The sole purpose of research into markets lies in the support it can give to planning for different time periods. This implies that market research becomes marketing research when it also deals with research into the most economic way of application of means to reach certain objectives. The way in which the planning process in a company is organised and the aspects of management it covers are very important for research. We can read very much, today, on strategic planning, tactical or operations planning, normative and exploratory forecasting, corporate and marketing planning. Business is invaded by other military terms such as goals, missions, action, while the sociologists make their contributions by introducing environments, social systems and interactions and so on.
This paper is meant to be a discussion paper and a contribution to a more systematic approach to what is called "industrial marketing research" . This approach will be two-pronged, i. e. the product flow from the top to the bottom of the product pyramid and the product flow in a manufacturing process from conception to marketing. It is felt that in this way the research contribution to management thinking can be more clearly defined as also the contribution of research methods to the solution of research problems.
Research in marketing has a starting point in problems of business management. As in every organism the most important problems arise from interactions between that organism and its surroundings. A business is usually started to perform tasks that have been self-imposed, but it has to accept several social and economic limitations. These limitations concern both the targets one can hope to achieve as well as the ways along which they can be reached. Hence there is a problem of adaptation to outside conditions. It is also recognized that adaptation is necessary when a company sets objectives in terms of market shares and/or profits, the real problem being to choose between the efforts to introduce something new or to follow certain trends. This thought must come to the mind when according to the mystique of the economics of scarcity someone says that he wants to meet the demand. In a quantitative sense this may apply in a developed society but here the problem of a manufacturer is more to find acceptance for a certain supply, since in essence he is anticipating a demand that has been made possible by a technical development to which he has contributed.
Report of the years' work for the years 1963-1964.
The present Yearbook will give further illustrations of some of the tendencies signalled last year.
The function of a marketing research department is essentially: a tool for management. This means that such a department must assist the management in obtaining facts and insights necessary for ah efficient and long-range operation of the business. The character of the marketing research department is therefore that of a service and advisory department. On the basis of the foregoing, every policy concerning marketing research can be looked at from two angles: a) the management policy towards the use of research; b) the policy of the research department towards the use of the instruments for research. The management policy towards research and the working methods used will define what programme for marketing research will be followed. Only on the basis of this programme will it be possible for the marketing research department to define its policy towards the use of research instruments.
Conference papers from the ESOMAR/WAPOR Congress 1957.
I shall not specifically deal with economic forecasts of a general nature, but that I shall put the accent on market forecasts. It may well be reasoned that every market forecast presupposes a forecast of the business situation and of any expected structural changes in the economy, so that in fact both kinds of forecasts are inseparable. The fact is, however, that trends in consumer durable sales do not necessarily reflect the fluctuations in the state of the economy, although influences the price and the types of a product sold can be severely felt. It would, therefore, be necessary for a producer of durable consumer goods to determine the influence of the factors affecting his sales, whether of a specific business cycle nature or not. The relevant information can be obtained from many sources, and the more and the better it is,- and the better the ability to combine them and analyse them, the better the chance that the forecast will be correct. In other words both statistical research at the desk and field studies have to be used to arrive at forecasts that satisfy a company a need. I shall now deal with two methods of forecasting the first one concerns the what may be termed statistical forecast and the second one concerns the forecast based on the consumers intention to buy.