Question

If a business chooses not to utilize marketing research, what would be its reasoning to do so? If you were speaking to the leader of one of these businesses, what would you say to convey to that person the benefits of marketing research?

Answer 1

Market research can be of various types. It can provide a restrictive vision and drill down deep into a problem. It can also be expansive or exploratory to generate new ideas and approaches to a problem. It can be used to study certain key aspects of an existing business or can also provide new business opportunities. Overall it has a wide scope when it comes to the reason why companies use market research. Companies use market research for various reasons. Some of the most common reasons are

· Understanding the customers

· Competitor analysis and positioning

· Product testing

· New product idea generation/diversifying

· Demand estimation/forecasting

The benefits of market research are many. However, instead of repeating the reasons why market research is performed, we should look at the underlying reasons. Some of them are

· Market research makes us question our current practices

· It makes us consider problem statements

· Exploratory research can point us to new directions

· Exploratory researches can reveal problems we didn’t know existed with our product/services

· Helps in forecasting the business in general

· Provides strong input for strategic planning