Page 146 - DLIS402_INFORMATION_ANALYSIS_AND_REPACKAGING

Unit 7: Marketing of Information

Notes

With consumers’ eroding attention span and willingness to give time to advertising
messages, marketers are turning to forms of permission marketing such as branded
content, custom media and reality marketing.

7.4 Marketing Research

Marketing research involves conducting research to support marketing activities, and the statistical
interpretation of data into information. This information is then used by managers to plan marketing
activities, gauge the nature of a firm’s marketing environment and attain information from suppliers.
Marketing researchers use statistical methods such as quantitative research, qualitative research,
hypothesis tests, Chi-squared tests, linear regression, correlations, frequency distributions, passion,
distributions, binomial distributions, etc. to interpret their findings and convert data into information.
The marketing research process spans a number of stages, including the definition of a problem,
development of a research plan, collection and interpretation of data and disseminating information
formally in the form of a report.

The task of marketing research is to provide management with relevant, accurate,
reliable, valid, and current information.

A distinction should be made between marketing research and market research. Market research
pertains to research in a given market. As an example, a firm may conduct research in a target
market, after selecting a suitable market segment. In contrast, marketing research relates to all
research conducted within marketing. Thus, market research is a subset of marketing research.

Types of Marketing Research
Marketing research, as a sub-set aspect of marketing activities, can be divided into the following
parts:
• Primary research (also known as field research), which involves the conduction and compila-
tion of research for a specific purpose.
• Secondary research (also referred to as desk research), initially conducted for one purpose,
but often used to support another purpose or end goal.
An example of primary research would be market research conducted into health foods, which is
used solely to ascertain the needs/wants of the target market for health foods. Secondary research
in this case would be research pertaining to health foods, but used by a firm wishing to develop an
unrelated product.

Primary research is often expensive to prepare, collect and interpret from data to information.
Nevertheless, while secondary research is relatively inexpensive, it often can become outdated and
outmoded, given that it is used for a purpose other than the one for which it was intended.
Primary research can also be broken down into quantitative research and qualitative research, which,
as the terms suggest, pertain to numerical and non-numerical research methods and techniques,
respectively. The appropriateness of each mode of research depends on whether data can be
quantified (quantitative research), or whether subjective, non-numeric or abstract concepts are
required to be studied (qualitative research).

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