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O? Review the marketplace by looking at ads, magazines, newspapers, yellow pages, television,
compare goods at various stores.
O? alk to co-workers or friends about their knowledge and experience with restaurants, doctors,
repairmen.
O? Ño Internet searches for vacations, know where the best deals are for game software, and know
which fast food restaurants have the best specials this week.
O? re must use these same skills to enhance our business judgment in contracting, re must
change our acquisition practices by increasing our market research efforts, re must do a better
job of documenting our market research results in contract files.

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he basic concept about marketing is to satisfy the customer needs, and its impossible to satisfy these
needs without knowing it, Also Its impossible to increase the market share or develop your products or
goods without knowing what the customer wants and wither he likes your product or no.

So, marketing research focuses and organizes marketing information. It ensures that such
information is timely and permits entrepreneurs to:

O? Reduce business risks

O? Spot current and upcoming problems in the current market
O? Identify sales opportunities
O? Ñevelop plans of action

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O? -articipation will vary based on the organization and types of supplies or services needed.
O? A wide range of people may participate in market research, based on their area of expertise.
O? A team approach may be best since many functional areas may need to be gathered during
market research. he team may be composed of:
O? -roject Officers, End Users, echnical Specialists, Logistics Specialists, Scientific
Researchers, esting Specialists, Cost Analysts, Legal Counsel, Contract Specialists, and
Contracting Officers.


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Oarketing research is the function which links the consumer, customer and public to the
marketer though information ʹ information used to identify and define market
opportunities and problems; generate, refine and evaluate marketing actions; monitor
marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process.
Oarketing research specifies the information required to address these issues, designs
the method for collecting information; manages and implements the data collection
process; analyses the results; and communicates the findings and their implications.

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Oarketing research is the systematic and objective approach to the development and
provision of information for the marketing decision making process.

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Oarketing research is the systematic and objective identification, collection, analysis
and dissemination of information for the purpose of assisting management in decision-
making related to the identification and solution of problems and opportunities in
marketing.
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he research process should be well planned and organized, with rules set in advance of
the project being investigated, to govern the types of data to be collected, the way in
which it is to be collected, the system of analysis which will be used, etc͙
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he research should be conducted in a way that eliminates, as far as possible, bias and the
corruption of data by subjectivity/emotion. Oarketing research does not take place in a
laboratory but it should, at all times, aim for ͚
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O? Ñeals specifically with the gathering of information about a market's size and trends.

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O? 4rom the definition explained before you can notice that it covers a wider range of
activity, rhile it may involve market research, marketing research is a more general
systematic process that can be applied to a variety of marketing problems.





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Oarket research, like other components of marketing such as advertising, can be quite simple or very
complex. You might conduct simple market research such as including a questionnaire in your customer
bills to gather demographic information about your customers. Or a complex one as you might engage a
professional market research company to conduct primary research to aid you in developing a
marketing strategy to launch a new product.

Either way, you will need to review the following steps About the Oarketing Research -rocess:

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he market research process begins with identifying and defining the problems and opportunities that
exist for your business, such as:

O? Launching a new product or service

O? Low awareness of your company and its products or services
O? Low utilization of your company's products or services (the market is familiar with your
company, but still is not doing business with you)
O? A poor company image and reputation
O? -roblems with distribution - your goods and services are not reaching the buying public in a
timely manner

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O? his is usually used in the initial stages of the research project, when uncertainty/ignorance are
at their highest.
O? It is characterized by flexibility, an absence of formal structure and the desire to measure.
O? It may be used before launching a new -roduct or service.
O? Exploratory research may develop hypotheses, but it does not seek to test them.

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O? Is more rigid than exploratory research and seeks to describe users of a product, determine the
proportion of the population that uses a product, or predict future demand for a product.
O? here are two basic types of descriptive research:
r? longitudinal studies:
V? Are time series analyses that make repeated measurements of the same
individuals, thus allowing one to monitor behavior such as brand-switching.
However, longitudinal studies are not necessarily representative since many
people may refuse to participate because of the commitment required.

r? cross-sectional studies:
V? It sample the population to make measurements at a specific point in time. A
special type of cross-sectional analysis is a   , which tracks an
aggregate of individuals who experience the same event within the same time
interval over time. +   are useful for long-term forecasting of
product demand.

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O? Seeks to find cause and effect relationships between variables. It accomplishes this goal through
laboratory and field experiments.
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his step consists of some main sub steps:

O? Setting research Objectives, Budget and timetable.

O? Ñata types and sources.
O? Ñetermine sample plan and Size.

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 rith a marketing problem or opportunity defined, the next step is to set objectives
for your market research operations. Your objective might be to explore the nature of a problem
so you may further define it, or perhaps it is to determine how many people will buy your
product packaged in a certain way and offered at a certain price. Your objective might even be
to test possible cause and effect relationships. 4or example, if you lower your price by 10
percent, what increased sales volume should you expect? rhat impact will this strategy have on
your profit?
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How much money are you willing to invest in your market research? How much can you
afford? Your market research budget is a portion of your overall marketing budget. A method
popular with small business owners to establish a marketing budget is to allocate a small
percentage of gross sales for the most recent year. his usually amounts to about two percent
for an existing business. However, if you are planning on launching a new product or business,
you may want to increase your budget figure to as much as 10 percent of your expected gross
sales. Other methods used by small businesses include analyzing and estimating the
competition's budget and calculating your cost of marketing per sale.
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 -repare a detailed, realistic time frame to complete all steps of the market research
process.


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O? Before going through the time and expense of collecting primary data, one should check for
secondary data that previously may have been collected for other purposes but that can be used
in the immediate study.
O? Secondary data has the advantage of saving time and reducing data gathering costs. he
disadvantages are that the data may not fit the problem perfectly and that the accuracy may be
more difficult to verify for secondary data than for primary data. 

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O? ASAE Ñirectory of Associations Online

O? Ask a Librarian - U.S. Library of Congress
O? Bureau of Labor Statistics
O? Business Research Lab
O? Center for Business romen's Research
O? Economic Statistics & Research
O? 4edstats.gov
O? Internet -ublic Library
O? -opulation & Ñemography Resources

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Often, secondary data must be supplemented by primary data originated specifically for the study at
hand. Some common types of primary data are:

O? Ñemographic and socioeconomic characteristics

O? Attitudes and opinions
O? Awareness and knowledge - for example, brand awareness
O? Ootivation - a person's motives are more stable than his/her behavior, so motive is a better
predictor. Of future behavior than is past behavior.

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Used to uncover consumers' motivations, attitudes and behavior, 4ocus-group interviewing, In-depth
interviews, Observations, Oarketing experiments and some types of surveys are typical methods used in
this type of research.
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O? Companies frequently recruit one or more focus groups to talk about a product or service under
the direction of a skilled moderator. he focus group may number 6 to 10 members who spend
a few hours responding to the moderator͛s questions and to each other͛s comments.
O? he session is usually videotaped and discussed later by a management team. rhile focus
groups are an important preliminary step in exploring a subject, the results lack the ability to
represent the larger population and should be treated cautiously.







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Ú Shoppers almost invariably walk to the right.

Úromen are more likely to avoid narrow aisles than men.
Ú Oen move faster than women through store aisles.
Ú Shoppers slow down when they see reflective surfaces and
speed up when they see blanks.
Ú Shoppers don͛t notice elaborate signs in the first 30 feet of
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Companies send researchers into homes to study household behavior toward products.
rhirlpool arranged for an anthropologist to visit several homes to study how household
members use large appliances.
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Observation can take place anywhere. Japanese carmakers stood in supermarket parking lots
watching American women strain to lower their groceries into their car trunks and came up with
a better trunk design. OcÑonald͛s executives once a year ͞work the counters͟ to experience
customers firsthand. Oarketers can learn a great deal by ͞stapling themselves to a customer.͟

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O? Muestionnaires are considered by some to be naive ͞nose counting͟ and their preference is to
go deeper into the minds and motivations of consumers (often called ͞head shrinking͟).
O? So the concept of depth interviews was implemented as by using this method you can discuss
with your sample everything you need to know about your product.
O? A more recent technique, the Zaltman Oetaphor Elicitation echnique (ZOE), developed by
-rofessor Gerald Zaltman, seeks to bypass the verbal left brain and dip into the right brain and
unconscious. ZOE asks small groups of consumers to collect pictures, create collages, and
discuss these in an interview. ZOE claims to achieve insight into product themes and concerns
that do not emerge through verbal research.


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he most scientific way to research customers is to present different offerings to matched customer
groups and analyze differences in their responses. Using split cable television or mail, companies are
able to feature different ad headlines, prices, or promotions to see which one(s) draw better.
o the extent that extraneous variables are controlled, the company can attribute response differences
to offering differences.




 
Companies hire mystery shoppers to check on how well sales clerks handle difficult questions from
customers, how well telephone operators answer phone calls, how easy it is to locate merchandise in a
store, and many other uses.
Oystery shopping is used to evaluate a company or competitor͛s marketing effectiveness rather than to
understand customers͛ needs or wants.
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O? Muantitative research is about measuring a market and quantifying that measurement with
data.
O? Oost often the data required relates to market size, market share, penetration, installed base
and market growth rates.
O? However, quantitative research can also be used to measure customer attitudes, satisfaction,
commitment and a range of other useful market data that can tracked over time.
O? he heart of all quantitative research is the statistical sample. Great Care has to be taken in
selecting the sample and also in designing of the sample Survey and the quality of the data
analysis.
O? here are a lot of echniques for Muantitative data collection some of them are: ͞some types of
Surveys and Ñata Oining.?

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Companies with large customer databases can use statisticians to detect the mass of new data segments
or new trends that the company can discover and use, thus they can understand the market type if they
are new in it or deduce if the market is ready or no if they are in the phase of launching a new product.

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O? ðeep it simple. Include instructions for answering all questions included on the survey.
O? Begin the survey with general questions and move towards more specific questions. ðeep each
question brief.
O? If the questionnaire is completed by the respondent and not by an interviewer or survey staff
member, remember to design a questionnaire that is graphically pleasing and easy to read.
O? Remember to pre-test the questionnaire. Before taking the survey to the printer, ask a few
people such as regular customers, colleagues, friends, or employees to complete the survey. Ask
them for feedback on the survey's style, simplicity and their perception of its purpose.
O? Oix the form of the questions. Use scales, rankings, open-ended questions, and closed-ended
questions for different sections of the questionnaire. he form or way a question is asked may
influence the answer given. Basically, there are two question forms: closed-end questions and
open-end questions.
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he following are steps to developing a questionnaire - the exact order may vary somewhat.

O? Ñetermine which information is being sought.

O? Choose a question type (structure and amount of disguise) and method of administration (for
example, written form, email or web form, telephone interview, verbal interview).
O? Ñetermine the general question content needed to obtain the desired information.
O? Ñetermine the form of response.
O? Choose the exact question wording.
O? Arrange the questions into an effective sequence.
O? Specify the physical characteristics of the questionnaire (paper type, number of questions per
page, etc.)
O? est the questionnaire and revise it as needed.

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o determine exactly which information is needed, it is useful to construct tables into which the data
will be placed once it is collected. he tables will help to define what data is needed and what is not
needed.

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Some question types include fixed alternative, open ended, and projective:

O? 4ixed-alternative or Close-ended: questions provide multiple-choice answers. hese types of

questions are good when the possible replies are few and clear-cut, such as age, car ownership,
etc.
O? Open-ended questions allow the respondent to better express his/her answer, but are more
difficult to administer and analyze. Often, open-ended questions are administered in a depth
interview. his technique is most appropriate for exploratory research.
O? -rojective methods use a vague question or stimulus and attempt to project a person's attitudes
from the response. he questionnaire could use techniques such as word associations and fill-in-
the-blank sentences. -rojective methods are difficult to analyze and are better suited for
exploratory research than for descriptive or causal research.

  

 


 




  


 








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Each question should have a specific purpose or should not be included in the questionnaire. he goal of
the questions is to obtain the required information. his is not to say that all questions directly must ask
for the desired data. In some cases questions can be used to establish rapport with the respondent,
especially when sensitive information is being sought.

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O? -lace the question in a series of less personal questions.

O? State that the behavior or attitude is not so unusual.
O? -hrase the question in terms of other people, not the respondent.
O? -rovide response choices that specify ranges, not exact numbers.
O? Use a randomized response model giving the respondent pairs of questions with a randomly
assigned one to answer. he interviewer does not know which question the person is answering,
but the overall percentage of people assigned to the sensitive question is known and statistics
can be calculated.

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Muestions can be designed for open-ended, dichotomous, or multichotomous responses.

O? Open-ended: responses are difficult to evaluate, but are useful early in the research process for
determining the possible range of responses, mostly used in Muantitative data Muestionnaires.
O? Ñichotomous: questions have two possible opposing responses, for example, "Yes" and "No".
O? Oultichotomous: questions have a range of responses as in a multiple choice test, mostly used
in Mualitative data Muestionnaires.



 



 
 
 


  


 

 


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he questions should be worded so that they are unambiguous and easily understood. he wording
should consider the full context of the respondent's situation. In particular, consider the who, what,
when, where, why, and how dimensions of the question.

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Oight seem clear at first, however, the respondent may consider "you" to be the family as a whole
rather than he or she personally. If the respondent recently changed brands, the "when" dimension of
the question may be relevant. If the respondent uses a different, more compact tube of toothpaste
when traveling, the "where" aspect of the question will matter.

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Some neutral questions should be placed at the beginning of the questionnaire in order to establish
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O? -hysical aspects such as the page layout, font type and size, question spacing, and type of paper
should be considered. In order to eliminate the need to flip back and forth between pages, the
layout should be designed so that a question at the bottom of the page does not need to be
continued onto the next page.
O? he font should be readable by respondents who have less-than-perfect visual acuity. he paper
stock should be good quality to project the image that the questionnaire is important enough to
warrant the respondents' time. Each questionnaire should have a unique number in order to
better account for it and to know if any have been lost.


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O? In the first stage, it should be administered using personal interviews in order to get better
feedback on problems such as ambiguous questions.
O? hen, it should be tested in the same way it will be administered.
O? he data from the test should be analyzed the same way the administered data is to be analyzed
in order to uncover any unanticipated shortcomings.
O? Ñifferent respondents will answer the same questionnaire differently. One hopes that the
differences are due to real differences in the measured characteristics, but that often is not the
case.

Some sources of the differences between scores of different respondents are:

O? rue differences in the characteristic being measured.

O? Ñifferences in other characteristics such as response styles.
O? Ñifferences in transient personal factors such as fatigue, etc.
O? Ñifferences in situation, such as whether spouse is present.
O? Ñifferences in the administration, such as interviewer tone of voice.
O? Ñifferences resulting from sampling of items relevant toward the characteristic being measured.
O? Ñifferences resulting from lack of clarity of the question - may mean different things to different
people.
O? Ñifferences caused by mechanical factors such as space to answer, inadvertent check marks, etc.

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whole.
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he answer to this question is not always obvious. 4 
example, to study the decision-making process for
a family car purchase, should
the researcher interview the husband, wife, other family members or all of
these?

he responses obtained from different family members vary, so the researcher
must determine
the information needed and from whom.


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Large samples give more reliable results than small samples. However, it is not necessary to sample the
entire target market or even a large portion to get reliable results. If well chosen, samples of less than 1
per cent of a population can often give good reliability.

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O? hose two questions are related As by deciding wither to use probability or non-probability
sampling you can decide how to choose your sample.
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each population member has a known chance of being included in
the sample, and researchers can calculate confidence limits for sampling error.

O? But when probability sampling costs too much or takes too long, marketing researchers often
take    



even though their sampling error is not measurable. hese varied
ways of drawing samples have different costs and time limitations, as well as different accuracy
and statistical properties.
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Once your data has been collected, it needs to be cleaned. Cleaning research data involves editing,
coding, and tabulating results. o make this step easier, start with a simply designed research
instrument or questionnaire.

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O? Look for relevant data that focuses on your immediate market needs.
O? Rely on subjective information only as support for more general findings of objective research.
O? Analyze for consistency; compare the results of different methods of your data collection. 4or
example, are the market demographics provided to you from the local media outlet consistent
with your survey results?
O? Muantify your results; look for common opinions that may be counted together.
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O? Once marketing information about your target market, competition and environment is
collected and analyzed, present it in an organized manner to the decision makers of the
business. 4or example, you may want to report your findings in the market analysis section of
your business plan. Also, you may want to familiarize your sales and marketing departments
with the data or conduct a company-wide informational training seminar using the information.
In summary, the resulting data was created to help guide your business decisions, so it needs to
be readily accessible to the decision makers.
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