AboutAlex J. Caffarini Expertise I can answer questions on any of the following:
* Determining the best marketing research method for your needs;
* Conducting surveys (including questionnaire design);
* Measuring the effectiveness of marketing promotions;
* Determining market size or market share;
* Data analysis;
* Statistical modeling;
* Sales or business forecasting; and
* Market segmentation.
Experience I have 15 years of marketing research experience across several different industries, including banking, insurance, retail, and non-profit.
Organizations American Marketing Association
Education/Credentials M.B.A. in Marketing and Quantitative Methods, and B.B.A. in Economics, both from Loyola University Chicago.
Question Sometimes managers commission Marketing Research but find that the data gathered is not useful. What could be possible reasons for this?
Can you site some external examples for reference.
Thank you.
Answer Marketing research data can be useless for many reasons, the main cause being that the managers failed to define the business problem adequately. Without a clear understanding of what they want to solve, managers will find marketing research useless. Other reasons include incorrect - or incorrectly executed - research methods, the politics of the organization, budget constraints, poorly constructed questions, and poorly constructed response scales. And this list is far from comprehensive.
One prominent association wanted to do a survey of professionals who purchased its publications so that the association could determine what product enhancements it could make. However, too many stakeholders were included in the decision process: the sales department wanted to know about competition and the customers' purchase intent; the content writers wanted to know customer satisfaction with specifics features; the business development group wanted to know where the association's publications ranked against each competitor, and so on.
As a result, the association ended up with a questionnaire that was so long and so tedious that many respondents dropped out of the survey and response rates to the survey were quite low.
Marketing research often fails because of inadequate problem definition and a poorly thought out research process.
