TABLE OF CONTENTS All kinds of organizations use, and need to use, marketing research techniques. The traditional and still the biggest users are the large, fast-moving consumer goods companies. Increasingly, marketing research is being applied by smaller organizations, by manufacturers of consumer-durable products and by suppliers of services. In recent years it has been applied by non-profit-making organizations such as charities, churches, official bodies and government departments at both local and national levels. Despite diversity in the aims and objectives of these widely differing organizations, what they have in common is the need to make decisions about the allocation of resources so as to be as effective and efficient as possible in achieving their goals. Resource allocation decisions can be improved by the acquisition of accurate, relevant and timely data and it is this which market research seeks to produce.
Getting started as a research user begins by answering three questions:
What does the organization need research for?
What types of research data are there?
How can the organization obtain the research it needs?
Being able to define precisely what marketing research can and should be doing for the organization is the first step in achieving it. One way of doing this is to reflect on the organization as a whole and decide what are its most pressing problems. The answers below were given by delegates to the Chartered Institute of Marketing's introductory course on market research:
From an insurance company: We...
