Importance of the Marketing Research - Essay Example

?Marketing Research Marketing research is one of the most important s in the field of marketing. This is practically the method of predicting the future needs for the betterment of the organization. Without a proper marketing research it is never possible to meet the expectations for the external environment. Marketing research is a long process with many important steps. There are several methodologies of conducting the marketing research. The specific design for the appropriate research is changing continuously. However, there are some traditional methods which are very much important for the better results in the research field are, identifying the target group, selecting the focus group, designing questionnaire, taking surveys, sampling and analyzing the data. With all of the important steps the research is designed and done accordingly to fetch the ultimate outcome. Introduction: Market forecasting is an important factor to be analyzed by the marketing team of the organization. For any decision the marketing research is very important. Starting from the customer satisfaction to the new product development and new branding strategies; the marketing research is important in all the aspects of marketing. This paper has different chapters dedicated to the thorough study of the marketing research. The importance of the marketing research in the decision making process, the different methodologies and data collection techniques are discussed thoroughly in this particular paper. The aim of this study is to understand the importance of the marketing research in the field of marketing decision making processes and forecasting. The Importance of the marketing research: The marketing research is the specific marketing function which is conducted to get the ultimate support for taking the marketing decisions (Wrenn, Stevens and Loudon, 2006). According to the American Marketing Association the marketing is defined as “the function which links the consumers, customer, and public to the marketer through information” (Wrenn, Stevens and Loudon, 2006). The marketing research is possible with the specified data, and it is done for some specific reason. It is a very expensive marketing affair. However, the best marketing research does not promise to produce the best marketing decision always. The marketing research specifies the important information to be needed to analyze the situation within and outside the organization. Without the marketing research no product development is possible. The proper marketing research tells the organization what are required to meet the expectations from the market. This is an essential function within the marketing department to simplify the future decision towards the development. Marketing research is the ultimate option to understand the internal strength of the organizations and also the expected performance from the external environment. This is the quantitative analysis which would fetch the ultimate solutions to the specified problems. The mathematical and the statistical approaches help the marketing research to have the measurable characteristics. Role of marketing research in decision making: One of the main role of the marketing research is to simplify the decision making process in an efficient way. However, the complete marketing research plays two major role in the whole marketing system, and they are; 1. They are the part of the marketing intelligence feedback function, and 2. It provides the ultimate quantitative data to the decision makers to take decision accordingly towards future advancement. The segmentation research and the new product research are the most lucrative field in the marketing for the opportunist marketing managers (McDaniel and Gates, 1998). From customer satisfaction to the brand extension, every step is taken carefully with the suitable marketing research programs by most of the organizations. Satisfying customers is the main motive of most of the organizations in the recent business environment. And, to work according to the customer requirements the proper marketing research design is very much essential. The proper survey is done in most of the restaurants and fast food centers to understand the service Gaps between the expected services and the services delivered. The suitable marketing research process or methods could fetch the best solutions to bridge the service Gaps within the organizations. Defining the target group: Identifying he target group or the target Audiences are the most important factor in the marketing research process. The target group or the target audience is the set of people within the selected or targeted market. It has different demographic profiles depending upon the requirement s of the research programs. The age, gender, nationality, income status and many more factors are closely related with these target groups. It is very important to choose the proper attributes of the target group for the best possible survey. Each target group must be given specific weights to strengthen the research objectives (Kotler, Haider, and Rein, 2002) Defining the focus group: Focus group is another tool to conduct a survey. It is basically the group of 8-12 people or consumers who are provided with a special meeting with special facilities for approximately two hours. The facilities are provided to the specific focus group to act accordingly to the instructions and with the help of the facilities it can be viewed from the outside. Focus groups are very similar to the customers who come to the specific stores and behave accordingly. Focus groups are some specific kind of interview with helps the organization to scan the environmental approaches of the customers in the given situation (McQuarrie, 2006). This particular process helps the organization to gather behavioral data from the live situations of the selected persons. Sampling: Survey samples are majorly accepted in the field of marketing research. There are many sampling designs used in the research processes. And, they are random sampling, stratified sampling, cluster and multistage sampling, two- phase sampling etc (Kalton, 1983). Sampling is the process in which the researches decides on who is his sample for the study, what size is his sample and the way of selecting the sample units from the total population. The sampling process includes the procedures of using a small portion of the total population either randomly or selectively (Zikmund, 2003). Developing the research plan: Development of the research plan is also very vital factor. This is a stage where all the plans are developed to conduct the successful research process. In this particular stage the research demands the development of the specific and efficient plan for collection of important and relevant information from the market that are necessary to conduct the research (Avasarikar and Chordiya, 2007). This stage can be segmented or simplified into several important phases and they are written bellow: 1. Data sources 2. Research approaches. 3. Research instrumentations 4. Sampling plan 5. Contact methodologies. Among these data sourcing and the contact methodologies for the data sourcing are very vital phases. Research approaches can be classifies into many approaches and they are observation research, focus group, survey research, experimental research, behavioral data research etc. in other hand the research instruments are very important. Without the proper instruments it is no way possible to conduct the effective researches. The relevant research instruments are questionnaire, physiological tools like laddering techniques, depth interview and Rorschach tests, mechanical devices, customer prototype, articulative interviews etc. Marketing research methodologies: Data collection methods: The data collection method is one of the most important actions in the organizational research work. The primary and secondary data are compiled in a proper blend to fetch the ultimate result. However, in every case the questionnaires are very much prominent. Questionnaires are the important factor to execute the survey. It has to be remembered that the answer of the questions must be the genuine answer from the people. Many times it have been seen that the sample size gives the answer as because they have to give the answer to kill the time for the survey, in that case the answers have no validity. So, in this case the distribution process and the formation of the questions in the questionnaire are very much important to get the ultimate answers from the target group. The stage of data collection involves many different methods based on the research type or research technique ( Zikmund, 2003 ). The researcher undertakes many qualitative approaches, in order to get a better view of perceptions of different job positions of different levels through questionnaire distribution. Primary Data It is meant by primary data as the data collected and gathered for that study or particular project in hand and the information is collected through different techniques such as survey questionnaires, interviews and observations (Zikmund, 2003). In this study, in order to be able to reach the desirable information and to get a better view of the different marketing research methods, the data collection method will be through questionnaires, interviews, online surveys etc. Secondary Data Secondary data or historical data are the kind of data that is previously gathered for some study or project, which built specially for that particular project ( Zikmund, 2003). In regards to this research, the secondary data used will be gathered from the Internet, journals and other publications in order to get basic information about the required information. Data Collection Tools: Survey design: Survey design is one of the most important factors to be analyzed before making the marketing research efforts. The pilot survey is also very important to organize a perfect final survey. The early stages of the survey must include a careful selection of the target group and the review of the literature review and taking the help of the experts in the country or in the selected region (Iarossi, 2006). The conceptualization of the potential problems is very much important to make the successful surveys. Taking the help of the previous surveys also help the organizations to bring up the best possible outcome of the research work. The selection of the questions and designing the questions in a suitable manner is very important which would provoke the target group to answer the questions. The best suitable questionnaire design is the most important step in the survey design process. The assessment of the infrastructure of the survey and the careful selection of the people or partner who would conduct the survey in the field are also very vital. Other important factors are data gathering, data entry, report generating, dissemination etc. The Questionnaire Design After going through previous surveys and reading a number of different researches and dissertations, this facilitated the process of questionnaire development. This set of in depth questions is used to get the views of respondents in a realistic and valid manner by ensuring confidentiality. Likert scale has been used for framing the questions. There are several advantages of Likert scale (Kothari, 2008). First of all it is easy to construct. Secondly it makes the respondent answer each of the questions in the instrument. This means that more data can be collected. It is also able to measure the difference between the responses of different individuals. It is also able to measure the difference between the responses of the same individual to different stimuli. The distribution process was through emailing the copies of questionnaires and also sending the hard copies. Questionnaire method has several advantages (Powell, 2002). First of all it produces frank answers. In other methods like interviews there is a chance that due to the presence of the interviewer and his particular line of questioning, the respondent may go for expected answers rather than the answers that that he feels are true. Therefore the results can be biased. Questionnaire reduces this risk of bias. Questionnaire also has the advantage that the respondent can fill it up at his leisure and he does not need to fix a time for answering. This means that there is likelihood for better answers and there is more chance of having answers at all. Questionnaires also have the advantage that they allow for collection of large amount of data in short period of time. For interviews, on the other hand for example, a lot of time is required for filling up the data. Considering these advantages, questionnaire survey method has been selected. Formatting the questionnaire: A good questionnaire powers up the survey process. However, there are no established ways or procedures to construct good questionnaire (Aaker, Kumar and Day, 2008). Surveys are basically costume built and each survey has their own specifications. The designing of the questionnaire highly depend on the nature of the survey. It is very important to conduct a sample survey or pilot survey to evaluate the final set of questions in the questionnaire. The pilot survey would help to omit the unwanted questions which would dilute the output of the survey (Aaker, Kumar and Day, 2008). The degree of freedom in answering the questions for the respondents is very vital for a successful survey. There are many set of questions are used in the survey and some them are open-ended questions with no specifications, open-ended questions with specified answers to choose from, close ended questions etc (Aaker, Kumar and Day, 2008). The communication gaps must be avoided to have the best possible set of questions. Interviews: The interviews are the basic conversation between the humans with the help of the questions and answers. The conversation is the basic from the human interaction (Kvale, 1996). The interviews can be taken face to face; sometimes group interviews are also taken to get the group answer. However, there are different approaches of conducting the interviews. In the recent time with the advancement of the technology the audio visual interviews, online interviews, and telephonic interviews are conducted easily. The main advantages of the interviews are it works as a general conversation but not like the questionnaire methods where it is very much time consuming. However, if the interviews are not conducted properly then the output may vary. Threats to Validity in the research results: There are different kinds of threats in most of the research works, threats are inevitable and threats can lead to a proper experimental process as to lose the treats everyone will try the best to be successful in the experimental process. Threats to internal validity: Threats to internal validity is one of the phase in the experimental process or in the research design which interacts or interprets the data use to reveal or describe the set of particular questions they have about the possible inaccuracies in interpretation of the cause and effects of the experiments (Craighead, and Nemeroff, 2002). Those important factors which allow for alternative explanation to the cause of the given effect of the dependent variables are called threats to the internal validity. (Cottrell, and McKenzie, 2010).There are many common threats to the internal threats to the validity and they are mainly categorized as the threats related to the History, Maturation, Testing etc. Threats to Construct Validity: The threat to the construction validities are related both to the previous instrument development and also to the development of particular measurement techniques as the part of the methodology (Burns (Ph. D.) and Grove, 2005). The construction validity says how well the dependent and the independent variables represent the constructs which they were intended to measure (Heppner et al; 2008). Research analysis: Survey design, survey execution, data collection and data feeding are the primary jobs for the survey but the most important part of the marketing research is the data analyzing method. In this section the collected data are analyzed with the help of the hypothesis and the mathematical approaches to get the ultimate solution which has measurable characteristics. The statistical approaches are very important for data analysis. Some of the analysis techniques are regression analysis which is further divided into multiple regression analysis, multivariate analysis, discriminate analysis etc (Hair, 2006). Conclusion: From this descriptive paper the importance of the marketing research has been discussed properly. The research methods and marketing research tools are discussed. It is very clear that among all the phases the survey design and the data collection phase are the vital phases in the research program. The marketing research is an expensive and time consuming process but, it helps a lot for the better assessment of the marketing decisions towards the development of the organizational strength. This paper has taken help from the secondary data sources like books, internet and some valuable journals to prove the importance of the marketing research in the field of marketing. However, it is very true that the behavioral approaches of the customers are never constant so the best marketing research may not help all the time to solve the issue but it definitely helps in the longer run. References Aaker D A, Kumar V and Day G S, (2008). Marketing Research, 9Th Ed. New Jersey: Willy. Avasarikar D P and Chordiya Dr. S B, (2007). Marketing Research. Pune: Nirali Prakashan. Burns Nancy (Ph. D.) and Grove Susan K. (2005). The practice of nursing research: conduct, critique, and utilization. Philadelphia: Elsevier Health Sciences. Cottrell Randall R, and McKenzie James F. (2010). Health Promotion and Education Research Methods: Using the Five Chapter Thesis/Dissertation Model. Massachusetts: Jones & Bartlett Learning. Craighead W. Edward, and Nemeroff Charles B. (2002). 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