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Designing and Using Market Research Effectively

According to Kotler, "Marketing research is the systematic design, collection,analysis, and reporting of data and findings relevant to a specific marketing situation facing the company."

Most large companies have a separate department to do market research but for a small entrepreneur it has to be done, mostly on his own. Nowadays there are outside specialized research agencies available that do market research for you.

The market research process involves the following five steps:

1. Define the Problem and Research Objective: It says that the problem should be defined accurately and objectives should be laid down clearly to solve the problem.

2. Develop the Research Plan: This stage involves the plan development to get the needed information like data sources, research approach, research instruments, sampling plan, and contact methods.

3. Collect the Information: This is the most error prone phase. Problem comes when the respondents do not answer properly or they are not available.

4. Analyze the Information: In this phase, collected data is analyzed and the information is used by the researchers to tabulate the data.

5. Present the Findings: This is the last step, where the researcher gives the information to the relevant parties.

Lets us take dairy unit example to understand market research process more effectively: A group of young entrepreneurs are contemplating to start selling of liquid milk in the nearby town. They may start the marketing research by defining the problem statement as -"What are the unmet needs of consumers from existing milk product offering".

To answer this problem statement, they make the research plan that includes a administering a questionnaire to 30 households (randomly selected) in 10 colonies of the town. The questionnaire design is such that it captures qualitative and quantitative information on various aspects like timely delivery, quality of milk with respect to freshness, flavor, smell, packaging quality etc.Subsequently administer this questionnaire door-to-door and collect relevant information. Subsequently, document the outcome. The result could be that the erratic supply is the most important unmet demand of the customer, at present.As a result, entrepreneurs need to focus on supply chain aspect of business to penetrate and be successful in the market with their product.

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