Write a description of the different types of market research. This should include a definition of
the term ‘market research’ and its importance to businesses. It should also provide explanations
of the different methods used to gather data.
Market research is the process businesses go through in order to understand what are the
consumer’s wants and needs when using a product or service. There are two ways in which this
can be done, one is primary and the other is secondary. Primary market research is when a
company does research to find new information or data that has not been collected before,
which makes it new. The different ways of doing this is by Surveys, Questionnaires, Focus
groups, Interviews, Observation and Experimentation. Most of these methods can be achieved
online and offline as it is easy to create and easier to get information quickly. For Surveys, this
is a primary source of information which can be collected through questions that can be
quantitative and qualitative that is is used as a measurement, for example you can measure
how many people like Pepsi cola rather than Coca Cola. Another method is questionnaires, this
is used to find strong answers which can be used to solve problems, make amends or even just
be used to ask questions that we don’t know the answers to. Surveys and questionnaires bring
out the best information from the public which is why it used the most by businesses today, the
reason for this is that it can generate a lot of profit and increase their popularity with consumers
as they are offering what the public want or need. Furthermore, focus groups are used for
gathering people together for a session of answering questions to get views and opinions from.
The people gathered can be random and have no similarity whatsoever, or they can be the
target of people that the company wants to sell their product to, this can be by their income,
likes, dislike, age, gender, type of fashion and more. Also, in the session there might be
questions asked that might be personal, narrow, and open or closed which is all to help the
company or business get the answers that they need to make sure the session was a success.
Although, it can be hard to get people in with a specific personality to come in a group and
answer questions, the outcome of this method is that you will get the answers you will need
which makes it reliable and strong. In addition to this, interviews are quite the same as focus
groups but instead of having multiple people in one room, there is only two which is the
consumer and the interviewer. The person can be random or meet the requirements of the
organisation, and the questions asked can be the same as the focus group. The difference
between an interview and focus group is that all the answers has to come from the consumer
and not anyone else, which can be difficult to get answers if the consumer does not know the
answer to it or doesn’t know how to describe it. To put the consumer at ease, the interviewer
must ask questions that are not too hard to answer and give the consumer as much time as
they need, this is because every answer that comes out of the mouth of the consumer can be
very valuable to the company. Moreover, observation is another method of primary research
which involves an observer to watch and record notes on how consumers behaves and reacts
to when shopping. This allows the observer to see what consumers like and dislike to see, what
they buy and when they buy it, and how much they spend. All of these actions and thoughts of a
consumer allows the observer to understand why they do such things and how does it affect the
consumer. This method is also used by scientist which can be the reason why businesses have