MARKETING RESEARCH
Marketing research
is "the function that links the consumer, customer, and public
to the marketer through information — information used to
identify and define marketing opportunities and problems;
generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor
marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as
a process. Marketing research specifies the information required
to address these issues, designs the method for collecting
information, manages and implements the data collection process,
analyzes the results, and communicates the findings and their
implications."[1]
Marketing research is the systematic gathering, recording, and
analysis of data about issues relating to
marketing products and services. The goal of marketing
research is to identify and assess how changing elements of the
marketing mix impacts
customer behavior. The term is commonly interchanged with
market research; however, expert practitioners may wish to
draw a distinction, in that market research is concerned
specifically with
markets, while marketing research is concerned
specifically about marketing processes.[2]
Marketing research is often partitioned
into two sets of categorical pairs, either by target market:
Or, alternatively, by methodological
approach:
Consumer marketing research is a form of
applied
sociology that concentrates on understanding the
preferences, attitudes, and behaviors of
consumers in a market-based economy, and it aims to
understand the effects and comparative success of marketing
campaigns. The field of consumer marketing research as a
statistical science was pioneered by
Arthur Nielsen with the founding of the
ACNielsen Company in 1923.[3]
Thus, marketing research may also be
described as the systematic and objective identification,
collection, analysis, and dissemination of information for the
purpose of assisting management in decision making related to
the identific
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