By consuming, we influence sellers. By making a sale, sellers influence distributors, who, in turn, influence producers, and they influence suppliers of raw materials. Each time such an inconspicuous act of consumption leads to a growing impact, which draws more and more economic actors into a continuous process.
Marketing research — this term has been a key one in business and not only, for almost the last hundred years. After so many years, marketing research has not lost its importance and relevance and acquired a more crucial conscious understanding of its need.
Marketing is your guide in the market game. Anyone who has mastered marketing can, if not defeat the international monsters, then at least cut off a piece of their pie.
Today, all successful companies owe their market position and competitive advantage to marketing research. More precisely, the knowledge gained from these studies and the actions taken afterward on their basis.
Marketing Research — Goals and Stages
For any firm that strives for success, marketing research acts as the beginning and logical end of any cycle of its marketing activities. Market research significantly reduces uncertainty in making important marketing decisions, which allows you to allocate economic potential to reach new heights in business effectively!
Marketing research has the following goals:
- Determine the actual and potential market capacity.
- Calculate or forecast your market share.
- Analyze the behavior of its consumers (demand analysis).
- Analyze the main competitors (supply analysis).
- Analyze sales channels.
The marketing research process consists of the following stages:
- problem definition;
- determining the need for goods, services;
- formulation of marketing research goals;
- choice of methods of marketing research;
- definition of types and sources of information;
- selection of data collection method;
- development of a form for data collection;
- data collection;
- data analysis;
- preparation and presentation of the final report.
Now, as you know the basic theory, let’s move to the more practical part. Which steps are needed to do at least a brief marketing research? Suppose at this stage you already realize that marketing research is time-consuming for you now or requires skills and experience you don’t have, or this marketing research is just an academic task. In that case, you can address a professional writing service e.g. WriteMyPaperHub and enjoy buying a research paper from online experts. This way, you will save time and receive a quality written paper based on your requirements. Later, you can use this draft for your needs.
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How to Do Marketing Research Step by Step
Step #1. Define the problem, task, hypothesis, and research objectives. Depending on the need and goal setting, subsequent work within the study’s framework is determined: methods, volumes, terms. Marketing research’s goal should be clearly expressed, understandable, achievable, measurable, and relevant to the current situation and needs. When setting a marketing research task, it is important first to define the marketing problem and only then – the method. It is a mistake to choose the technique first and then the marketing problem.
Step #2. Develop a research plan. A logical and consistent marketing research plan can save you time, money, and effort. By planning, you can anticipate possible events and reduce costs.
Step #3. Collect and prepare data. The most time-consuming part of marketing research is finding, collecting, and validating data. Data can be primary when it is collected for the first time and secondary when it has already been collected and prepared by someone. The data obtained must be prepared for analysis: brought to a typical form. Usually, up to 60% of the entire research time is spent on this and even more. It takes a lot of time to check the sources and check the data itself. There is a lot of different data on the Internet, and most of it is so-called “garbage” – content made specifically to attract traffic, where a useless amount of information is hidden behind interesting headlines. Online content that drives growth is heavily focused on fluff-free SEO content writing.
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Every year there is more information in the world. For this, information and analytical systems come to the aid of marketers and analysts, which help to quickly process large amounts of data and provide visual, easy-to-understand results.
Step #4. Analyze the data and draw conclusions with recommendations. This is a key stage of the research, in fact, for the sake of which the entire research was conducted: to obtain information for solving a problem, to confirm or refute a hypothesis. The data obtained in the course of marketing research should accurately answer the questions posed and the objectives of the research.
Step #5. Present the information and insights received. A few graphs and numbers will help you quickly understand even the most difficult situation or decision. And also, quickly understand a large amount of information. Often, the information obtained, in addition to answering basic questions, provides additional information and deeper knowledge – insights, which can be used to solve a specific problem or improve marketing in general. The end result of marketing research should clearly answer the stated goal of the research. If a hypothesis was tested in the study, it must be confirmed or refuted.
The results of marketing research are a guide to action and are used to develop a marketing strategy, business strategy, business plan, or other documents related to the market and the situation on it. Usually, marketing research results are drawn up in the form of a marketing research report, which is accompanied by initial data and a presentation of no more than 10-15 pages.
How to Scale a Marketing Research
We don’t know what kind of marketing research you need precisely. Is it full-range research for a real business product or an entire company’s strategy, or small marketing research for your MBA program, personal research for a handmade brand you want to create, or an academic assignment? That is why it is only for you to decide how to scale the steps we mentioned above according to your requirements. The most important thing to remember is, no matter how big or small your research is. The steps remain the same — just for real market technological products, you can spend weeks for one step and for academic projects — only hours.
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