What is Marketing Research Process
Market research process refers to learn everything about a targeted market area for promoting a specific service or product. There are variety of resources and tools are available to help marketer in research and analyze the marketplace. Market leaders and other growing companies like Apple, Dell, and Toyota has their own Market Research development department (R&D). Many specialized marketing research companies also offer effective services for large companies and business to conduct market research. So, many businesses conduct the marketing research using the wide-ranging and cost-effective resources and tools that are widely available.
A well integrated strategic planning process always needs market research and information in order to design an achievable marketing strategy.
Four Steps in Marketing Research Process
There are four steps in marketing research process. I would discuss each in detail.
- Define the Problem & Research Objective
- Developing Marketing Research Plan
- Collect Needed Information
- Implementing Marketing Research Plan
Define Problem & Research Objective
The first step of marketing research process is to define the problem and objective of research. Top level management and marketing manager should work together to define underlying problem and also must be agree on research objective. C-suite executives better understand the decision for which information is needed, marketer and researcher best understand marketing research and required tools for obtaining information. Defining the problem and selecting the research objectives is vital and critical step of research process. The definition of the problem and the selected research objective serves as a guide to entire research process.
Develop Marketing Research Plan
After defining the problem and set the research objectives the next step in marketing research process is to develop marketing research plan. In this step marketers and researchers determine the exact needed information, develop a plan for gathering it efficiently and then present the plan to the C-suite executives. To develop research plan outlines the source of existing data tells about adopting specific research approaches like contact method, Focus group interview, Sampling research plan, Marketing research questionnaires and other instruments researchers will use to gather new data.
Different companies use different instruments and tools for data collection according to their specific needs and requirements. Marketing Research plan should be in the form of written proposal. A written marketing research proposal is very important when research project is complex or when research is being done by any specialized agency. Marketing research proposal must cover the management problem, selective research objective and the information needed for data collection.
Collect Needed Information
This is the practical and most expensive stage of marketing research process. There are also chances of errors. For example if information is being collected by survey method, there may be problems like some respondent will not be at the home, some other may refuse to corporate and so on. So data must be collected carefully because the decision will actually base on this collected data.
Implementing Marketing Research Plan
After collection data, marketing research department processing and analyzing information and make the decision based on findings and then implement the decision. After implementation of the decision if management not achieve desired results then there is a need to revise the steps in marketing research process.
