Marketing research is very vital for any organization. Different organizations engage in marketing research to determine the needs of their customers to ensure that the needs of these customers are met. Marketing research can be easily defined as the process through which a marketer seeks to obtain information on consumers’ needs, opportunities available for an organization, as well as any problems that may be encountered in marketing an organization’s products.
The Marketing research methodology can be either qualitative or quantitative. Qualitative marketing research methodology involves the use of qualitative data while the latter involves the use of quantitative data. Marketing research follows the following processes: Definition of the research problem, determination of the research methodology, identification of the data type needed, which will eventually help the researcher to come up with the data collection questionnaires. The researcher then collects data from an identified sample size, which is then analyzed to come up with the marketing research report.
Marketing research plays a vital role for any researcher or organization interested in customers’ responses. The main roles of a marketing research include identify the needs of existing and potential customers, increasing sales, and profit maximization. Businesses thrive in a competitive environment and they need to survive, hence the need for marketing research.
Marketing research also does have its setbacks or limitations. At times, the process is time consuming as well as expensive. Additionally, the report generated from the research may not be factual. The organizations also at times do not implement the research findings making the research process useless. However, the benefits of research greatly outweigh its limitations.
PHD students are students who are doing their doctoral studies. Their main aim in doing research is to ensure that the studies are published as well as help various organizations; the published work of a PHD student comes in great hand for various organizations as well as for students doing their undergraduate studies.
The research interests for PHD students mainly can be divided into two portions based on the target markets. That is consumer marketing research and a research on business-to-business research. The consumer marketing research aim at determining the need of the consumer and understanding consumers’ behaviors’ while the latter aims to determine the behavior of various organization in relation to other organizations.
Based on the above PHD students can base their researches on; retailing which is mainly consumer research, global marketing strategies that are used by various organizations in the business world, this can be classified as a business research. Students can also base their research on governance in marketing as well as marketing decision making which helps marketing managers come with fresh ideas for the ever-changing business world.
Research interests can also be based on other areas such as, product development where students help organizations in coming up with new products and developing loyalty programs. Loyalty programs help organizations in retaining the customers, which eventually leads to increased sales and profits.
In conclusion, the research interests in the Ph.D. school can be based on either the consumer or the organization itself. Research interests on the consumer include doing research on customer’s retention programs, accessing consumer needs, attitudes, and preferences. In an organization’s perspective, research interests are based on new product development and global marketing strategies.