Title: Unit 6 Reading
Course: SLF 130 Marketing Practices for the Small Business > Section: SLF 130 Marketing Practices for the Small Business

Unit 6 Reading

SubTabs

- Unit 6
- Table of Contents (Selected)
- Unit 6 Glossary (Selected)

Market Research Page 1

Reading adapted from Chapter 4, Marketing: Boundless Marketing Open Textbook, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
www.boundless.com/marketing/consumer-marketing, CC BY-SA 2.0

 |  | Marketing Research Techniques for a Small Business
The idea of marketing research in a small business may seem like an unnecessary expense, but it is very important because in the long run it saves money!

Through the use of research and planning, the small business can avoid costly mistakes. Research in a small business generally concentrates on consumer market research.

This type of research focuses on understanding the consumer as a person by focusing on exploring his or her attitudes, needs, motivations, and behavior as it relates to a product or service. Consumer research provides practical, relevant, reliable, valid, and current information about target buyer(s).

Consumer market research
•  Helps small business owners make strategic and tactical decisions in the process of identifying
and satisfying customer needs
•  Removes some of the uncertainty by providing relevant information about marketing variables,
environment, and consumers.
•  Provides insights that help guide the creation of a marketing plan, or launch a new product or
service
•  Determines how much of a population will be most likely to purchase a product or service,
based on variables such as age, gender, location, and income level
•  Understand how consumers talk about the products and services in the market
•  Identifies which consumer needs are important and whether the needs are being met by current
products