Market Research

Marketing information system design is important since the quality of a marketing information system has been shown to have an impact on the effectiveness of decision-making and as use of these systems, managers are able to better understand their customers. Marketing research is one key component of a marketing information system and is primarily concerned with the provision of information about markets and the reaction of these to various product, price, distribution and promotion. To maximize the benefit of the marketing research, those who use it need to understand the research process and the choice of method.

Once the need for marketing research has been established, most marketing research projects involve these steps. At first manager need to define the problem, by understanding the business problem clearly, it's time to plan out the type of research and determine the market research method. Choose the method, which will best obtain the necessary data. Then the next step is collecting the research data, it's important for the project manager to select the data collection methods, which are most likely to achieve the research objectives. The fourth step is called data analysis and interpretation, in which, qualitative data analysis can be facilitated by software packages such as NUD*IST and quantitative data analysis is conducted by software packages such as SPSS. The final step in the marketing research process can be visualized the data or report writing and presentation.

All market research method can be broadly classified into primary and secondary data collection, and within primary research, into qualitative and quantitative. Secondary research involves the compiling of information from existing or published sources. These sources can be internal or external. Internal would be the company's customer database, historical files and so on. External would involve searches for published information, such as trade publication and industry report. The secondary research should be carried out before primary research. At other hand, primary research refers to original or custom research- gathering information from original sources about preferences, buying habits, and opinions.

Within the primary research, a choice between research methods rests fundamentally on a set of decisions about the questions a researcher wants to answer and what's kind of data should be gathered. The basically principal is to look for an obvious fit. The term qualitative methods are developed to discuss with relative less people in the target audience of interest. The main purpose here is to dig into the range and depths of beliefs and buyer attitudes. This kind of marketing research is normally conducted in the form of focus group and in-depth interview. Then the quantitative methods look forward to seek the project results of a quantitative market survey to the complete marketplace. Some of the well-known