1.

Advise one of your clients on the importance of effective marketing research and identify the
key elements of the marketing research process.
( 2016 March Q5) ( 20 marks)

Answer- Marketing research definition, importance of effective marketing research, diagram of research
process, explain detail the diagram from( defining the research objective to report the findings) ( Page-106-
119)

Marketing research is systematic problem analysis, model building and fact finding for the purposes of
important decision making and control in the marketing of goods and services. There are many importance of
effective marketing research. By doing marketing research, marketers can get information about the market
and marketing environment, it can help marketers to measure the current situations and to anticipate future
development and make better decision. It also helps to identify new opportunities in the marketplace, suggest
appropriate distribution channels, evaluate and analyze the company’s reputation and performance, minimize
the risk involved in making decisions and one steps ahead of competitors.

Marketing research process has four steps and which are described below.

The first step is finding what needs to be researched. This can be a difficult step because if the company does
not identify the correct research opportunity and they can get skewed data that does not help them solve the
problem or assist in growing their business. It contains two parts of defining problem and setting up research
objectives. In problem definition, it is important to be specific, avoiding uncertainties and simplifications. Care
should also be taken, not to define problems in too narrow and that may distract the researcher’s perspective.

Once the problem is defined, the next step is what the researcher wants to achieve and is called objectives. To
be meaningful and help focus the researcher’s attention, this objective should be SMART. The purpose of this
objective is to act as guide to the researcher and help him in maintaining a focus of research. Marketing
research project might have one of the three type of objectives.

The objective of exploratory research is to conduct when the researcher doesn’t know how and why the
certain phenomenon occurs. Eg. How does a customer evaluate the quality of bank or airline services? Focus
group, interviewing key customer groups, experts and even search for printed and published information are
some common techniques. The objective of descriptive research is to carry out to describe phenomenon or
market characteristic. Eg the study of the effect of sales promotions on customer buying behaviors of
electronic products in Myanmar and objective of causal research is to establish cause and effect relationship,
eg. The influence of income and life style effect on purchase decision.

The next step in marketing research is to develop the research plan. The research plan will allow marketers to
sort out the details of which information they need to make a reasonable marketing decision. In these part
marketers first need to identify the data they need to make marketing decisions. So marketer make sure to
use the right data. There are two sources of data or information ( primary & secondary)

Secondary data: it refer to the information that has been collected earlier by someone else. This includes
printed or published reports, news items,etc. this also include internal documents like invoices, sales reports,
payments history of customers etc. Primary data: to overcome the limitations of inconsistency, oldness and
bias, the researcher turn to the primary data. Primary sources refer to the data collected directly from the
market place, customers. They are also reliable data sources and help in overcoming limitations of secondary
data. The problem of primary data is costly and spends more time. Data can be collected through any or
combination observation or experimentation or survey method.

The researcher next puts the research plan into action and it involves collecting, processing, and analyzing the
information. Data collecting can be carried out by research staff or outside firm. Researchers must also
process and analyze the collected to isolate important information from insight. It is important to understand
raw data has no usage in marketing research and appropriate analytical tools must be used. The most
elementary is arithmetic analysis using percentage and ratio. Statistical analysis like mean, medium, mode,
percentages, standard deviation and coefficient of correlations should be used to measure the result.

The last stage is report and making presentation to the decision makers. It is important that the report is
summary and called executive summary and giving birth eye view of the research. The structure of good
report should contain introduction of problem, marketing research finding or survey finding, interpretation of
research findings and policy suggestion. Thus managers and researchers must work together closely when
interpreting research results and must share responsibilities for the whole research process and resulting
decisions.

( if you have other idea on importance of market research and research process depend on your own
experience, you can add more with your own idea)