4.4

• Market research 


  refers to marketing activities designed to discover the opinions, beliefs and preferences of potential and existing customers.
• Ad hoc market research


  takes place on an ‘as and when necessary’ or one-off basis
• Continuous market research 


  takes place on a regular and on-going basis.
• The purpose of market research include:

  • Giving business up-to-date information.
  • Enabling businesses to improve their marketing strategies
  • Assessing customer reactions to a new product by testing it on a small group of customers (focus groups). Can prevent huge losses
  • Giving businesses a better understanding of the various activities and strategies used by their competitors 
  • Helping businesses to predict what is likely to happen in the future. Understanding the likely trends will enable businesses to react more accordingly in order to take advantage of future opportunities. 
• Primary market research/ field research/bespoke research

  involves gathering new and first-hand data for a specific purpose. 
• Advantages of primary research

  Relevance - primary market research is carried out for a specific purpose, so directly addresses the questions that need to be answered. 

  Up to date - secondary market research data tends to be more dated and therefore often less reliable than primary research findings 

  Confidential and unique - as it is conducted first-hand, no one else has access to the information
• Disadvantages of primary research

  Time-consuming - it can be a very tedious and lengthy task to collect primary research data that are accurate and representative 

  Costly-collecting primary data is often costly, due to the time involved to gather sufficient and meaningful data, or because data collection is difficult. 

  Validity - flames in market research will lead to misleading, incomplete and biassed results. 
• Survey =


  (sometimes referred to as a questionnaire) is a document that contains a series of questions used to collect data for a specific purpose.
• There are several types of surveys, such as:

  • Self-completed surveys - done by individual people to provide feedback and comments to the researcher
  • Personal surveys - conducted face to face, similar to an interview. 
  • Telephone surveys -similar to personal surveys but use telecommunications technology 
  • Online surveys - increasingly popular, cheaper, 
  • Postal surveys - sent to the individual, drawbacks = ignoring theme, delayed responses
• Survey drawbacks

  • Ability to generate quantitative and qualitative answers specific to the needs of the researcher. 
  • May be costly and time-consuming, as it is necessary to use a large enough sample to get statistically representative findings. 
  • May be reservations about the results due to bias or dishonest answers from some respondents. 
• Interviews =


  involve one-to-one discussions between an interviewer and interviewees, such as individual customers, to investigate their personal circumstances and opinions. 
• drawbacks of interviews

  • Provide a range of non-quantifiable information that might prove difficult to analyse or make any extrapolations from 
  • Time consuming to plan, conduct, and analyse 
• focus groups

  involve forming small discussion groups to gain insight into the opinions, attitudes and behaviours of respondents. 
• Drawbacks of focus groups

  • Only extroverts tend to take part as introverts are shy from group discussions and debates and are unlikely to participate = their views aren't acknowledged or represented 
  • Pressure to conform to the majority view rather than expressing personal opinions 
  • Participants often have to be paid 
• Observations

  watching how people behave and respond in different situations 
• Drawbacks of observations 


  May not actually reveal why a person behaves or responds in the way they do
• Secondary research involves


  the collection of second-hand data and information that already exists.
• Advantages of secondary research 

  • Cheaper and faster to collect and analyse
  • Provide an insight to changes or trends in an industry 
  • Huge range of information, Easy accessible 
  • Often based on large sample sizes, = statistically valid 
• Disadvantages of secondary research 

  • Information may be outdated or can become obsolete quire quickly
  • May be in an inappropriate format 
  • Provide only partial information 
  • Also available to competitors 
• Secondary market research can be collected from internal and external sources

  • Internal Sources = are those that have already been gathered by the organisation itself 
  • Company annual reports and sales records
  • External Sources = come from outside the business
  • Market analyses, academic journals, government publications, and media articles
• Market analyses


  reveals the characteristics, trends and outlook for a particular product or industry, such as market size, market share, market growth rates.
• Market analyses advantages

  • Enable businesses to access relevant up-to-date and detailed market data, trends, and forecasts
• Market analyses disadvantages

  • Expensive
  • Outdated quickly
• Academic journals


   are periodical publications from educational and research institutions.
• Academic journals purpose 


  to distribute and share theoretical work and market research findings, rather than to sell the information for profit.
• Advantages of academic journals

  • Contains the most-up-to-date research in an academic discipline 
  • Likely to be very reliable as it has been authored by academic scholars 
• Disadvantages of academic journals

  • Can be outdated
  • Often contestable
  • Charge users a fee to access their academic journals 
• Government Publications

  •  a broad range of data, such as population, censuses, social trends, labour market developments, trade statistics, unemployment rates, inflation rates etc. 
• Government publication advantages

  • Data and statics are comprehensive, reliable and up-to-date 
  • Cover wide range of topics = providing wealth of data 
  • Free
• Government publication disadvantages

  • Challenge in identifying and locating the information required 
  • Fee for researchers to obtain specialist and detailed information
• Media Articles 


  are text publications written about specific topic
• Advanatages of media articles

  • Up-to-date as it's frequently published 
  • Free 
  • Easy to access
• Disadvantages of media articles

  • Potential bias 
  • Can become out of date quickly, therefore irrelevant
• Online

  • Googling topics, 
  • Provides a range of invaluable information
• online advantages

  • Multiple sources
  • Readily available
• online disadvantages


  Can be costly
• Qualitative market research

  involves getting non-numerical answers and opinions from research respondents. It is commonly used as a part of primary market research but can feature in secondary market research. 
• Purpose of qualitative market research


   to understand the behaviour, attitudes, and perceptions of customers, employees or other respondents.
• Advantages of qualitative market research

  • Exploited the driving forces and restraining forces concerning the behaviours and attitudes of respondents.
  • Can be valuable 
  • Inexpensive yet provide detailed information
  • One-to-one interviews respondents aren't under the pressure of conforming to the views and opinions of the majority
• Disadvantages of qualitative market research

  • Small sampling size might not be entirely representative of the whole population.
  • Time consuming to conduct and to interpret findings. 
  • A high level of interviewing expertise is required to engage and encourage respondents. 
  • Interviewer bias might be introduced to serve the researcher's own purpose = validity of findings can be questionable