The process of marketing research takes this order:
Step one-Define Marketing Problems and Opportunities
This stage is the most important stage in the marketing research process as before the research is carried out the organization must make sure that the problem or information required has been correctly identified. As if the identification of the problem has been miscalculated then the results of the research will be useless. The research problem will be defined in a research brief. A research brief is an essential first step in any market research exercise. It will help the market research agency develop a relevant and appropriate research program for the organization.
Step two-Detail an Appropriate Research Plan
In this stage the organization focuses on defining what research is needed to generate the data specified in stage one. Three factors will be taken into account at this stage, the nature of the problem, the money available and the timescale available. Once this information has been acquired key decisions will be made regarding the mix of primary and secondary research required, the mix of quantitive and qualitative research required and also how many staged are required.
Step three- Design Appropriate Research Instruments
This stage focuses on designing the actual research tool to be used. For example if the best research tool to acquire the information needed was to use a questionnaire, many factors would need to be taken into account before creating the questionnaire. Things like the questionnaires design and layout would have to be chosen so that its going to be quick and easy for the public to answer, wither the questionnaire would contain open or closed questions.
For most questionnaires open questions would rarely be used due to the level of detail required, as each member of the public may have a different answer to the question, so the person creating the questionnaire could not possibly identify each individual answer and incorporate these into the questionnaire.
Step four-Select Appropriate Sampling Procedure
This stage focuses on who is going to take part in the research. The general goal of all sampling methods is to obtain a sample that is representative of the target population.The information obtained from the sample is expected to be the same if a complete census of the target population had been carried out.
Step five-Collect Data
For this stage if the organization chose to use questionnaires as their research tools, at this point they would have to decide whither the questionnaire would be self-administered, given out to member of the public and they would fill it out at their own will and hand the questionnaire back at their own will, or researcher-administered, which would involve a trained researcher basically stopping the members of public and going through the questionnaire with them.
There are advantages and disadvantages for both, self-administered are much cheaper and quicker for an organization also if the questions involved in the questionnaire is of a sensitive topic then the response rate would be higher for self-administered questionnaires, the downside to self-administered questionnaires is the fact there are more wasted questionnaires, they could also be wrongly filled in.
Researcher-administered questionnaires are good as there is never a wasted questionnaire and they are all filled in correctly, the downside to this sort of collection of data is that it is time consuming, more expensive and bad for sensitive topics.
Step six-Process and Analyze
Data For questionnaire data analysis the questionnaire survey will resent data from a large number of respondents, the data will be in the form of ticket boxes, the type of information can be subjected to rigorous statistical analysis. For focus group data analysis the focus group will concentrate on how customers feel about a given brand or topic, a small number of participants will have expressed the views, data processing requires researchers to interpret the groups opinion.
Step seven-Present Results
How the results are presented will depend on the client. The degree of certainty with which results are presented needs to be carefully weighted. Hard data is statistical data usually coming from questionnaires, soft data is researchers opinion usually coming from focus groups. Both hard and soft data should always be available for scrutiny and the results should not be over interpreted. Qualitative data explored attitudes, behavior and experiences through methods as interviews or focus groups. It attempts to get an in-depth opinion from participants.
As it is psychological experiences which are important, few people take part in the research, but the contact with these people tends to last longer. Quantitative data generates statistics through the use of large scale survey research, using methods like questionnaires or structured interviews. The degree of certainty with regard to wider applicability of results is the main advantage of quantitative data.
Primary data is new data which is collected by the researcher themselves. This kind of data is new, original researched information. Primary sources enable the researcher to get as close as possible to what actually happened. A primary source reflects the individuals viewpoint as a participant. Examples of primary data are questionnaires, interviews and observations. Secondary data usually analyze and interpret. It is pre-existing data that requires no contact with consumers. An example of secondary data are things like books, magazines and the internet.
