Marketing research for small business

The term "market research" covers a broad range of activities. It encompasses the gathering and analyzing of facts relevant to problems arising during the transfer and sale of goods and services and can be used to study and improve any aspect of a firm's operation, including transportation, packaging, display, advertising, sales, and customer satisfaction. Large companies with access to sophisticated techniques and materials and advanced statistical tools have caused many people to view marketing research as a complex business made up of computers, models, and statistical gymnastics. Every marketing research project is based upon some kind of logical, "common sense" idea. Any small business manager can use that idea to find his own market and generate useful facts and data without using computers or exotic tools. Marketing is more of an art than a science; it cannot be reduced to a strictly organized body of rules or principles. The scientific methods include careful and accurate observation and classification of important facts, rules in problem-solving, self-criticism, testing, and validity of results. Marketing is not a true science and can never meet all the criteria of the scientific method.