4.4 market research Flashcards
market research
refers to marketing activities designed to discover opinions, beliefs, and preferences of potential and existing customers.
purpose of market research
- giving businesses up to date information. This is particularly important in fast-paced industries that are always changing ie. Fashion.
-improving market strategies
-assessing customer reactions
Primary market research
gathering new and first-hand data for a specific purpose.
pros
-relevance; carried out for a specific purpose thus is relavent to the questions the business are trying to answer.
-up to date
-confidential and unique
Cons
-time consuming
-costly
-validity (flaws will lead to biased results.
Primary research examples
i) Surveys
ii)interviews
iii)focus groups
iv)observations
Surveys (Pr)
-Self completed
-personal surveys (face to face)
-telephone surveys
-online surveys
-postal surveys
pros
-surveys can generate quantitative and qualitative answers specific to the needs of the researcher.
surveys should;
-avoid bias or restricting peoples answers
-avoiding jargon
-include both closed and open-ended questions
-be tried and tested
-only having necessary questions.
secondary research
-second hand data and information that already exists
pros
-generally cheaper to collectand faster to analyse
-can provide insight to trends in industry
-huge range of secondary sources that market researchers can use
-findings are often based on large sample sizes, so statistically valid
Cons
-secondary data is second-hand data, so the information might already be outdated or can become obsolete quite quickly, such as a SWOT analysis for the organisation
- Secondary research might only provide partial information as it was produced for a different purpose
-data is available to competitors
Market analyses (sr)
reveals trends characteristics and outlooks. it can help measure how well a business is doing compared to its competitors
- market research firms
- competitors
- trade publications.
pro
- businesses can access relevant up to date and detailed market data, trends and forecasts.
cons
however, it can be very expensive to use.
information can become outdated quickly
Academic journals(SR)
pros
- articles contain the most up to date research in an academic discipline.
-source is likely to be reliable.
cons
- information or data are not always relevant to the researcher and can become outdated quickly
-can be expensive
Govt publications (Sr)
can publish population censuses, social trends, labour market developments, trade statistics…
pros
-data and statistics are usually comprehensive, reliable and up to date.
-In addition, government publications, cover a wide range of topics.
-also can be freely available
cons
-challenge in identifying and locating the information required, due to vast amount of info available.
-fee to access specialists information
Media articles (sr)
-newspaper
-commentaries and articles
-general business books, biographies,
pros
-released frequently
-can be found for free online
cons
-potential bias
-can become out of date quickly
Qualitative research
getting non-numerical answers and opinions from research respondents. understand behaviour, attitudes, and perceptions of customers, employees, or other respondents
pros
- better than quantitative research exploring the driving forces and restraining forces, concerning the behaviour and attitudes of respondents.
- information gathered from qualitative research can be very valuable. unlike the use of
-inexpensive
Cons
-due to small sample sizes findings may not be representative of society.
-time consuming to conduct
- high level of interviewing expertise
-interviewer bias might be interoduced to serve the researcher’s own purpose.
quantitative market research
factual and measurable information rather than views and opinions.
sampling methods
-quota sampling; certain number of people from different market segments are selected
-random sampling
-convenience sampling
