UNIT 4.4 MARKET RESEARCH Flashcards
What is Market research?
Market research refers to marketing activities designed to discover the opinions, beliefs and preferences of potential and existing customers.
What does market research involve?
It involves collecting data and information on competitors and market trends to gain insight into a specific market.
What is ad hoc market research?
The focus of the research is on specific marketing problems or issues and tends to be on a one-off basis.
What is continuous market research?
Research that takes place on a regular and ongoing basis.
What is the role of Market research in Business?
Market research gives businesses up to date information.
Market research helps businesses to improve their marketing strategies by using a distinct marketing mix for each customer target market.
Market research assesses customer reactions to a new product by testing it on a small group of customers.
Market research gives businesses an understanding of the activities and strategies used by their rivals.
Market research helps businesses to predict what is likely to happen in the future.
Define the term Primary market research/ field research/ Beespoke research.
Primary research is market research that involves gathering new data first-hand for a specific purpose.
What are the four methods of conducting primary research? (Also referred to as four types of primary research)
Surveys/ Questionnaires
Interviews
Focus Groups
Observations
What are surveys?
A survey or questionnaire is a document that contains a series of questions used to collect data for a specific purpose.
What are the different types of surveys?
Self-completed surveys are completed by a sample of people.
Personal surveys that are conducted face-to-face.
Telephone surveys are similar to personal surveys but use telecommunications technology.
Advantage:
A larger number of people in a wider geographical spread can be covered.
Disadvantages:
Relatively higher costs involved.
Low response rate as a large number of people are not willing to take part in telephone surveys.
Online surveys
Advantages
They are much cheaper than other forms of surveys.
Time and resource saving as softwares can collate quantitative research data.
Postal surveys are sent to peoples home or office addresses for them to complete in their own time.
Disadvantages
People might simply treat the surveys as junk mail, so ignore them.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of primary research?
Advantages
Relevance Primary research is carried out for a specific purpose, so directly addresses the questions that need to be answered.
Up to date Secondary market research data tends to be more dated and therefore often less reliable than primary research findings.
Confidential and unique Since the research is done first hand, no one else (including rivals) has access to the information.
Disadvantages
Time consuming: It can be very difficult to primary data that is accurate and representative and this can delay decision making and could lead to lost market opportunities in the short term.
Costly: Collecting primary data is often costly, due to the time involved to collect quality data or because the data is difficult to collect.
Validity: Faults in market research (e.g. poor questionnaire design or sampling errors) will lead to misleading or biased results.
Explain how interviews can be used in primary market research.
Interviews involve one-to-one discussions between an interviewer1 and interviewees, such as individual customers, to investigate their personal circumstances, opinions, beliefs, attitudes and feelings.
The findings from all interviews are analysed to identify the views that participants share.
Identifying the differences can also be important as it can help a business to refine its marketing strategies.
In-depth interviews are often used when a business is planning to introduce change and new initiatives as they can be used to investigate the views of participants to a new proposal.
Disadvantages
Interviews often provide a range of non-quantifiable3 information that might prove to be difficult to analyse.
Interviews tend to be very time consuming.
Interviewer bias which can have an impact on the way in which respondents answer.
Explain how focus groups can be used in primary market research.
Focus groups involve forming small discussion groups to gain insight into the attitudes and behaviour of participants who share a similar consumer profile.
They can provide important information to help a business to devise and refine its marketing strategies.
By using a focus group, detailed questions can be asked and participants are more likely to engage in discussions to generate insightful information.
To aid market research analysis, audiovisual recordings of the discussions and observations of the behaviour of the participants are often used.
Disadvantages:
Those who shy from group discussions and debates are unlikely to participate and therefore their views are unregistered.
In an open forum, there might also be some pressure for group members to conform to the majority view rather than to express their own opinions.
Focus group participants often have to be paid, either in cash or in lieu for their time and input raising the overall costs of market research.
Explain how observations are used in primary market research.
This method of primary research involves watching how people behave and respond in different situations.
Observations can be carried out using surveillance filming, photographic evidence or in person (by using a checklist or tally charts).
Observations are often used by businesses such as restaurants, theme parks, health clinics, call centres and the post office to measure the average time it takes to serve a customer.
Advantage
Observations record people’s actual behaviour.
Disadvantage
Observations do not necessarily reveal why a person behaves or responds in the way they do.
