Current Best Practices That Are Followed When Undertaking Surveys Essay

Current Best Practices That Are Followed When Undertaking Surveys - Essay Example Market surveys identify what appeals to the customers, when customers make purchases, the preferred distribution and promotional outlets of the products. Secondary data is usually available in either electronic or publicized form and includes company reports, newspaper articles and government agencies data. Primary data is collected purposely for solving the marketing problem and involves use of surveys, focus groups, interviews and experiments. Aims The main aim of the research paper is to identify different types of marketing surveys, their advantages and disadvantages in collecting primary data that is useful in market research. The paper also aims at outlining several survey strategies and examples of multiple choice and open-ended questions in surveys. The paper includes the use of rating scales, bar charts, pie charts in data analysis. Methodology The paper has utilized previous literature in order to identify different types of marketing surveys. Surveys are the most common method used by organizations in primary data collection and include mail surveys, telephone surveys, internet surveys, and face-to-face surveys or interviews. The less formal methods of surveys include informal interviews and observation. The selection of survey method will depend on factors such as the budget, the purpose of the study, the characteristics of target population and time availability. Mail surveys reach a large population and surveyor mails the written questions to the sampled population. The mailing list can be prepared from local phone book, yellow pages or past customer contacts. The main disadvantage of mail surveys is that many respondents may not return the completed survey. Telephone surveys entail calling the individuals and responses can be analyzed immediately as the caller will encourage the respondent to provide more details. However, telephone interviews are expensive for small companies. face-to-face surveys entail in-person interviews, but may require a lot of personnel thus are expensive. Internet surveys reach large random population and some web surveys offers tools for data analysis. Observation entails taking note of consumers shopping behavior in order to determine their preferred products. Survey strategies involves having a focus group or pilot surveys that identify if the questions are worded correctly. Conclusion The purpose of the above paper is to offer insight of survey methods and primary data analysis for marketing research. Critique paper Title: conducting market research using primary data Authors: Kyunda R. Curtis, Ph.D. (Department of Resource economics, University of Nevada) Published: The above research paper fails in outlining the best practices that are involved in conducting marketing research. I believe the first step entails defining the problem and objectives of the survey. The researcher must specify the sources of data and information that will be used in the research. The researcher should assess the time and cost involved in carrying out the research through a cost-benefit analysis before committing huge resources towards the study. The knowledge of objectives makes it easier to generate the survey questions and choice the target population (Ferrell & Pride, 2012). The researcher should also select a sample among the target population. The researcher should consider the expected margin of error and costs in selecting the size of the sample (Smith & Albaum, 2005). The researcher s