“Market research” is a term all of us have already heard. However, hardly anyone knows exactly what it means. We, the students of Michael Payant’s Business English course, wanted to explore the subject in more detail. For this reason we invited Kerstin Lindner, a marketing expert from RAVENSBURGER, to join our course. On October 28th of this year, she came to our school in order to explain what market research is and how it is actually conducted.
At first, Ms. Lindner provided us with a working definition of the term market research:
When a new product is soon to be launched, it is vital to research the market in order to find out whether potential customers like the product, how a product should be advertised most effectively and how financial risks can be minimized.
This research is carried out through the compilation, analysis and interpretation of market development information.
Depending on the area of marketing you are working on (Product, Placement, Price or Promotion policy) you have to use one of the different types of research: Field and desk research.
Field research involves finding out people’s opinions on certain products
whereas desk research is based on information that has already been compiled as a result of primary research. Now all this information in combination is evaluated in order to provide the company with clear guidelines on how to market, present, price and thus establish a specific product in the market.
In addition, we learned about the problem of defining an optimal sample size when researching the market and we gained a deep insight into market research methods.
We are, of course, very grateful to Kerstin Lindner for finding the time to come and discuss these issues with us.
Business English course participants: Martin Lang, Julia Lang, Jochen Fähndrich, Tillmann Triebel, Sebastian Kaltenbach, Lewin John, Sonja Hummel, Margaux Kuwilsky, Fabian Meißner, Iljas Becker, Fabian Siebenrock.
Kerstin Lindner, personal assistant to Michael Tiesler
(Managing director program and marketing at RAVENSBURGER)