for what you need

3. Government Publications

• Wide range of topics are covered 

• Fee to research and there is a lot to sift through 

4. Media Articles

• Just like mass media and the internet 

• Has tons of bias 

• But can give very good insight on trends 

Sampling Methods

1. Quota sampling

2. Random 

3. Convenience

Population

all potential customers for a product

Sample

a portion of the selected population

Sampling

Primary research technique

Quota sampling

involves using a certain number of people (known as the quota) from different market segments for primary market research purposes.

Random Sampling

gives everyone in the population an equal chance of being selected for the sample

Convenience Sampling

uses research participants who are easy (convenient) to reach. It relies on the ease of reach because of the convenient availability of volunteers.

Unethical Market Research: The 5 d’s

1. Damage: protecting participants

2. Dishonesty

3. Deception

4. Disclosure: Ensure that no research on a person is leaked

5. Detachment: research must not be affected by personal bias