Marketing research is "the process or set of processes that links the consumers, customers, and end users to the marketer through information — information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process. Marketing research specifies the information required to address these issues, designs the method for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, analyzes the results, and communicates the findings and their implications."[1]
It is the systematic gathering, recording, and
analysis of qualitative and quantitative
data about issues relating to marketing products and services. The goal of marketing
research is to identify and assess how changing elements of the marketing
mix impacts customer behavior. The term is commonly
interchanged with market research; however, expert practitioners may
wish to draw a distinction, in that market research is concerned
specifically with markets,
while marketing research is concerned specifically about marketing
processes.[2]
Marketing research is often partitioned into two
sets of categorical pairs, either by target market:
- Consumer
marketing research, and
- Business-to-business (B2B) marketing
research
Or, alternatively, by methodological approach:
- Qualitative
marketing research, and
- Quantitative
marketing research
Consumer marketing research is a form of applied sociology
that concentrates on understanding the preferences, attitudes, and behaviors of
consumers in
a market-based economy, and it aims to understand the effects and comparative
success of marketing campaigns. The field of consumer marketing research as a
statistical science was pioneered by Arthur
Nielsen with the founding of the ACNielsen
Company in 1923.[3]
Thus, marketing research may also be described as
the systematic and objective identification, collection, analysis, and
dissemination of information for the purpose of assisting management in
decision making related to the identification and solution of problems and
opportunities in marketing