ICC/ESOMAR (International Chamber of Commerce/Global Market Researchers Association) and China Market Research Association define standards as follows:
"refers to the information-oriented research process, including the information needed to concretize the corresponding problems, designing the methods of information collection, managing and implementing the data collection process, analyzing the research results, drawing conclusions and determining its significance, etc. In terms of classification, it includes quantitative research, qualitative research, retail research, media and advertising research, business and industrial research, ethnic minorities and special groups research, opinion polls and desktop research. "
Please note that this definition includes not only commercial market research activities, but also research on ethnic minorities and special groups, opinion polls and desktop research.
As an industry, market research has a history of 100 years in the world and nearly 20 years in China. In 2005, the turnover of market research industry in Chinese mainland was RMB 5 billion, which refers to the first-hand turnover of commercial companies and related institutions specializing in market research.
Common market survey consumer survey: observe and study specific consumers, purposefully analyze their purchasing behavior, the evolution of consumer psychology and so on.
Market observation: comparative analysis of specific industrial fields, and research from the organizational perspective of economy, science and technology.
Product survey: study the development history, design, production and other related factors of the same product of a certain nature.
Advertising research: analyze and sort out the promotion effect of specific advertisements.
It may include the following contents: market trial sale: before the product goes on the market, provide a certain amount of trial products to designated consumers, and study the future market trend of this product through their reactions.
Concept test: for designated consumers, use questionnaires or telephone interviews to test whether new sales ideas have a market.
Mysterious shopping: arranging hidden researchers to buy specific goods or consume specific services, and completely recording the whole shopping process to test the attitude of products and services. Also known as mystery guest or mystery guest shopping.
Retail store audit: used to judge whether chain stores or retail stores provide appropriate services.
Demand estimation: used to judge the maximum demand level of products, so as to find big customers.
Sales forecast: after finding the maximum demand level, judge how many products or services can be sold.
Customer satisfaction survey: use questionnaires or interviews to quantify customer satisfaction with products.
Distribution review distribution channel audit: used to judge the attitude of potential retailers and wholesalers to products, brands and companies.
Price elasticity test: used to find out the consumers who are first affected when the price changes.
Quadrant research subdivision research: demographic method is used to divide the consumption behavior and psychological thinking of potential consumers into quadrants.
Research on consumer decision-making process: analyze the factors that affect consumers' purchase of this product and their behavior patterns when changing their purchase decisions.
Brand name test: to study consumers' feelings about new product names.
Brand equity: Quantify consumers' preference for different brands.
Research on advertising and promotion activities: investigate whether sales techniques, such as advertising, have achieved the expected benefits, and whether people who watch advertisements really understand the information. Did they really buy it because of the advertisement?
What are the forms of the above market research? Solve the problem? The way of classification.
In addition, there are different classification methods, such as? Exploratory? 、? Decisive. ? Exploratory? The way of comparison focuses on the decoding and analysis of the problem; And emphasize conclusive opinions and understanding. And the so-called? Our research is often used to infer the overall consumer.
Both of the above methods are so-called first-hand information. Marketing companies often conduct large-scale research in these two ways, which consumes a lot of money and time. In contrast, second-hand data refers to the analysis after studying these published first-hand data, which requires less financial resources, but it is often not the perfect form that market analysts want.
Skills of Market Research Technically speaking, there are four skills of market research.
Qualitative marketing research qualitative marketing research: the most commonly used. Simply put, it is to divide the west from the numerical answers of the respondents, not for the whole population, nor for a large-scale statistics. Common examples are: focus groups, in-depth interviews, project progress, etc.
Quantitative marketing research: adopting hypothetical form, adopting random sampling and inferring results from the number of samples, which is often used in large-scale research such as population census and economic power survey. Common examples are: large-scale questionnaire, inquiry form system questionnaire, etc.
Observation technology: researchers observe social phenomena and set their own cross practices, that is, horizontal comparison (usually referring to temporal comparison) and vertical comparison (comparing with different societies or different phenomena at the same time); Common examples are: product usage analysis and browser cookie analysis.
Experimental technique: The researcher creates a semi-artificial environment to test users. This semi-artificial environment can control some influencing factors that researchers want to compare, such as purchasing laboratories and test sites.
Market researchers often use the above four methods comprehensively. They may first get some background knowledge from second-hand materials, then interview the target consumer groups (qualitative research design) to explore more problems, and finally may further conduct a large-scale national survey (quantitative) according to the specific requirements of customers.
Words commonly used in market research Since politics intervened in market research, market research has developed many specialized terms and theories because it is necessary to know how much support candidates have before the election, what is popular and what is criticized in political views. Mata-analysis (also known as Schmidt-Hunt technology) believes that the final statistical data should be composed of multiple and multiple research concepts. Conceptualization means transforming metaphorical psychological images into clear concepts. Computerization is a way for researchers to measure special and obvious consumer behaviors and turn them into concepts. Precision precision is the precision comparison of any market adjustment method. Reliability en: Reliability refers to whether the data analysis results after market adjustment meet the original plan, and if not, it needs to be readjusted. Validity en: Validity refers to whether the design and measurement of time, place and people in the process of market adjustment are too complicated or have deviated from the original theme. In order to obtain valid data, market researchers often ask themselves. Are you currently measuring the data you originally intended to measure? ? .
Applied research refers to putting forward specific and valuable assumptions to meet the customers who pay for research. For example, a cigarette company with strong financial resources may entrust a market research company to investigate and prove that cigarettes are good for health. Many researchers often face a certain degree of moral problems when conducting this type of applied research.
False marketing mainly refers to a controversial sales technique. Some salespeople pretend to be market researchers, but in fact they are promotional activities. This kind of example most often occurs in telephone interviews, and the interviewee will feel that the other party is constantly strengthening its sales intention and trying to arouse the interviewee's purchase intention. Sugar is the abbreviation of sales under the guise of market research. (Camouflage: Appearance)
Frugality is a controversial fund-raising behavior, and some new companies will pretend to be market regulation companies and open fake cases to obtain a lot of funds. FRUG is short for raising funds under the guise of market research.
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Contents and methods of market research
Market research is the starting point of marketing activities. It can understand and grasp the market through certain scientific methods, collect, sort out and analyze market information in investigation activities, grasp the laws and trends of market development and change, and provide reliable data and information for enterprises to make market predictions and decisions, thus helping enterprises to establish correct development strategies.
1, the content of market research
The content of market research involves the whole process of marketing activities, mainly including:
(1) Market environment survey
Market environment investigation mainly includes economic environment, political environment, social and cultural environment, scientific environment and natural geographical environment. The specific investigation content can be the purchasing power level of the market, economic structure, national guidelines, policies and laws and regulations, customs and habits, scientific development trends, climate and other factors that affect marketing.
(2) Market demand survey
Market demand survey mainly includes consumer demand survey, consumer income survey, consumer structure survey and consumer behavior survey, including why consumers buy, what to buy, quantity, frequency, time, manner, habits, preferences and post-purchase evaluation.
(3) Market supply survey
Market supply survey mainly includes product production capacity survey and product entity survey. Specifically, the quantity, quality, function, model and brand of products that can be provided in a product market, as well as the situation of production and supply enterprises, etc.
(4) Investigation of marketing factors
The investigation of marketing factors mainly includes the investigation of products, prices, channels and promotions. Product survey mainly includes understanding new product development, design, consumer use, consumer evaluation, product life cycle stage, product mix and so on. The price survey of products mainly includes understanding consumers' acceptance of prices and their response to price strategies. Channel survey mainly includes understanding the structure of channels, the situation of middlemen and consumers' satisfaction with middlemen. The investigation of promotional activities mainly includes the effects of various promotional activities, such as the effect of advertising implementation, the effect of personnel promotion, the effect of business promotion, and the market reaction of external publicity.
(5) Market competition survey
Market competition investigation mainly includes the investigation and analysis of competitive enterprises, understanding the products and prices of similar enterprises, and what competitive means and strategies have been adopted, so as to help enterprises determine their competitive strategies through investigation.
2, the method of market research
The methods of market survey mainly include observation, experiment, interview and questionnaire survey.
(1) observation method
It is the most basic method of social investigation and market research. It is based on the object of investigation and research, and is investigated and collected by investigators in a direct way with eyes, ears and other senses. For example, market researchers go to the interviewee's sales place to observe the brand and packaging of goods.
(2) experimental methods
Investigators follow up the requirements of the investigation, control the investigated objects under specific environmental conditions through experiments, and observe them to obtain corresponding information. The control object can be price, quality, packaging, etc. Under controllable conditions, observe market phenomena and reveal market rules that are not easy to occur under natural conditions. This method is mainly used in marketing experiments and consumer use experiments.
(3) Access method
It can be divided into structured access, unstructured access and collective access.
Structured interview is an interview with a designed structured interview questionnaire. Investigators should conduct interviews according to pre-designed questionnaires or interview outlines, and conduct interviews by asking questions and recording. The tone and attitude of questions should also be consistent as far as possible.
There is no uniform questionnaire for unstructured interviews, and investigators can talk freely with the interviewees. Extensive communication can be conducted according to the contents of the survey. For example, talk about the price of goods and understand the respondents' views on the price.
Group interview is to listen to the interviewees' ideas and collect information through group discussion. It can be divided into expert group visit and consumer group visit.
(4) Questionnaire survey method
By designing the questionnaire, the respondents can get the information of the respondents by filling in the questionnaire. After designing the survey data into a questionnaire, let the respondents fill in their own opinions or answers in the questionnaire. In general field survey, questionnaire is the most widely used.