Business To Business Resources

Marketing Research

Marketing research is a type of business research that deals with researching the market. It can be further divided into consumer market research and business-to- business market research. Consumer market research deals with studying the buying habits of individual people. It aims at understanding the behaviors and preferences of the consumers in a market based economy. Business-to- business market research studies the markets for products sold by one business to another.

Marketing research is the systematic identification, collection, analysis and dissemination of information that assists the management in decision making and finding solutions to problems related to marketing. The information so provided must be accurate, reliable, relevant, valid and up to date. All the stages in research are important and must be planned well in advance.

Marketing researchers use the DECIDE model to make marketing decisions. The role of research is described by this model. ‘D’ is used to define the marketing problem. ‘E’ is used to enumerate the decision factors that might be controllable or uncontrollable. ‘C’ denotes the collection of accurate information. ‘I’ helps to identify the best alternative from the several alternatives available. ‘D’ helps to develop a marketing plan and also implement it. ‘E’ helps the management to evaluate the decision process and the decisions made from the marketing plans.

Research for the market must be done by using a systematic plan for each stage. The process followed at each stage must be sound and well documented. The research must be objective and should provide accurate information. The basic aim of the research is to identify and assess how the elements of marketing affect the behaviors of the customers.