Market research has proven to be a vital piece of successful business plans today. It has revolutionized the way companies go to business. This paper will reflect the importance of market research along with challenges it continues to face. There are a number of benefits that market research provide to companies doing business in todays very competitive market place. I have seen first hand in my company how they utilize market research to determine how we go to market with existing products as well as utilize it to develop new ones. The key is knowing the difference between market research and marketing research. Market research, as opposed to marketing research, is the systematic gathering, recording, and analyzing of data with respect to a particular market, where “market” refers to a specific customer group in a specific geographic area. We are able to do this by setting up research objectives, which simply put tell the researchers what they must do in order to be successful. Utilizing exploratory research is most common in this practice as it helps you to gain background information about the issue. Primary data collection I feel is more of the statistics and qualitative information. It allows us to figure out an overall picture of what is going on. In my company I feel that they are more likely to use secondary data analysis as our underlying issue most of the time is the same, what does the consumer want and what marketing program is going to make them jump on board. Secondary data is where we get the majority of our problems solved, it is less costly and it allows us to dive down into the “meat and potatoes” of what our business is all about, the consumer. When it comes to secondary data, we utilize everything from experience surveys to focus groups. When we utilize focus groups they are in a non-traditional setting that embraces a free and open discussion. Some of the benefits of utilizing focus groups in market research are they allow you to observe the participants and touch a wide variety of issues. MOst importantly I feel it allows you access to gain information from a hard to reach sub-population. For this very reason, we conduct them all over the US as to get a broad picture of what consumers want. They let us know what worked last time, what didn’t and most importantly what will work for them now. My business is a very consumer driven business where the adopters and adorers of my brands are really what makes us successful. These focus groups have helped us to launch product like Smirnoff Premium Mixed Drinks, as well as Smirnoff Ice flavors like Strawberry Acai, and our newest innovation Cherry Lime. The focus groups for the Smirnoff brand is typically HIspanic and African American Men and a few women as our target audience as we have discovered through market research is Male and of those backgrounds. I know male, really? It is true in this flavored malt beverage category, Smirnoff skews to hispanic and african american men where as Mike’s skews to Caucasian males as it is viewed as having a “white boy” image. There are other ways of accessing data as well in the area of market research. For example consumer surveys via the internet or over the phone and well as person-to-person interviews. I have seen my company utilize a couple in the past. For example we will sue consumer experience events to take on the spot consumer surveys to capture the demographic at the event. We do this my using a hand help device which we scan the individuals ID, and then ask then a series of question which will help us to capture who they are and what they are looking for. They are coming to our event anyway we might as well capitalize while we have the captive audience. Another way we data capture is by driving consumers to our websites for each of the individual brands. Many of our pages are interactive and do have a component where consumers can take a consumer survey which is usually tied to a sweepstakes of some kind. As well as capturing there information up login as everyone needs to enter their birthdate and country in order to enter the site for legality reasons. Now that we have taken the time to capture all this data, what on earth do we do with it? a question many of us sales people ask as we spend our time in the field dealing with consumers day to day and do not always agree what the numbers come up with. Once the data is collected it is now time to figure out what it all means. In our case, who is drinking our brands, and what do they want to see from us as a company. Innovation is key in this industry given the selection, and this is how we determine what the next innovation will be. We take the data we have collected and interpret it into what each demographic is doing and what they want to see next. This is exactly how we innovate against Smirnoff. The data collected at our consumer events determines who of those groups are Smirnoff drinkers and what flavor they want to see next. The use of data collection has helped us to determine that our main consumers for Smirnoff ice is in fact Hispanic and African American males. The use of focus groups have allowed us to determine what works and what does not. It has allowed of to add flavors to the Smirnoff Ice family as well as alter our marketing campaigns to something this consumer can identify with. Most recently we were able to have a direct marketing opportunity with BET and Centric which were a direct result from ideas and information taken from a focus group. We learned that our african american consumer had strong ties to these two TV networks. As a direct result Smirnoff vodka and Smirnoff Ice put marketing dollars behind BET’s Master of the Mix reality television show. It allowed us to do two things, directly impact our target consumer as well as help us recruit new ones, which is key as it is how brands grow. Market research has been a key piece to the success of my company. It has allowed us to determine who each of our brands should target based on age, sex and race. In addition to the best way to go to market from a marketing standpoint as well as in the field. It has allowed us to develop visibility tools that can be used in both on and off trade which simply put is a bar or a store. Allowing our brands to be showcased in every segment where beer and spirits are sold. By retrieving this information we have done two things, first and foremost determined who our target is for specific brand and line extension and secondly have made our very own database of consumers who we can now mass email offers, surveys, and sweepstakes to at our fingertips. It will help us to determine who our demographic is, as well as their likes and dislikes which in a consumer goods company is half the battle. The taste of every consumer is constantly changing, by having captured this data somewhere along the way we have the power to utilize them as a research tool. They are the greatest tool a consumer goods company can have. They are who we speak to, which is half the battle.

References
Burns . Basic Marketing Research Using Microsoft Excel Data Analysis, 2nd Edition. Pearson Learning Solutions 5.4
www.diageo.com