The field of marketing research can be quite exciting, as it may involve dynamic interactions with data, statistical analysis intended to find the way to greater profitability, and creativity. It can also be quite lucrative.
The most common type of marketing research involves what is known as problem-identification research, or problem-solving research. This type of marketing research covers a wide array of endeavors, however.
A few of the most well-known of these positions include: Brand Name Testing, where one seeks to find out what consumers feel about the names of given products; Brand Equity Research, which involves finding out how favorably consumers view a given brand; Concept Testing, which as the name implies tests the acceptance of a concept by target consumers; Sales Forecasting, which seeks to determine the reasonably expected level of sales with respect to the level of demand; Advertising Research, which gathers data that is to be used to predict copy testing or to track the efficacy of advertisements for any medium with respect to a given ad’s ability to grab attention, communicate the intended message, build a brand’s image, and motivate the consumer into the buying motion; and, in the age of the Internet, Viral Marketing Research, which is intended to allow the estimating of the probability that specific targeted communications will be transmitted throughout an individual's social network.
Qualitative marketing research, quantitative marketing research, ethnographic studies, and/or experimental techniques may be used in problem-identification or problem-solving marketing research.
Typically, the educational level that is needed to land a marketing research job is a Master's Degree in Marketing Research, which the College Board defines as ''A program that prepares individuals to provide analytical descriptions of consumer behavior patterns and market environments to marketing managers and other business decision-makers. Includes instruction in survey research methods, research design, new product test marketing, exploratory marketing, consumer needs and preferences analysis, geographic analysis, and applications to specific products and markets.''
A person who wishes to become a marketing researcher will need to have exceptional quantitative skills, so they are able to draw abstract, broad-based conclusions from data patterns. They should also possess strong communication skills so that they can understand the nature of marketing and advertising, what ends it seeks, and how it seeks them.
According to Marye Tharp, who has degrees in marketing and international business, including a PhD and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin, ''Any communication or marketing professional needs cross-cultural research and communication skills to be able to succeed in the future.''
The typical everyday activities of the marketing researcher can be intense, and they are part of what is known as the ''research process.''
The first step in this research process is establishing the need for marketing research in a given area; that is, the researcher needs to have an in-depth understanding of why the sought information is needed in the first place. Needless to say, this very first step involves the researcher simply getting to know a company's products and services intimately, and then monitoring any previously existing data concerning their sales volumes, their profit margins, their relative success or failure, etc. so as to identify potential problems, areas for improvement, or areas which can probably be used for increasing profits by repeating a successful past marketing strategy.
Once this is established, the researcher then makes a list of what a given marketing research project would have for its objectives, asking, ''Why is this project being conducted?'' He or she then lists all the possible benefits.
Then the researcher designs the formal research project. This entails identifying the appropriate sources of data for the study, which begins with generating primary data. It is recognized that there are three methods for generating primary data: experimentation, observation, and survey. To these will be added later on the two types of secondary data: internal (data originating within the firm), and external (published data originating outside the firm).
If these data aren't already collected in sufficient quantity, the marketing researcher will undertake data collection actions. Typically, although not always, the methods of data collection are focus groups, surveys, or interviews.
The marketing researcher will, throughout, need to determine the appropriate target population of the research, and when collecting data or doing testing he or she will need to draw and use random samples: groups of units composed of non-overlapping elements that are representative of the population from which they are taken.
Finally, after all the data are collected, the marketing researcher does editing and coding. According to writers Thomas C. Kinnear and James R. Taylor, ''Editing involves reviewing the data forms to ensure legibility, consistency, and completeness. Coding involves establishing categories for responses or groups of responses so that numerals can be used to represent the categories.''
After all of this is done, the marketing researcher will present his or her findings and analysis conclusions to management and the marketing department. He or she must be able to be circumspect yet concise, and very clear.
There are, of course, many new software programs for PCs that constantly emerge in the market to help with all of this data collecting, collating, and managing.
However, one of the emerging marketing research technologies is actually an old technique: the NPS, or net promoter score, which is a management tool that allows customers to be categorized into three groups: promoters, passives, and detractors. Viral marketing researcher Paul Mardsen writes, ''For the research community [the NPS is] a brilliant thing because it’s enabled us to have real impact at top level. After having been emasculated for years as these people who speak in hieroglyphics and commission studies that end up getting filed away, it’s increased our exposure to board-level business. What NPS does is it speaks their language. It’s the simplicity of the model that has been attractive, and has made research intelligible at board level.''
