Marketing Research

Marketing Research is not to be confused with environmental scanning. Neither is it to be confused with market research. Marketing research covers any research relevant to marketing while market research is a subset of it which studies market characteristics. So marketing research can study selling techniques, effectiveness of advertising, pricing and packaging and so forth and may include market research (eg. how will the market respond to product X?') studies. There are many polls, surveys and studies which may be instructive for you and which may relate to your product/service area. It is also possible for you to use your website or newsgroups to carry out your own market research surveys.

Marketing research is about trying to get answers the easy way. Maybe you plan to spend a lot of money developing a product, or to increase your prices, or you plan to buy advertising, or to modify your service to make it more appealing to a different age group without alienating present customers. Whatever your idea, it raises questions which will not be finally answered until you implement your plan. However, you can get a good idea of what the ultimate response to your initiative will be if you conduct some focussed marketing research first. That can cost a lot of money if you use professional research companies. Sometimes they're pretty good but very often they are dressing up a simple and straightforward exercise in an elaborate outfit of techniques and analysis designed to look impressive and to convince the client that a very sophisticated service is being offered. Blinded by science, the client pays up and often comes back for more. When you look behind the percentages, demographic breakdowns, pie charts and powerpoint slides what you get is a few simple messages which usually confirm what you thought in the first place. Sometimes you find out something that perhaps you would not have expected - but if you had simply asked the questions of a few hundred people without recourse to any particularly sophisticated analysis you might have got there anyway.

Marketing research is important. It can help confirm you in the direction you are taking or it can save you from making a costly mistake.