Motivation for Market Research

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En provenance du cours de University of California, Davis

Research Proposal: Initiating Research

59 notes

University of California, Davis

Research Proposal: Initiating Research

59 notes

Cours 1 sur 4 dans Specialization Market Research

Market Research is a growing and important field that is used in many industries around the world. Given all the data that is collected whether by organizations, industries, social media, governments, etc., it’s important that someone can review and sift through all the noise to provide valuable insights. And that’s where you come in as a market researcher. This course will only scratch the surface and provide you a foundational understanding of this field. In this course, you will be able to define market research and identify some tools used in the industry. You will be able to discuss the importance of secondary and internal research in terms of the planning process. You will be able to define what primary research is and identify the various ways to conduct primary research. You will be able to focus on an actual research plan or proposal for your peer review project. You will be able to compose a response to a request for a proposal or research plan and be able to address the various components of the proposal and package it in a professional manner.

À partir de la leçon

Getting Started and Introduction to Market Research

In this module, you will be able to define what market research is and identify the tools that are used. You will be able to discuss the various motivations behind a research inquiry and what goes into a market research request. You will define the services, the roles and the qualities of a market researcher. You will also be able to identify constraints to help you ask the right questions. Finally, you will be able to respond to a market research proposal.

Introduction to Market Research0:53

Defining Market Research3:07

Motivation for Market Research5:38

Requests for Market Research3:25

The Services, Roles, and Qualities of a Market Researcher3:12

Complexities, Constraints, and Questions to Ask4:31

Planning a Response to a Market Research Inquiry5:34

Rencontrer les enseignants

Jim Fong
Director, UPCEA Center for Research and Marketing Strategy
UC Davis Extension

Welcome back. Have you ever wondered what motivates

an organization or individual to consider market research?

There are various motivations behind market research inquiries.

We will cover those in this lesson.

After we're done, you'll be able to discuss why someone might request

market research and explain pros and cons

of conducting research in-house or contracting it out.

You'll also be able to describe situations in which market research should not be done.

Let's get started.

To me, market research is fun.

It's a puzzle or mystery that needs to be solved.

It's an opportunity to help someone in need.

When a person or business is considering market research,

it usually means something important is happening within an organization.

It indicates that there is a high level of uncertainty.

Employees or internal stakeholders either don't have the answer,

or are not confident about the direction, or have biases.

External forces and changes contribute to even more uncertainty.

So, whoever makes a market research inquiry is on a quest for answers.

Gathering useful and accurate information can be

the key to break gridlock in an organization or department.

Information is the key to unlocking

the mystery and helping to solve an organization's problem.

However, there are a lot of challenges and steps to

getting to the answer needed to solve the business problem.

There also could be many various answers.

Market research often doesn't lead to a definitive answer.

With that said, there are many considerations as to how to get the research done.

It can be done internally or externally by

choosing a trained market research person or organization.

Why might they go outside for market research?

Your organization may lack market research expertise.

Surprisingly, despite being in an information world,

market research has been a luxury position.

Until recently, there just weren't many market researchers out there. That's changed.

Many colleges and universities are now offering degrees in business analytics, big data,

data mining, predictive analytics,

applied statistics and computational mathematics.

Even when a company has their own skilled staff,

it sometimes makes sense to go outside in order to

get a more objective viewpoint or approach.

A market researcher may have less bias or

be more objective than internal stakeholders might be.

There are also good reasons to have internal staff conduct market research.

Internal research can be a good option when there is expertise internally.

There are also a lot of good tools out there that have

helped non-market researchers conduct some market research.

Here are some reasons or considerations for internal staff to do research.

You should consider internal market research when;

speed is an issue and staff requires

little or no orientation on the issues or background,

when bias or objectivity are less of an issue,

when the organization has sufficient expertise internally

thus making research potentially less expensive and quicker,

but this is not always the case.

And lastly, when internal research groups have

additional information and insights on the organization.

In such cases, internal research would have

a high potential to deepen those insights and provide actionable recommendations.

Deciding when to do market research or when not to do it deserves consideration, as well.

While some may consider market research to be novel or magical,

it has its place in the decision-making process.

This also means that there are times where it just doesn't work.

So, under what scenarios can it work?

Market research can work when information is lacking that can be

accurately collected to advance decision-making given its constraints,

when market, economic or internal situations arise, well,

having up-to-date insightful information will help advance decision making.

In both cases I've emphasized keywords and phrases such

as accurately, constraints and up-to-date.

For example, accurately implies that it is possible to

collect the sought after information that accurate information is available,

but not all situations or experiments can be measured.

One famous case was New Coke.

That launch became renown as one of the most failed product launches of the past century.

In the 1980s, the Coca-Cola Company was convinced that the taste of

their new formula could better compete against Pepsi's slightly sweeter taste.

The researchers spent millions on market research,

they were certain that it couldn't lose.

The taste tests were conclusive indicating that New Coke would be a winner.

However, researchers and company executives failed to measure

the impact of brand loyalty or what Classic Coke had on the taste.

In this case, it wasn't a matter of resources,

rather failure resulted from the inability to measure what couldn't be measured.

There are also times when market research should not be done.

Market research should not be used to manipulate

a situation or unfairly influence a decision.

For example, I worked with a politician who was young in his political career.

The campaign manager wanted me to conduct a random sample of voters.

However, the campaign wanted to use very loaded questions about his opponent.

That would have been a misuse of market research.

There are times when market research can work and therefore should be chosen.

There are other times when market research should not be

used as in the case of the politicians,

people wanting to use market research to sway the media.

Decision makers should carefully consider

the appropriate use of market research in their organization's situation.

As we wrap up,

I hope you can now discuss various motivations behind the market research inquiry,

explain why it may or may not be good to do

market research internally or use an outside source.

You should also be able to describe

situations in which market research should not be done.

This understanding of distinguishing when to use

market research and the various options regarding how

to approach it are part of becoming

a market research professional who can advise her clients well.

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