5
Steps for Marketing Research Process
Marketing Research is an operation that plays an important
role in order to make decisions that are important for the growth of the company.
It is helping us to take the right decisions for the organization systematically.
It reduces the uncertainty in the decision-making process and increase the chances
of success in a systematic way. It doesn’t guarantee that the organization will
be in profit for the upcoming days in marketing its products. Marketing
Research is nothing but a tool that helps in building of the decision making
process.
The 5 most important steps for Marketing Research Process
are -
1.
Define The Problem:-
If a problem isn’t defined carefully, a good research cannot be designed
Optimizely. A problem well defined is half-solved. So, our first step is to
define the research problem. The problem(s) faced by the company must be
translated into market research problem in the form of questions.
These questions must contain the data which will be required to make the decision later and how this information can be obtained. Thus, the decision problem gets translated into a research problem.
For example, a decision problem may be whether to launch a new facility
or service. The corresponding research problem may be to assess whether the
market would accept the new product, the demands etc.
2.
Develop Your Research Plan:-
After that, you have to design or
develop your own research plan. Developing the research design specifies the
method to conduct a particular study.
Marketing research designs can be
classified into three categories
1.
Exploratory research
2.
Descriptive research
3.
Causal research.
In
exploratory research, problems are formulated clearly. It aims to clarify
concepts, gathering explanations, gaining insight, eliminating illogical ideas,
and forming hypotheses. Exploratory research can be performed using surveying of
certain people, focus groups, and case studies. During the survey, exploratory
research studies would not acquire a representative sample. Exploratory
research is characterized by its flexibility.
When the researcher wants to know the characteristics of certain groups like name, age, sex, qualification, annual income, occupation, etc a descriptive research is taken for this. Descriptive research is more rigid and valuable than exploratory research. It describes users of a product, determine no. of persons using a product. Even it predicts future demand for a product. It also defines questions, people surveyed, and the method of analysis prior to beginning data collection. In other words, the who, what, where, when, why, and how aspects of the research should be defined. Such preparation allows one the opportunity to make any required changes before the costly process of data collection has begun.
Two types of descriptive research
are:
1.
longitudinal studies and
2.
cross sectional studies.
Causal research seeks to find
cause and effect relationships between the variables. It accomplishes this goal
through laboratory with field experiments.
3.
Collect Relevant Sample Data:-
Next, one of the most important as well as difficult step is to collect
data for which the research process has been carried out.
Interviewing and the supervision of field work should be taken for this. Interviewing
for marketing research is one of the most difficult tasks. Many times the
respondents may not part with crucial data.
Supervision of field work is also important to ensure timely completion
of the field survey.
If these two are not carried out properly, then the results throw an
error which badly affects on the
research.
So we need to collect the related sample data as many as possible from
the universe. Because more data can give us the prediction with more accuracy
that can help us to take right decisions further.
4.
Analyze Data and Report Findings:-
The next step is to analyze the data that has been collected from the
survey. The raw data is transformed into the right format. First, it is edited
so that errors can be corrected. The data is then coded; this procedure
converts the edited raw data into numbers or symbols. Finally, the data is classified
to count the number of samples falling into various categories. Simple
tabulations count the occurrences of each variable independently of the other
variables.
Cross tabulations can treat more than one variables simultaneously. Cross tabulation is the most commonly utilized data analysis method. Once the tabulation is done, the following analysis can be carried out then-
·
Conjoint Analysis: The conjoint analysis is a powerful technique for
determining consumer preferences for product attributes.
·
Hypothesis Testing: The null hypothesis in an experiment is the hypothesis
that the independent variable has no effect on the dependent variable.
Once analysis is completed, make the conclusion.To check whether research results are statistically significant a test of statistical significance can be run for this regard.
5.
Perform Action:-
All the researches have to be compiled in one report to be submitted then
to the organization.The format of the report varies with the needs of the company.
The
report can contain:
Ø
Authorization letter for the research,
Ø
Table of Contents,
Ø
List of illustrations,
Ø
Executive summary,
Ø
Research objectives,
Ø
Results,
Ø
Limitations,
Ø
Conclusions and recommendations etc.
The report has to be written neat and clean with
objectivity, coherence, clarity before submission.
At last, this is obvious to research before anything to
plan. Because researches give us the real time scenario, current circumstances
that are beneficial for us to take right decisions. The Marketing Research
Process involves in a number of inter-related activities. Each and every step
plays an important role in the research process.