What is marketing research?

Practically every important management decision involves some prediction of the future. Without adequate information on which to base such decisions, management must, of necessity, fall back on hunches. Those fortunate enough to have had experience with the same sort of thing in the past can also fall back on such experience.
The emphasis placed on marketing research in recent years indicates that practical business men have found marketing research of practical value. In fact, they spend between $250 million and $300 million annually on it.
Marketing research is the practice of gathering and interpreting facts pertaining to any phase of the marketing activity. Facts are needed for better decision-making, for better planning, and for better programming.
The importance of marketing research in modern marketing. Marketing research is destined to make its chief contribution by narrowing down the area of uncertainty and by reducing the risk attached to the introduction of new products, to planning of long-range programs, and to economic and sales forecasting. Research is not merely a matter of finding out facts. To be useful in business decision-making, research must also include sound interpretation of these facts. Business decisions always involve the future. The oft- quoted statement that most of us possess 20-20 hindsight applies to business decisions as well as to personal ones. It is fairly easy to determine what we should have done in a situation which has passed. What we need to do is to gather and correctly interpret information that will help us anticipate what we will need to do in situations about to develop. Thus, marketing research is of value because it helps us in sounder decision-making.
Business is placing larger funds at the disposal of the marketing researcher, indicating greater confidence in the techniques and findings of such research. The growing realization of the importance of the interdependence of all segments of a business has led to greater understanding and appreciation of the role and potential of marketing research as an aid to the entire business.
Because we deal with people (consumers) in marketing, and because human beings, their wants, aspirations, needs, and capacities are constantly changing and hence, to a degree, are unpredictable, the addition of the findings of the social sciences to our marketing knowledge has made important scientific contributions to marketing technology. Psychology, anthropology, sociology and economics have all helped to improve marketing research. Thus, marketing research may be said to have come of age with the decade of the 1950's. It is ready to play a major role in the application of scientific principles to marketing in the years ahead.