The Relationship Between Marketing Research & Marketing Strategy

Companies can use questionnaires to collect primary data.

Sound marketing strategies must be based on information, especially about the characteristics, needs and wants of target consumers. Marketing research provides tools for gathering, analyzing and applying these types of information. Without research, decision makers can only guess at what is or isn't boosting sales of their brand, leading to ill-chosen tactics and ineffective expenditures.

Analyzing Markets

Identifying consumers with high potential to respond to the firm's offering is the first step in developing a marketing strategy. These buyers may be selected based on demographic characteristics, like age and sex, or distinctive lifestyles, like fitness buffs or socialites. Segmentation research includes a set of approaches that can be used to profile different consumer groups. Data can also be gathered to estimate the size of each group, where they live, how much they spend, and what media they access.

Evaluating Tactics

Marketers have many alternatives in how to create, promote, price and distribute a product or service. Certain research methods, like surveys or experiments, can provide important information to help in choosing among different approaches. For example, survey respondents could be asked to rate a proposed product design in comparison to competitive brands, or to indicate at which outlets they prefer to shop. An in-store experiment could measure the effect of a point-of-purchase display on sales.

Types of Data

Marketing research can be based on either primary or secondary data. Primary data is original information, gathered by the researcher specifically to address the issue at hand. Secondary data is collected by others, for reasons unrelated to the issue. Both types can offer useful insights. For example, a hotel's customer satisfaction questionnaire would yield primary data about how well it is serving its own guests. But media reports about new hotel amenities would provide secondary data about the industry that could help identify new opportunities.

New Technologies

Thanks to increasingly sophisticated web-based data retrieval systems, marketers now have instant access to an unprecedented array of secondary data. They can also create virtual customer communities to provide instant feedback about their products in real time. New research vendors, called data aggregators, are pioneering methods of mining, integrating and analyzing information across websites and databases at a cost that will make these resources affordable to small firms as well as large corporations.

References

• "Marketing"; Charles Lamb, Joseph Hair, Carl McDaniel; 2009
• "Marketing Research"; Naresh Malhotra; 2010