Marketing Research: The "Behind the Scenes" of Marketing

Ian O.

       Marketing is known as a very dominate factor in the business world, and with the proper use of it's strategies it can completely change your business, for better or for worse. What is often unseen about this process of promotion and advertising is the research behind each move. Every advertisement put out, every event promoted, even every label on a product has had countless tests done and surveys preformed in order to make sure that it is as effective as possible at what it needs to do. As David Ogilvy, a renowned advertiser during the 20th century, once said

Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore 

decodes of enemy signals. 

      This division of marketing, known simply as Marketing Research, is defined as the function that connects the general public's interests, whether they be current or predicted, with the marketer through the use of data. In order to understand where this data comes from, we must look at the types of marketing research. 

Primary Research

      Primary research is anything that your company or a research company you hire comes up with for that specific marketing research project. This can stem from multiple tactics, some of the more common and well known being customer surveys and questionnaires. These are essentially a couple, typically no more then 10, questions asking about yourself and your interaction with the product or service. Some examples of these questions could be "In what age group are you?" or "How often do you buy this product?", with the key similarity being they are simple and quick multiple choice or yes/no questions. One of the key mistakes made when making these surveys is the use of written word answers or lengthy questions, which typically leads to low response rates, though those who do respond give more detailed answers. 

       This balance between response rates and actual detailed answers is what describes the two sides of primary research, quantitative data and qualitative data. Quantitative data is all about getting as many responses as possible, even if the detail isn't much or even there. This is where most surveys and questionnaires will fall, with them being fairly cheap to do and easy to do. Qualitative data is the exact opposite of this, with the focus being of detailed answers, even if there are not that many. Few surveys/questionnaires will fall on this side, though a common way to get qualitative data is through focus groups, or groups of people not associated with the company who sit around for a certain amount of time and give their comments or opinions on a new product or ad. This is a long and much more expensive process, but it yields very detailed results and gives a much more in depth look into the consumer's mindset

Secondary Research

       Secondary research is essentially all the research that wouldn't fall under primary research. This covers anything that the company looks at that wasn't created by them or anyone they hired for that current project. Secondary research is much broader in terms of what is out there, with anything from government population surveys to a competitors quarterly report being free reign. Secondary research can even be previous data that your company came up with, but in a different project. This large amount of ways to get data is what makes secondary research so popular among companies, even though some draw backs are how biased it can be as well as that the research data might not completely match with what your need. It is much like data in terms of the scientific fields, where there is plenty of outside research you could use to reference to your own experiment, but typically it won't pertain to everything your experiment needs. Nothing can beat the accuracy of primary data, or in the case of the example, your own data for experimentation.

So why is any of this important? 

For that, we get to look at the beverage powerhouse Coca Cola. In the mid 1980's, Coca Cola was in the midst of fighting off newcomer Pepsi Co. for dominance over the soda industry. They misconducted their marketing research for their new product and created New Coke while taking their original coke off the market. This mistake cost them millions and tarnished their reputation because of improper data and a poor taste test set up with their focus groups. They eventually brought their old formula back as Coke Classic and eventually took New Coke off the market, essentially cutting their losses. Just imagine that a company like Coca Cola almost destroyed itself and it's brand because of a mistake in their marketing research. This only highlights how important this research can be and how much it can make or break not only your product/service, but your company as a whole.

Picture Sources:

Coke/New Coke: http://blog.retroplanet.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/new-coke-change.jpg

Primary Info/Secondary Info: http://a.files.bbci.co.uk/bam/live/content/zp3w6sg/large