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Market Research Essay

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Market Research

Market research is carried out by a business before they launch a product, to find out what the target market wants and what they could do to increase the appeal of their product. It involves thoroughly gathering, recording and analysing data and can often take a large amount of time. A wide variety of market research techniques are used to find out what customers want. Depending on the product, customers are asked questions like: Where are they? Can we satisfy them? How can we improve our product for them?

There are two types of market research. The first, Field or Primary Research, is the process of gathering new information about the market. The term ‘field’ comes about …show more content…

Questionnaires can be carried out a number of ways, including face-to-face, over the telephone or through the post.

* Test marketing/product testing: This is when a product is marketed and tested by a small part of the total market. The aim of this is to see if the product would be suitable for commercial release, and what changes can be made to the product to make it better or more suitable.

* Consumer groups/panels: This is where a select group of people are give a product and asked to comment in detail on what could be improved or changed. It is probably the least effective form of field research as the sample of people is so small, that fewer opinions can be taken into consideration.

Methods of secondary (desk) research are:

* Government Statistics: Useful sources of information carried out by the government include the National Census. A full Census is carried out once every ten years in the United Kingdom. It shows many different sets of data, including age, income, religion and where people live. Government statistics also include the Family Expenditure Survey and Social Trends.

* Published market research information: This type of

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