Abstract:

Despite an increasing concern for marketing among industrial firms, many executives are disenchanted with their firm's marketing efforts and remain somewhat reluctant to undertake expensive market research. How much of this disenchantment is due to mutual misunderstandings by the client and the research organisation as to the specificity of industrial marketing and the contribution of marketing research to industrial management? In order to help answer this question, the paper indicates how much the time lag in extending marketing research to industrial markets may be explained through - the specific responsibilities of marketing in industrial firms, - the inappropriateness of data collection and processing methods used in industrial markets, - the marketing myopia of research organisations. The paper then presents some of the most immediate challenges of industrial marketing research: real understanding of the concept by its clients, transformation of market data into marketing information, contribution of such information to strategic planning, etc... Finally, a "new product offering" is suggested to the market research organisations, which may help them in contributing to the growth of both the profitability and the research budgets of their "new clients".