Does that mean that organizations that conduct market research will perform better than organizations that does not?

Does that mean that organizations that conduct market research will perform better than organizations that does not?

Do organizations really need market research? There is a perception along with smaller businesses that the really profitable entrepreneurial companies don’t use research: but that’s only half true (Do you really need market research? n.d.). In fact, they do use research, but not as much as the big name brands. Take Covent Garden Soup Co (NCG), one of Britain’s best-known success stories. As Kate Raison, the company’s marketing director, explains, while NCG’s founders didn’t do any research into the product, they researched what the retail trade thought of its packaging. Organizations that do market research on a regular basis are positioned better to stay in touch with their customers or clientele.

Bob Waterman wrote in The Renewal Factor that the mirror of marketing research tells them that the world has changed and that, in the harsh light of the new reality, they are not as beautiful as they once were unless they change, they're in for a crisis (Do you really need market research? n.d.). However, those organizations that conducts that contribute more than those who do not while the research is going on, they can understand the pros and cons of marketing research. Thus, this cannot conclude that organizations carry out marketing research will perform better in their business. Conduct marketing research will definitely increase the overall performance of the company as long as company manager interprets the data of research appropriately and vice versa.

P&G is one of the examples that conducting marketing research and succeeded in their products. In 1942, P&G became the first company to conduct planned, data-based market research with consumers .This forward-thinking approach enables the company to improve consumer understanding, anticipate consumer needs, and respond with products that improve their everyday life (P&G tage 2011). Nevertheless, by the early 2000s, the company had made significant changes in the way it handled market research (Selling in the world's largest consumer market 2007).Instead of finding out what products consumers used; P&G had initiated an exercise to learn how consumers used them.

In spite of the rapid growth of marketing research, many companies still fail to use it sufficiently or correctly. For example, McDonald’s Arch Deluxe. Arch Deluxe was marketed as the ‘Burger with the Grown-up Taste’ (Kramer and Louise 1996). The idea was to have a burger which wasn’t associated with children. Indeed, the advertising campaign for the Arch Deluxe rammed the message home with various images of kids shunning the ‘sophisticated’ product (Kramer and Louise 1998). The trouble was that nobody goes to McDonald’s for sophistication but they go for convenience.

An interesting aspect of the Arch Deluxe failure is that the product was well researched. After conducting masses of market research, it emerged that people would love to eat a burger designed specifically for adults (Tom 1996). Unfortunately, these people seemed to be in short supply when the product was finally launched. Moreover, McDonald’s has been accused of losing touch with its customers and being too far behind the market (Cliff 1997). According to the company’s CEO, Jack Greenberg, they have been taking much too long to develop an idea and get it to the market, then too long to decide whether they want to do it or not (Dottie 1996). As a result, they have already lost their market share in this product and reduced the company performance.

Conclusively, marketing research can be an advantage tool to company if all the researches that they have conducted are useful and true. To prevent the disadvantage of using marketing research as a tool to develop the marketing strategy, company has to keep reading and analyzing the marketing research. This is to reduce the possibility for misinterpret the research and reduce the risk of using wrong information that is provided by marketing research.

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