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A Desiscion-Making Perspective on Marketing research – Budget Rent-A-Car Corporation
In seeking growth opportunities in the car rental market against three dominant competitors, Budget uncovered a “professional care” segment who felt “that nobody cares about me anymore.” The next question was: What kind of programs would be appealing to this segment?
These examples could be multiplied by thousands, for virtually every private- and public-sector organization encounters the same pressures for more and better information about its markets. Whether the organization serves customers in competitive market environments or clients in a public-sector enterprise, there is a need to understand and satisfy the changing needs of diverse groups of people. This task is greatly complicated within the private sector by the nature of competitive action, which is relatively unpredictable and seldom in the best interests of the firm. Competition also exists in many parts of the public sector. For example, private delivery services are effectively supplementing the faltering postal services in many cities, and publicly operated clinics compete with privately financed and operated health maintenance organizations.
Overall, the similarities outweigh the differences between the private and the public sector so far as the functions of marketing research in the organization are concerned. This is reflected in the following definition, which serves equally well in both decision-making situations.
Marketing research is the Junction that links an organization to its market through information. This information is 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; interprets the results and communicates the findings and their implications.
American Marketing Association
Official Definition of Marketing Research, 1987.
This definition highlights the role of marketing research as an aid to decision making. An important feature is the inclusion of the specification and interpretation of needed information. Too often marketing research is considered narrowly as the gathering and analyzing of data for someone else to use. Finally, marketing research is defined as an information input to decisions, not simply the evaluation of decisions that have been made.
The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate and discuss the role that marketing research does—or should—play in the organization: When should marketing research be used? What are some examples of useful marketing research? Why is it used? For what kinds of decisions? What do the users expect? This chapter begins with a discussion of the role of marketing research in analyzing markets and developing and controlling marketing strategies and programs.
Next, the factors that contribute to successful marketing research are reviewed. The chapter then concludes with an overview of the research industry to clarify the relationships among various information providers and the ultimate users they serve.