“I want to see the entire marketing team in Conference Room A at 10 AM this morning. No exceptions.”As voice mail from the Executive Vice President Scott McDermott cascaded through the key teams, each VPs’ forwarding message raised the stakes and anxiety for each recipient in the food chain.There were no stragglers to this meeting, their first with the Big Name Business Leader Media Star, freshly recruited from outside the industry. Across the assembled teams, managers quietly speculated and shared rumors on this latest fire. As the EVP commanded the room, his body language broadcast worry and anger:”I’ve just received market research and analysis on our industry’s Direct Mail performance for latest quarter. [Competitor A] did a mailing that got an exceptional response rate. Far higher than has ever been reported!!! On the other hand, this department is barely beating the industry average-you’re 3% compared to 1% to 2%. Too much time is being spent sitting around congratulating yourselves, when quarter after quarter you’ve only won each race by a nose.””Well, this time you’re not. [Competitor A] is crushing us. And I’m being asked why we’re doing so poorly in comparison. Hell, some of you came from over there. Why can’t you figure out how to get push the envelope?! I don’t want to hear excuses; I want results. Get moving; get busy. I want to see our numbers climbing and I want it fast. I’ve instructed each of my direct reports to make this top priority. Now get me some answers!”And he left.The room burst into multiple conversations.The meeting’s tone transformed from Executive Suite to a gym, with each speaker hoping to demonstrate insight and commitment by trying to “out-macho” all preceding comments.Close to me sat a frustrated product manager and list development manager.”Not possible. I don’t believe it,” the product manager began, shaking his head.”Doesn’t matter,” answered his colleague. “Scott is obviously pissed about this and BS flows downhill. We’ve got to come up with something.””But what idiots! No one, simply no one ever gets such an outrageous response rate. It’s just BS! And they believe it and expect us to do better. Can’t be done.”Turning to me, the Product Manager asked, “Well, Dr. Market Research, if it’s not a breakthrough, what is going on? It’s your damn report.””First, it’s not our report. Some other department is buying a syndicated report from a research company. So not only is the company paying twice for the same report, but someone is cherry picking the data. I can’t speculate on their motivations, good or bad, but I investigated when I first read the report – because that number was so totally off-the-wall.””So what gives?””The research company claims they are just reporting what they found, which, of course, is bogus. In this case, the published table combined results from combined multiple reports. Whoever sent this up the line might not have explained that, or they may have deleted all the footnoted caveats regarding unique sampling size issues, which make the competitor’s number totally unreliable. “”Because they didn’t want any technical issues detracting from the point they wanted to make with the EVP?””Or it could be that some junior staffer here may have stripped the number out of the report and had no idea what it means or what trouble it might cause, especially taken out of context.””Who would create a fire storm so they can sell their solution to the new fire chief?””Well, there already is a fire drill. Just look around. But to get anywhere, our conversation needs to move away from a Blame-Game blind alley and focus on the real issues.””Which are….?””Doing strategic market research that produces customer insights and competitive advantage and improving the information flow process. I’ve raised that issue before. Marketing must assign a single source to acquire, vet and disseminate all syndicated research reports.””Senior leaders don’t have time to spend learning technical research issues. They need to be focused on pertinent, high quality results for decision-making. And if they’re not, as today, chaos reigns. No one wins when competitive intelligence becomes the wild west.””Well it’s all total BS!,” the list manager whined. “What kind of a fool would believe a number like that and what kind of a charlatan operation would report that as valid?!””Okay,” the product manager said. “So obviously something else must be going on here. I doubt Scott believes it either. Then why the fire drill? Maybe the anger and frustration could have been handled better, but clearly Scott’s rear is getting chewed from higher up and something’s obviously got to change. And it appears that that is our problem. How do we respond in ways that satisfy the thirst for blood and also up our game. Maybe we can do better than we’re doing…””Well,” I picked up, “we’ve been talking about doing a segmentation study of our potential customers so that we can align the offers more tightly with actual perceived needs.””We’ve been over that ground,” the product manager interjected. “It’s much cheaper to send out the mail to do the tests than to take six months to do segmentation.””Yes,” I agreed, “Market Segmentation research is long and laborious…..but in a highly competitive environment, it can give us a real edge. Consider this: if we identify the main drivers that cause response-what offers appeal most to which potential customers, we can up the response rates by better targeting. And we’ll have a much better understanding of how to position the offers.””The products were so hot for a while and we were so far ahead of our competitors that we didn’t really need to understand them more than we did. But now, competition is closing the gap; maybe we need to think in that direction.””Maybe so,” mused the product manager.

Before proceeding into this article, you must understand the concept of marketing research first. In marketing, whenever there is a new product launched or a service is being offered, you must know that there has gone a lot of research work behind them. There has been collection of data, analysis of those data to judge and predict the benefits of both public and the company at the launch of the new product or service. Marketing research is the collective term given to all these marketing processes. It can be divided into two distinct categories. They are the consumer marketing research category and the business to business marketing research category.The work of an employee in marketing research can be quite tedious but then at the same time can be fun and challenging. The profile of a marketing research analyst can be thrilling. He or she should hold a formal master degree in the field of business administration with specialization in marketing. There are certain things that are expected of an employee working for such a post. They have been given below precisely.Understanding the market based economyOne has to apply his knowledge of sociology to understand the pattern and trends of market based economy. He or she should be able to interpret the behaviors of target consumers in the market. With his knowledge of statistics the employee must analyze the success of any new product or service launched for this target group. It is important to understand the elements that comprise a marketing mix can have a huge impact on the way a customer would react or respond to any new product.Should be in a position to take strategic decisionsThe employees engaged in analysis market analysis reports should be in a position to take quick and appropriate decisions when required. The decision may concern the potential chances and opportunities in these fields, market segmentation and segregation, marketing performance, implementation of marketing programs and many such fields.Should be updated with the current scenarioA good decision can not be taken by just a good student. He or she must be in a position to evaluate current situation. He or she should be aware of all the government policies concerning the field of work at that moment. The public policies and technology developments that are taking place which can deeply affect his marketing research work are something about which he or she should be updated.An important link has to be established by a marketing research analyst between environment and the marketing variable in order to understand the behavior of customers.There are new challenges always waiting for the marketing research employees for their betterment and to help them grow as responsible workers. They are high paying jobs and there are many opportunities in this field.

The reason why you should do internet market research is so that you can find out about your competitors. This is great because you will know how to go against them. If you have an online business this should be very critical as your business success is based on your research. Doing research can be very hard but doing research online for your online business can take 20 minutes. You see doing internet market research consists of only three elements: finding your market, choosing the keywords and getting your products and or services in front of potential customers.You should do internet market research also to find information on the hottest trends on the market. This is very effective because you can determine your selling techniques based on the current trends. Furthermore you will be aware about what competitors are doing now, and perhaps come up with new, unique plans to beat them. Research is the first place to start if you are considering starting a business online. All businesses need to do research, otherwise you they will not know who their customers are, what they want and why they buy certain products.This research is very simple it can be obtained through questionnaires and other forms of feedback. Thus why it is very good to do internet market research. At the end of the day it is you that determines the future of your business. The only business that does not need market research is that which is not of this world. This means that all businesses need to do research even though not all of them succeed.