“The basic purpose of marketing research is to facilitate decision making process”.

 Marketing research is a crucial part of marketing system; it helps to refine ideas in decisions making of management by giving accurate, appropriate, and timely information. Every decision requires unique needs for information, and appropriate strategies can be evolved based on the information collected through marketing research. Too often, marketing research is considered briefly as the collecting, analysing and interpreting of data and information for someone else to use. Creative use of market information helps firms to attain and maintain a competitive advantage. Hence, marketing research is defined as input information to decision making, not simply the analysis of decisions which you took. Market research alone will not guarantee success; the clever use of market research is the key to business success. A competitive edge of the firm relies on how information is used by you than others don’t have or if doesn’t use the information. Marketing decisions contains problem that range from fundamental move in the positioning of a business or the decision to penetrate a new market to list tactical questions of how best to load a grocery shelf.

Situation analysis, strategy development, marketing program development, and implementation are the four stages which helps decision making in market planning process. During each stage, marketing research gives a major present for clarifying and diagnosing issues and then selecting among decision alternatives. Marketing research is not an instantaneous or an obvious way for finding solutions to all managerial problems in organisation. A manager who is facing with a particular problem should not blindly go for conducting a marketing research to find a solution to the problem, several factors to be considered before ordering marketing research. Sometimes it is better not to perform marketing research. Hence, the central decision to be made is whether to do or don’t do market research is called for in a specific situation. Factors that influence initial decision are as follows:

• Relevance
• Type and Nature of Information Sought
• Time
• Availability of scarce Resources
• Cost-Benefit Analysis

Marketing research not only makes the decision making process simpler, but it also reduces the risks associated with the decision-making process. The risks arise because of uncertainty of what will happen in future. For instance, it is never certain as to how the customers or distributors would believe in future or the manner in which the competition will react. To the extent that research provides information about the future, it anticipates the future and provides the manager with a sound basis for his decision-making. However, one cannot overlook the fact that research couldn't provide perfectly exact or accurate information. Uncertainty about the expected outcome of the decisions will always retain there, no matter how much information one has collected to base one's decision on hard facts. 

Even though research is performed to generate information, but managers will not readily use the information to solve their issues. The factors that influence a manager's decision to use research output are quality of research, conformity to prior expectations, presentation clarity, political acceptability within the firm, and challenge to the status quo. But make a note that researchers and managers agree that only the technical quality of research is the key determination of research use. Also, managers are less favorable to utilize research that does not conform to prior belief or is not politically acceptable. Some researchers state that the use of information and data is a function of the direct and indirect effects of environmental, informational, organizational, and individual factors. However, a researcher should not manipulate the findings to match a manager's prior belief. Further, managers in consumer firms are less likely to utilize research findings than their peer in industrial firms. This is due to a higher exploratory objective in data gathering, a greater interest of formal organizational structure, and a lesser interest of surprise in the data gathering. Ethics defines the moral principles or values that generally regulate the conduct of an individual or group.

It makes sense then that international brands invest heavily in market research. Learning from a few case studies, see how multinationals relied on sound research to inform product decisions, to-market strategies, elevate business, and seriously level-up advertising.  

First Direct Used Marketing Research to Regain Market Share

The problem:  

First Direct (established in 1989 as a telephone bank) expanded into online banking as technology changed with the turn of the century. Despite evolving in line with market trends, the bank struggled to make ground against stronger market competition.

The research:             

The market research consultancy used various methodologies similar to ours. These included case study personas, user profiles and quantitative research methods like collating stats to indicate customer brand perception. Qualitative research like focus groups and in-depth interviews revealed how customers felt about First Direct’s move to online banking.

The findings:             

Customer brand perception research pinpointed weaknesses in customer service as the cause and identified which areas required focus. The research results enabled the bank to make changes that their customer base genuinely appreciated.

 The results:      

Nowadays, they consistently rank as a top customer service provider. In January of 2021, First Direct was named Britain’s best brand for customer service delivery in the latest Customer Satisfaction Index.

Mitsubishi Pajero’s Research Failure Folly

There are countless examples of brand wins underpinned by research, but what happens when a brand skips this step?

Mitsubishi found out the hard way, losing significant sales in Spanish-speaking regions. This happened when the Japanese car manufacturer launched the “Pajero”, unaware that this is a derogatory term in Spanish. Their failure to conduct international research before entering the market resulted in a highly costly exercise, ending with the model’s name eventually being changed to “Moderno” in Spain and other Spanish-speaking territories.