How to Evaluate Market Research Reports

Research to Aid Decision-Making

As we noted in the Marketing Research section of our Principles of Marketing tutorial, research serves as the foundation of all marketing decisions.  While the results of research should never serve as the only reason for making a decision, marketers face a higher risk of making bad decisions if a decision is made without research.

To gather research marketers have three choices:
• undertake new research themselves
• out-source the task of new research to a third-party, such as a market research company
• acquire pre-existing research from others

The first two options are associated with conducting primary research, which involves the collection of original data, generally for one’s own use.  The last option is associated with secondary research, which involves collecting data from either the originator or a distributor of primary research.  In most cases secondary research is not undertaken specifically for one company.  Instead it is made available to many either for free or for a fee. 

While the value of research conducted using primary methods is largely controlled by the marketer, it is a different story when it comes to secondary research.  Consequently, the quality of such research should be scrutinized closely since the origins of the information may be questionable.  Organizations relying on secondary research as an important component in their decision-making (e.g., market research studies) must take extra steps to insure the information is good by critically evaluating how the research was designed, that is, how information was gathered, analyzed and presented.