12-10-2012, 04:40 PM
industry analysis
INTRODUCTION
Market research is the systematic gathering, recording and analysis of data by methodological approach like qualitative methodological approach and quantitative methodological approach.
Market research is important for every business. Successful business conducts research on continual basis to keep up with market trends. Regardless of whether it’s a starting or expanding of business, market research agency helps to understand the target market and increase sales. There are many reasons for conducting a research by business owners:
• Identifying potential customers
• Understanding existing customers
• Set realistic targets
• Develop effective strategies
• Examine and solve business problems
• Prepare for business expansion
HISTORY
In the Early years of 70’s, MR was a part of the Advertising (to gauge the advertising campaigns or launch). In the 80’s full-fledged agency had come into the landscape of research which contributed to efficient marketing management. Using different research techniques with the availability of varied statistical tools helped the marketing personal to measure the Socio Economic Strata or Ethnographic research. Later on, its scope got envisaged into various other issues like mapping the need of consumer demand, new product development or the new usage’s of the existing products, transform the industry from measuring ethnography to behavioural patterns. After the liberalization process in the early 90’s market research became even more critical where marketers can evaluate their marketing strategy based on the feedback from various segments of the market. Thus MR became one of the major component in the decision making process. But still there are lots of industries in India where marketing managers are relying on their team assessments rather on the scientific calculation of the market forces. Today, after the introduction of Internet (Social media) the entire landscape of the research has got changed with more and more real time data of the consumers getting tracked and thus further increasing the value of the research work in the minds of the efficient and productive marketing managers.
Market research is an essential tool for developing viable strategies and plan, assisting management to take strategic decision and identifies opportunities available in the market.
While working on market research projects for the clients, one needs to understand client's core need of market research and only after proper counselling one can help clients to prepare research objectives. Focusing on client's research objectives, market research project should be conducted by applying inherent expertise and experience in strategic market research for broad range of industries, And at the end a detailed market research report with all analytical findings, conclusions, and recommendations are delivered to the client.
HOW MARKET RESEARCH IS CONDUCTED
Market research is conducted using primary and secondary research methodology. Quantitative and qualitative data are gathered using wide network of primary and secondary sources to have relevant information and data. Primary sources include key personnel across leading industry players, industry associations, government officials, financial intermediaries and industry experts with whom our research analysts regularly interact to have latest developments and analyse its impact. Secondary information sources include various national and international statistical offices, online databases and various national & international publications across wide variety of industries and geographic areas.
Research includes service marketing, services quality, CRM, relationship marketing or database marketing applications. Applications of market research will help the service firms acquire more information on the new and unmet demands of the consumers, perceived service quality, closing the gaps in the services delivery and thus improving the quality of the services. The new age has immense potential to get real time information about consumers and to service them accordingly. For example, Wal-Mart India is getting the information on every consumer entering their retail shops or Pantaloons gets more critical sets of information about the buying behaviour of their consumers in their stores through observation with the help of videos or high end web cameras. Many automobiles companies are using social media channels to analyse the behaviour of their potential customers.
Emergence of new age sectors like Telecom, Media (Digital) and Insurance are helping the Market Research Industry to climb to new heights with varied analysis of Consumer Insights. Despite slowdown in the past coupled with talent crunch and dog pricing by agencies, this industry is doing well. The Overall Market gets divided into full services MR agencies and the KPO Services clocking around 18% of CAGR (Source: Industry Estimation). During the last couple of years there has been a consolidation between MR agencies in their scale of operations and data management practices. No wonder despite all these, India still becomes the popular destination for the MNC based research agencies since there is untapped potential of new sets of consumers with an opportunity to serve huge population. MR Team (Part of Advertising Agency during 70’s) moves from the boardrooms of Consumer Durable or FMCG companies into the boardrooms of every sector of the economy.
Market Research is changing and that too from its early days of data collection (Pen n Paper Method) to technically prowess devices like PDA’s, mobile phones & in-built camera’s which can record exact state of the matter of every interview. At the same time, MR has become more of a commodity rather than delivering differential value to the end consumer. Still MR is being performed in mega cities and towns rather than pushing it to the rural economy which undoubtedly is the next biggest growth opportunity in our country for all the products/services. MR industry is also facing a crunch in having the right kind of people skilled with a good training background to understand the nitty gritty of the clients brief. Moreover, today’s most of the research work is being covered with a regular monitoring job like tracking, audience measurement, syndicated studies etc rather than with a specific problem. Another eaten away factor could be the nature of the industry which is fragmented and largely being driven by price factor worrying clients ranging from product’s to service industry. As a result, absence of talents due to low price factor has resulted in MR firms having a project to project assignment system where in they do the piecemeal job i.e. data collection and not the analysis which is done at the client side.
This is also a part of the service industry which is contributing almost 60% of our nation’s economy.
CONCLUSION
Undoubtedly, the market research has travelled a long journey from piggybacking advertising job to the mainstay of the decision component of one organization. Market research seeks to align the enterprise with the expectation of its consumers and delivering value with its systematic analysis of the information captured. Although there were lots of changes in the past the way research is being carried but off course the IT enabled market research is a new trend which propounds ways to maximize an enterprise’s returns in the newly emerging liberalized market in India. Now is the time for the MR agencies to reap the ever growing and burgeoning customers with rapidly changing lifestyles through research work, so that Indian Marketers could be more productive, result oriented and globally the best workforce to cater the demands of their consumers. Finally, 3C strategy namely Convince, Convert and Collaborate as formulated by MRSI (Market Research Society of India) helps to take the industry into to new heights by breaking the barriers and thus increasing its share in the Indian Economy