Marketing information system has a more recent origin than marketing research.
Actually, while the first marketing information system were developed in 1960, the performance of marketing research as a separate activity of marketing began in 1920. Because of this, people feel that marketing information system should be an element or a subset of the marketing research system of an organisation.
This is so erroneous. As far as the acquisition and the process of information is concerned, marketing information system use of a broader scope than marketing research. And an organisation that is yet to have a formal marketing information system installed, the personnel of the marketing research department may be found performing the activities expected to be handled as marketing information system activities. This is not the best thing since such activities are often subjugated to marketing research activities. Rather, a firm should either establish a separate marketing information system, department or make marketing switches one of its unit or sub departments.
Actually, there are lots of differences between marketing information system and marketing research.
These differences are so much that the two activity areas should not be confused with each other. The most prominent among the differences between them have been highlighted below :
1. Marketing information system handles both internal and external information, while marketing research and sizes on handling external information.
2. Marketing information system is concerned with preventing as well as solving problems while marketing research is concerned with problem solving activities.
3. Marketing information system operates continuously as a system while marketing research operates in a fragmented intermittent fashion on a project by project basis.
4. Marketing information system tends to be future oriented while marketing research tends to focus on past rented information.
5. Marketing information system is a computer based process while marketing research needs to be computer based.
6. Marketing information system includes other subsystems of which marketing research is one, while marketing research is one source of information inputs for marketing information system.
