Marketing Research For Small

and Medium Enterprises

(SME’S)
Wael Kortam
Professor of Marketing,
Department of Business Administration,
Faculty of Commerce
Cairo University
 Why Marketing Research For
SME’s
Globalization of Markets
Deregulation of Industries
Drastic Changes in Customer Bases
Accelerated and Breakthrough Progress in
Marketing Research Methods and
Marketing Information Systems
Marketing Research Postulates for
SME’s
Marketing Research is the Scientific
Extreme of Marketing Practice
Marketing Research is the Main
Information Supplier and Knowledge
Retailer to All Other Marketing Areas
Marketing Research Is Means to an End
Marketing Research is a Problem Solving
Mechanism and a Change Catalyst
Marketing Research Literacy For
Entrepreneurs
Assess your needs for marketing research
Liaise with marketing researchers
Do your own limited-scale marketing
research
Evaluate marketing research outputs and
incorporate them into your decision
making process
Upgrade your marketing research
expertise and knowledge
Marketing Research Challenges for
SME’s
Scale Challenges
Budget Challenges
Time Challenges
People Challenges
Suppliers Challenges
What You Need to Know Through
?Marketing Research For SME’S
Know about yourself (Marketing Audit)
Know about your competitors
Know about your customers
Know about your external environment
 Value Added of Marketing
Research for SME’s
Finding Hidden Market Niches
Preserving Capital to Building Customer
Loyalty (Leveraging Marketing Efforts)
Identifying more business opportunities
with existing customers
Phases of Marketing Research For
SME’s
Phase One: Assessment of the need(s) for
Marketing Research (Rationale, Kinds,
Supplier, and quality)
Phase Two: Conducting the Marketing
Research Process (Encoding, Application,
Decoding)
Phase Three: Utilization of Marketing
Research Outputs (Instrumental,
Conceptual and Symbolic)
Marketing Research Services for
SME’s
Product Tests
Promotion Effectiveness
Retail Audits
Listing Services
Customer Values
Clipping Services
Market Intelligence
 Marketing Research-Oriented
Organizations For SME’s
Social Development Fund (EGYPT)
Small Business Administration (SBA)
(USA)
European Society of Marketing Research
(ESOMAR) – (Belgium)
British Market Research Society (BMRS),
(UK)
A.C. Nielsen, Synovate and Euro monitor
Web-Based Marketing Research
For SME’s
WWW Search Engines (Broad Profile)
Commercial Data Bases (Categorized
Information)
Deep Web (Highly Mass Customized
Information)
Marketing Research Pitfalls For
Small Business
Think it is costly
Try secondary research only
Use Web Searching Only
Hit the wall- Overdoing Marketing
Research (Franks tine Effect)
Rely on Family and Inmates Focus Groups
(Dracula Effect)
Adopt Big Company Attitude
 Marketing Research Tips For
SME’s
Facts Not Assumption
No need to reinvent the wheel
Listen to people
Know your data
If you tortured your data, it will confess
No room for complacency
Make your understanding grow alongside
your knowledge