How Market Research Is Conducted

Market research can be initiated by either a business organization or an agency. Very big business organizations have their own market research departments while most of the big agencies have subsidiary market research companies. There are also many independent research organizations. Some of these units use more than one research technique; others specialize in, say, online shopping audits, consumer panels, industry-wise research, or opinion surveys. Research fields may be different, but the techniques they use to conduct a market research are more or less same. Sometimes they are introduced in latest packages. Some of the very common techniques that will let you know how a market research is conducted. Those techniques are Sampling, Depth Interviews, Opinion Research, Motivational Research and Desk Research.
Sampling: Sampling method involves a certain number of people who represents the whole population relevant to the enquiry or research. This population is the total numbers of people, for example all motorists or all mobile phone users or all internet users, who are of value to the research. The sampling size depends on the simplicity or complexity of the questions and the numbers of characteristics that exist in the population. By characteristics we mean different things or kinds of people who must be represented in sufficient numbers so that their opinions, preferences or motives are discovered. By questions we mean documented questionnaire that contains both questions and instructions which the interviewer has to complete for each respondent interviewed. In the case of sampling by questions, a set of questions has to be answered by a respondent who completes the task to show purchases made or services taken.
Depth Interviews: Dept interviews are those conducted without a formal questionnaire, questions being answered freely and the interviewer writing these down verbatim, or recording them on a tape.
Opinion Research: Opinion research seeks attitudes or shifts of opinion, and questions usually require 'Yes', 'No' or 'Don't Know' answers. Most market research invites preferences for this or that product, packages or services.
Motivational Research: Motivational research uses clinical tests, rather like intelligence tests, to identify the natures of the persons forming like sample, and then to reveal their hidden motives. With motivational research, the respondents are usually unaware of the reason for the enquiry and so their answers are unlikely to be biased.
Desk Research: Desk research consists of the study of existing or published data ranging from internal reports to those published by the business organizations. It is not always necessary to undertake original research. A wealth of statistics is available from authentic sources like Wikipedia.
It is possible to conduct the same enquiry by two different methods and get two different answers, as occurs with election time opinion polls, or happens with newspapers readership surveys. The point is that research does not produce facts, only tendencies. Statistics can be interpreted in various ways. But the inaccuracy of market research does not condemn it. Moreover, while discussing about market research, we are dealing with the social sciences, especially psychology, sociology, and economics, and these are full of contrary schools of thought. There are 'schools' in market research too!