Understanding Marketing Research

Written by Kelechi onyegbulam, Marketing expert

The prime responsibility of the manager is decision making. A decision is a conclusion or a formal judgment precipitating action. It is a process of evaluation and comparison. In order to evaluate and compare it is necessary to have information. Without information the basis for decisions is guesswork. Occasionally , due to the law of averages, such intuitive efforts succeed. Frequently, management actions are based on experience alone and some measure of success may be achieved for the same reason as intuitive actions.

   Most managers will be aware of examples of successful ventures based on such meagre reasoning. With few exceptions, each such successes will have resulted despite the lack of information, not because the information was unnecessary. Risk in business is endemic, but it should never be a gamble. In the verger somerset Maugham brought elementary market research graphically into perspective. The main character decided to open a tobacconist's shop after walking a considerable distance to make a purchase. As he explained he knew from personal observation that the local demand was high. That decision was based in information, obtained at negligible expense; but even today projects costing many thousands of pounds are initially without adequate consideration of supply and demand.

  Marketing research is a process of investigation into the working of the distributive systems. Henry Ford, as has already been mentioned, found through marketing research the price at which cars would sell by the million and then developed his mass production techniques accordingly. He was equating supply with demand.

    Today,  with the average size of company increasing, decisions have become even more critical. While a bad decision involving €5000 By  a small form may have more disastrous consequences than an equally bad decision involving €1 million BH a large firm, the bigger investment decision may take two years to implement and a further three years before the outlay is recovered from profits. A time span of five years following a wrong decision could mean lost opportunities, frustrated, management and an overall decline in company prosperity, fat in excess of the project costs.

  Judged against the changes in the past five gears in product innovation, channels of distribution, price levels and market needs  - decisions made today require knowledge of future environment, events and human behaviour. Research into these influencing factors is essential.

   It is almost 2500 years since confucius said: ' Study the past if you would divine future.' At that time, communications, transport facilities and human knowledge were decidedly poor, production was confined to single items, so remedial decisions were easily made  and quickly implemented. In the twentieth century this is not so. Divining the future must be more sophisticated. Industry and commerce is a mass of interdependent parts, cohesively manipulated by government, with its appetite both nourished and deprived by world trade and by technological progress. Thus the past must be analysed, trends established and predictions made of innumerable influencing factors. Marketing research will not determine the future, but it can be used to illuminate the scene, to  eliminate the unlikely and to spotlight the probable. It can help to reduce business risk.