The Marketing Research Process

This week chapter 9 focuses on the Marketing Research Process. The text refers to marketing research as the process of planning, collecting, and analyzing data relevant to a marketing decision (pg. 148).

The Marketing Research Process includes the following steps:

1. Identify and formulate the problem/opportunity
2. Plan the research design and gather secondary data
3. Specify the sampling procedures
4. Collect primary data
5. Analyze the data
6. Prepare and present the report
7. Follow up

All of these steps are important to the marketing research process and clearly needs to be done in a certain order for them or work properly. I believe the most important part of the research process however is the step 7 of the "follow up". This is because without the follow up, the company would not understand what any of the data collected means, or how it can impact the future of the company. Is there a certain part of the research process you believe is more important than the other, or should have more time invested in, or sold it all be treated equally?