Market Research Flashcards
What is market research?
Businesses have to find out what customers want and what competitors are doing. They have to do this to make sure they provide the goods and services customers want (otherwise they won’t make a profit) and to make sure that they keep ahead of the competition.
Businesses do this by carrying out market research. Market research involves looking a information that exists and finding out new information.
what are the two types of market research?
field research and desk research
What is field research?
gathering new information by carrying out surveys, interviews and observations. This gathers primary information.
What is desk research?
Looking at existing information, eg in newspapers, books and internet websites. This gathers secondary information.
What are advantages of field research?
the research has gathered new information and is therefore more up-to-date than existing information
the information has been gathered for a specific purpose and is therefore more relevant to the business needs
What are advantages of desk research?
because the research has already been carried out, it is usually easy to obtain by looking in a newspaper, book or on a website
It is usually cheaper to gather than field research, which saves the organisation money
decisions can be made quickly because the information already exists.
What are disadvantages of field research?
it can be expensive to carry out, which means the money cannot be spent on something else (eg buying a new machine)
it can take a long time to carry out, which could stop decisions being made quickly
people need to be trained in order to carry out field research (eg in interview techniques), which can be expensive
what are disadvantages of market research?
Because this research was carried out for a different purpose, it is not as reliable as field research and might not be useful
the research might have been carried out a long time ago and therefore the information is not relevant to today’s business environment
The information might be biased, which could lead to wrong or incomplete decisions being made.
