Many businesses are Product Orientated. This means that they design and make a product, and then try and convince consumers to buy it. Business can also be "Market Orientated". This is where they try to find out what consumers want before making the final product. Finding out about what consumers want and need, and what makes them buy, is called "Market Research". Businesses which are mainly product orientated risk spending a large amount of resources launching a product which proves to be a failure. Researching the market helps reduce this risk. It should focus research and design effort onto products which have a chance of success in the market place. When the product is launched, a carefully researched product stands less chance of failing. Market research attempts to find the answers to questions a business might have about its market. A market researcher must then decide what information might help answer the question brought forward. The market researcher then decider how best to collect this information. There are two ways of doing this, desk research and field research. The information is then collected and analysed. Finally, the business has to make a decision about what to do in the light of the information formed. Desk research involves the use of secondary Data. This is information which is already available, both within and outside the business. Information within the business is information collected routinely. Invoices, for instance, will tell them how much they selland who they are selling to. Accounts will give information about the value of sales and costs of production. Businesses can also collect information which is available from sources outside the business e.g. Government, the media, Trade associations etc. The results of that research are given in a table. Field research involves the collection of Primary Data information which no one has yet collected. It is collected specially for the particular piec...
