Market Research Essay, Research Paper

Many businesses are Product Orientated. This means that they design and make a product, and then try and convince consumers to buy it. Business can also be Market Orientated . This is where they try to find out what consumers want before making the final product. Finding out about what consumers want and need, and what makes them buy, is called Market Research .

Businesses which are mainly product orientated risk spending a large amount of resources launching a product which proves to be a failure. Researching the market helps reduce this risk. It should focus research and design effort onto products which have a chance of success in the market place. When the product is launched, a carefully researched product stands less chance of failing.

Market research attempts to find the answers to questions a business might have about its market. A market researcher must then decide what information might help answer the question brought forward. The market researcher then decider how best to collect this information. There are two ways of doing this, desk research and field research. The information is then collected and analysed. Finally, the business has to make a decision about what to do in the light of the information formed.

Desk research involves the use of secondary Data. This is information which is already available, both within and outside the business. Information within the business is information collected routinely. Invoices, for instance, will tell them how much they selland who they are selling to. Accounts will give information about the value of sales and costs of production. Businesses can also collect information which is available from sources outside the business e.g. Government, the media, Trade associations etc. The results of that research are given in a table.

Field research involves the collection of Primary Data information which no one has yet collected. It is collected specially for the particular piece of research. Primary data is collected through direct investigation, usually in one of three ways-observation, survey and expreriment.

Observation is looking at and recording what people do and how they behave can be important.

Surveys usually involves asking questions of Respondents- people or organisations who reply to the questions asked. There are different ways of conducting surveys. A postal survey, where questionaires are sent through the post, or a newspaper survey, where readers are invited to fill in and return a questionnaire in a newspaper, are cheap. Telephone surveys, personal interviews and consumer s panels are more expensive because an interviewer has to be employed to interview customers. Surveys can only be useful for market research purposes if the questions asked are appropriate. A survey cannot ask every customer for their opinion. Only a fraction or Sample of customers can be surveyed. To be useful, the sample chosen must be representative of all consumers (the population). In a random sample, every potential respondent has an equal chance of being chosen, random numbers can be used to do this. To reduce the length of time, a systematic sample can be used. This is where every100th or 1000th person on a list like a telephone directory or the electoral register is chosen. In a quota sample, the sample is broken down or stratified. One problem with a quota sample is that any people that fit the description can be asked to complete the survey. A stratified random sample may get round this problem. It is a quota sample where all the respondents, the people being interviewed must be chosen at random.

Experiments are experimental techniques which market researchers can use. To launch a new product is often very costly. Instead, products could be tested on groups of consumers to see whether they are acceptable and likely to sell well.