The Importance of Marketing Research

Every business is a living organism. Like all living beings, it grows, develops, reaches maturity, and then dies, but fortunately, it does not come with a natural lifespan. The good part is that a business’s life can be extended indefinitely, as long as it operates economically efficiently—namely, it generates sufficient profit.

Throughout a business’s existence, various serious problems arise, such as: poor product performance in the market, declining sales, unprofitable investments, or hard-to-manage image crises. How can these be solved? By starting from the root of the problem, through marketing research. The purpose of marketing research is to provide information about consumers, specifically about their attitudes, opinions, and behavior, as well as about the marketing environment. The information obtained through research is essential in designing and executing marketing plans and strategies.

Marketing research is structured into 7 stages

1. Defining the problem

In the first phase, the problem and the levels at which it is located must be identified. For example, a drop in sales for Soap X, while sales remain steady for the rest of the soap range, indicates a problem at the product level (perhaps Soap X is not preferred by customers due to its pungent smell, too watery consistency, or the hand-drying effect it produces) and promotion level (the packaging is not attractive or the promoted image is not to the target audience’s liking).

2. Establishing research objectives

Refers to the aspects that must be monitored during the research to find optimal solutions to the problem. Taking the example above, the objectives could be: determining customer perception of Soap X and identifying the reasons why customers do not buy the product.

3. Developing the research plan

This is the most complex stage, as research results depend on how accurately it is carried out. More specifically, developing the plan involves identifying the type of data needed for the study (primary or secondary), choosing the appropriate research methods (survey, observation, interview, or experiment), tools (quantitative or qualitative), creating the sampling plan, and establishing methods for contacting respondents. Specifically, the research plan for Soap X will focus on collecting primary data through a survey using a questionnaire as a tool, on an online sample of 1,000 respondents, who will be contacted by email.

4. Collecting the necessary information

This stage is critical because it involves collecting data as accurately as possible. The lack of coherent data, which can have multiple causes, can often negatively influence the established plans. Therefore, it is important to have two basic elements well-defined (and controlled):

• questions included in the sampling must be well-established, short, and easy to understand, because we want to extract as accurate an answer as possible.

• easily processed information, representing the official opinion of the sampled market segment, is vital for analyzing and extracting relevant conclusions.

5. Analyzing the obtained information

Involves organizing the information obtained to answer the initial objectives and interpreting it by correlating it with the problem at hand. In the case of Soap X, the data analysis would focus on negative and positive aspects of customer perception regarding Soap X, what the reasons were for it being bought or not bought, and why it is no longer being bought. Data will be correlated, and it will be determined how the product is perceived by different social and age categories.

6. Formulating conclusions

Conclusions and recommendations must always be supported by the results obtained from the marketing research. The conclusions in the case of Soap X express decision pathways that can be followed and their effectiveness by highlighting the product aspects that need improvement so that it gets purchased, as well as which features of the soap are important to each customer category.

7. Making the decision

At Rainfall, research is the fundamental stage from which we start in determining the best solutions for our clients’ problems, a fact that differentiates us from the competition. Any other solutions to problems, without having the foundation provided by marketing research, are mostly speculative, and their results cannot be guaranteed.