Market Research
Involves gathering, analyzing, and presenting information about marketing and consumption.
Aims to identify customer needs, predict demand, and understand consumer behavior.
Helps determine buying frequency, price points, customer types, sales channels, and desired product features.
Questionnaires/Surveys: Postal, online.
Focus Groups: Discussions with groups of customers.
Consumer Panels: Ongoing feedback as a product evolves.
Face-to-Face/Telephone Interviews
Product Trials: Testing by consumers before launch.
Test Marketing: Initial sales in a small area.
Website Information: Competitor pricing, product details.
Social Media: Data trends, consumer comments.
Newspapers & Magazines: Articles on industry sectors.
TV/Radio: Documentaries, consumer trends.
Market Intelligence Reports: Detailed sector trend information.
Government Statistics: Freely available data on various topics.
Advantages:
Collected for specific business questions.
Confidential; not accessible to competitors.
Only way to find specific information.
Disadvantages:
Time-consuming and costly.
Potential sampling errors.
Risk of bias from question phrasing.
Advantages:
Quick, low cost, and easy to collect.
Multiple sources can be compared.
Useful for refining primary research questions.
Disadvantages:
May not be precisely what the business needs.
May be outdated or irrelevant.
Potential for bias.
Quantitative Data: Numerical data for easy measurement and analysis.
Easy to chart or graph trends.
Often from surveys or government statistics.
Qualitative Data: Opinions and beliefs.
Requires interpretation.
Provides valuable insights into consumer behavior.
Difficult to analyze.
Often from focus groups or interviews.
Leading questions.
Unclear questions (jargon).
Closed questions (data coarsening).
Irrelevant questions.
Surveys that are too long.
Bias from incentives.
Sampling errors.
Databases store electronic records of business transactions.
Businesses can use their own or buy data from other sources.
Advantages:
Relatively easy to use; can be primary data.
Trends can be analyzed over several years.
Disadvantages:
Data may be outdated.
Data may not be in a useful format.
Sampling saves costs and time, and can be accurate if done correctly.
Random Sampling
Randomly choosing participants; each has an equal chance.
Reduces selection bias.
May include people outside the target market.
Requires a larger sample for accurate results.
Quota Sampling
Targets specific groups of a population that represent a market segment/group.
Saves time and cost.
May be inaccurate due to the lack of random selection.
Stratified Sampling
Divides the population into subgroups (strata) based on shared characteristics and randomly samples each.
Creates a more representative sample.
Allows comparison between sub