Marketing Research

According to the American Marketing Association:

Marketing research is the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information—information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process. Marketing research specifies the information required to address these issues, designs the method for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, analyzes, and communicates the findings and their implications. (Marketing Research, 2007, p.9).

Marketing research can be an extensive and involved process. Companies that are aware of this fact tend to hone in on the tools and resources that are going to best benefit them as quickly as possible to avoid unnecessary costs and time. Identifying the best tools can be critical to the successful implementation of a market research plan. This paper will discuss some of the differences between the different types of marketing research and the tools that each approach uses.

Primary Research versus Secondary Research

Marketing researchers must decide what is going to work best for their purposes. This begins by understanding the fundamental differences in the types of research that are available to them. A logical start is understanding primary and secondary research. This will enable the researcher to establish a solid start to their research plan while giving them the basis to fine tune the research question they are seeking to answer.

Primary research is defined as original data. This is a very non-descript definition so to delve deeper, take a look at some of the tools that are u...

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...s. The results of surveys tend to be more black and white. This is because to be able to quantify results the researcher must not have an overwhelming list of values. The variables must be narrowed to make them more manageable.

Conclusion

Any effective marketing researcher must understand the differences between primary and secondary research. They must also understand the difference between qualitative and quantitative research methods. Each method yields different results and covers different research objectives. Researchers must understand what their research question is so that they know how to implement the correct research tools and methods.

Works Cited

Aaker, D. A., Kumar, V., & Day, G. S. (2007).Marketing research (9th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John

Wiley & Sons.

Mangham, Dawn T. (2011). Re: WK2 DQ2. Retrieved from University of Phoenix, MKT441

website.