marketing research

• the systematic design, collection, analysis, and reporting of data and findings relevant to a specific marketing situation facing the organization 
• research is critical
• marketing research terminology can be characterized in different ways 
• research objective - explanatory, descriptive, casual (cause- effect) 
• stage in planning process - fethonography, etc ormative, pretest, monitoring, evaluation
• source of information - secondary data or primary data 
• research approach - quantitative research or qualitative research 
• primary data collection method - surveys , interviews, focus groups, crowdsourcing, experimental research, observation, ethnography etc. 
• market research plan 
• research purpose - what questions do you need to answer? what decisions will this research inform 
• audience - for whom is the research being conducted? to whom will it be presented 
• informational objectives - what specific information do you need?
• respondents or participants - from whom do you need information? whose opinion matters? 
• research techniques - what is the most efficent and effective way to gather this information
• sample design - how many respondents or participants? from what population will you select your sample? how will you get access to this sample? 
• pretest - with whom will the questionere or moderator's guide be pretested? who will conduct the pretest
• data collection 
• analysis 
• report