what sections should be included in a marketing research report

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9.2: Elements of a market research report

The market research report marks the culmination of the project, but it also marks the beginning of the recommendations’ implementation and action phase. Having established the decision problem, chosen a research method, identified a target population sample, collected and analyzed data accurately, and, hopefully, produced sound findings, the next step is to prepare the report and possibly present it to a group of decision makers. Usually, this involves writing a report and, occasionally, creating a slide show based on the report.

The six fundamental components of a research report are as follows:

• Title Page: This section provides an overview of the report, including its purpose, who requested it, when and how it was conducted.
• Table of Contents: This section lists all of the major sections of the report along with any graphs or charts, along with the page numbers where they are located.
• Executive Summary: This section provides a brief summary of all the details in the report, suitable for both executives and nonexecutives who may not have the time to read the entire document.
• Methodology and Limitations: The methodology section of the report explains the technical details of how the research was designed and conducted. The section explains, for example, how the data was collected and by whom, the size of the sample, how it was chosen, and whom or what it consisted of (e.g., the number of women versus men or children versus adults). It also includes information about the statistical techniques used to analyze the data. Every study has errors—sampling errors, interviewer errors, and so forth. The methodology section should explain these details, so decision makers can consider their overall impact. The margin of error is the overall tendency of the study to be off kilter—that is, how far it could have gone wrong in either direction. Remember how newscasters present polls before an election? They always say, “This candidate is ahead 48 to 44 percent, plus or minus 2 percent.” That “plus or minus” is the margin of error. The larger the margin of error is, the less likely the results of the study are accurate. The margin of error needs to be included in the methodology section.
• Findings: If there is additional research or secondary data that supports the study’s conclusions, it can be included in the findings section to help demonstrate that the study accomplished its goals. The findings section is an expanded, more detailed version of the executive summary that provides additional information about the statistics that the research uncovered and that support the study’s conclusions.
• Recommendations. The recommendations section should include a description of the course of action you believe should be followed in light of the research’s findings as well as the project’s objectives. Examples

Staff members have the most knowledge about the organization or business, so they will know what should and should not be included in the final research report and presentation. When preparing the report, it is important to keep the readership in mind. Avoid using technical jargon that decision makers and other readers will not understand; if you must use technical terms, explain them. Additionally, proofread the document to catch any typos or grammatical errors; ask a couple of people to proofread behind you to catch any mistakes you might have missed. Lastly, since many research reports are presented using slideshows, avoid trying to include every detail of the report on the slides. People attending the presentation will not have the time to go through the lengthy and boring material, and even if they do, it is unlikely that they will be paying attention to the presenter.

During or after the presentation, attendees can review the longer, paper version of the report so they can read the details at a convenient time, if they choose to. Instead of including all the information from the study on the slides, condense each section of the report down to key points and add some “talking points” only the presenter will see.

Albrecht, M. G., Green, M., & Hoffman, L. (2023).  Principles of Marketing . OpenStax, Rice University. CC BY 4.0

Author removed at request of original publisher. (2022). Principles of Marketing – H5P Edition . BC Campus Open Education. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Introduction to Market Research Copyright © by Julie Fossitt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How to Write a Marketing Research Report

I n today’s date, successful businesses have figured out how their customers research, shop, and buy. If you want your business to succeed, you must develop a thorough understanding of who your customers are, your target market, and what influences their purchase decisions and behaviors. That is where market research comes in.

According to HubSpot , market research is a process of collecting data about your company’s buyer personas, target audience, and customers to figure out viable and successful your service or product is going to be in this market, among these people.

A marketing research report is a document where you need to present market data, including current market trends, consumer behavior, and competitive analyses.

The primary objective of such reports is to identify business opportunities in the market. Needless to say, such reports play a crucial role in the success of a brand’s marketing strategy .

How to Prepare an Effective Marketing Research Report?

If you haven’t worked on a marketing research report before, the task may seem a bit challenging for you. In reality, however, it can be dealt with quite easily by following several tips.

#1. Understand the objectives of the report

Just like an essay writer needs to identify the objectives of the essay he/she is writing, you also need to determine the objectives of your marketing research report before you prepare one. The objectives, as you may know, justify why the research is being conducted.

Take some time to identify and understand the objectives so that you can use them as the starting point for your report. The whole report is just about answering the objectives, nothing more.

#2. Conduct thorough research

Since you are writing a report on marketing research, it is quite evident that you need to perform in-depth research of the market before you develop the report. Learn about the target market as much as you can.

Gather information about the target audience members, their purchase behaviors, and other market dynamics. Basically, you need to collect all the necessary data that will help you prepare a report in compliance with the objectives.

#3. Prepare an outline for the report

Once you are done gathering the necessary information, you need to develop the outline of your report. As you may already know from your academic years, the outline helps you organize the information in your paper and works as a skeleton of the report.

Since you have not prepared a proper marketing research report before, let me tell you about the crucial aspects of its outline:

A marketing research report generally has the following segments:

• Table of contents
• Introduction
• Background and methodology
• Executive summary

#4. Add the relevant details only

It is important that you realize that your research findings may not make it to the report. If a few pieces of information do not add value to the objectives of the report or seem insignificant to your report, you should leave them out.

Include only the relevant pieces of information. If you think some details may not be that important to the report you are preparing but can help the readers, you can add details in the appendix section.

#5. Include an executive summary

Let’s say that you are able to develop an impressive marketing research report on your first try. But there are still going to managers or other important people who just don’t have the time to read the entire report.

However, their inputs are still important. So, you need to prepare a shorter version of that report with only the most important details in the form of an executive summary . The summary should include just the details those managers (or other important position holders in the company) will need to make the business decisions .

#6. Tell a story

No one would be interested in reading a report if it only offers statistics and data points. You need to tell a story that will make your researched and analyzed data sound practical and interesting, compelling the readers to take the necessary measures.

For instance, you can form a story of how the findings of your marketing research will allow you to serve your ideal customers better. It is important to acknowledge that stories are generally more memorable. When you present your findings in the form of a story, they often become the guiding principles for future decisions.

#7. Put the least amount of methodological information at the start

To regular people, methodological information sounds boring. Instead of putting off the readers by presenting such data at the beginning, just mention the details that the readers will need to understand the context of the data you are about to present in your report.

Details such as who took part in your research survey, the sample size, how you collected the data will allow the readers to interpret the data more effectively. So include these data, and put the rest of the details regarding methodology in the Appendix.

#8. Use pictures or other visual elements when possible

There is no denying that pictures and other visual elements such as infographics, charts, graphs, etc., are more convenient for the readers. Besides, you can communicate complex concepts with much ease when using such visual elements instead of just texts.

You also need to consider the fact that your report will not just be handed to the readers in the form of a brochure but also be presented in PowerPoint. So it is wiser to use more visual elements in your report to make it more consumable for the readers who often lose interest while reading long chunks of texts and data.

#9. Proofread and edit

Once you are done writing the report, spend some time proofreading the content of the report. While having spelling or grammatical errors in your report can cause embarrassment for you in front of your colleagues, you should also be focusing on the fact that the report you have prepared fulfills all the objectives that were identified in the beginning. Also, make the necessary editing changes in the paper to make the report more reader-friendly and comprehensive.

#10. Get it checked by a person with experience

Since you do not have much experience in preparing marketing research reports, it is possible that you may still have something missing in your report, even if you have followed all the tips. So, it will be better if you have someone read your report and offer you constructive feedback on the paper.

Make sure that the person you are asking for feedback from has enough experience in preparing such reports. Such people can tell you how to make a more practical report for the business.

In conclusion

As you can see, preparing a marketing research report is not much different from preparing an academic paper. But the problem is that you are no longer a student. So, if you make a mistake, you will have to face the consequences as well.

This is why it is important that you stick to the basic guidelines of report writing and seek guidance from people with some quality experience.

About the Author!

Clara Smith is a senior marketer who is currently working for a reputed MNC based in California, US. She is also a part of the team of experts at Essaygator.com , where she offers coursework help by AssignmentHelp.us to students on their requests.

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What is a Marketing Research Report and How to Write It

In essence, a market research report is a document that reveals the characteristics of your ideal customers, their buying habits, the value your product or service can bring to them, and the list of your top competitors.

The marketing research report paints a picture of what kinds of new products or services may be the most profitable in today’s highly competitive landscape. For products or services already available, a marketing research report can provide detailed insights as to whether they are meeting their consumers’ needs and expectations. It helps understand the reasons why consumers buy a particular product by studying consumer behavior, including how economic, cultural, societal, and personal factors influence that behavior.

Furthermore, the purpose of writing a marketing research report is to make calculated decisions about business ideas – whether they’re worth pursuing or not. This requires one primary skill which is observing the pattern which is hidden in the User Generated Content (UGC) written in different tones and perspectives on the social web.

Simply put, writing a market research report is a vital part of planning business activities and serves as a neat way to assimilate all the information about your target market and prospective customers.

Now, there are two key varieties of marketing research report formats – primary and secondary.

Primary vs. Secondary Market Research

Let’s take a look at the main recipes of how to make a market research report in detail:

Primary Research

This method of marketing research involves gathering firsthand information about your market and prospective clients. You study your customers directly by conducting:

• Interviews (either by telephone or face-to-face)
• Surveys and polls (online or by email)
• Questionnaires (online or by email)
• Focus groups discussions with a sample of potential customers and getting their direct feedback

Some crucial questions that you need to ask your prospective customers in your primary research are:

• What are the factors that motivate you to purchase this product or service?
• What do you like or dislike about this type of product or service already available on the market?
• Are there any areas you’d like to suggest for improvement?
• What according to you is the appropriate price for this product or service?

Primary research also involves analyzing competitors’ strategies, so you can find gaps and weaknesses that you can turn into your strengths.

Secondary Research

The second method of writing a marketing research report is all about analyzing the data that has already been published and using the available information on the web. That is, secondary research is done from reliable reports and statistics found on the websites of other organizations or authority blogs in your industry.

Sources can be:

• Public: This includes all the free sources like social media and forums, Google Trends, YouGov, and government sources such as the United States Census Bureau.
• Commercial: This includes industry insights compiled by research agencies like Pew, Gartner, Forrester, and so on. Typically, these are paid.
• Internal: This is the historical market data your organization already has in-house, such as the Net Promoter Score, customer churn rate, and so on.

Secondary data can help you identify competitors, establish benchmarks, and determine target customer segments or demographics – people who live a certain lifestyle, their income and buying patterns, age group, location, etc.

Market Research Reports Advantages and Disadvantages

Before we discuss how to write a marketing research report, let’s quickly take a look at market research report benefits and also some of the limitations in marketing research reports.

Advantages of Market Research Report

Here are the top reasons why you should invest in creating a market research report.

1. Gives a Better Understanding of Your Customers

The answers to questions like who will buy your product, what are the customers’ pain points, what motivates their buying behavior, and so on will be effectively answered with a market research report. Essentially, it will help you map out the full profile of your ideal customer and consequently, allow you to create tailored products and marketing campaigns.

2. Helps Spot Business Opportunities

As already mentioned, market research will give you insights about your competitors’ strategies, so you can find gaps in their offerings that you can turn into your product’s strengths. You may also find other business opportunities such as potential partnerships with brands that sell complementary products, or an opportunity to better upsell or cross-sell your products. For example, a keyword research report from a SaaS SEO agency provides an opportunity to acquire organic search ranking by creating in-depth, high-converting, and funnel-oriented content.

3. Minimizes Risks

Starting or running a business is synonymous with risk. In fact, nearly half of all small businesses with employees don’t survive for more than five years. Conducting proper market research frequently will allow you to stay on top of trends, and not waste your efforts and resources in things that would likely be fruitless.

For instance, before you launch a new product, conducting market research gives you a much better idea of the demand for your product. Or if an existing product is seeing a big drop in sales, market research helps you determine the root cause of the issue.

4. Facilitates Data-Driven Decision Making

When it comes to business decisions – data over guesswork, always. So, based on your market research results, you can make more informed decisions regarding the pricing, distribution channels, and marketing budget of your products.

Disadvantages of Market Research Report

As with anything, there are a couple of downsides to conducting marketing research as well.

1. Could Be an Expensive Activity

Conducting a comprehensive, in-depth research is usually a costly activity in terms of both time and money. To research the right audience with the right questions requires you to invest a lot of time. If you wish to use data by commercial market research agencies or get help from one such agency in conducting primary research, be prepared to spend a substantial amount.

2. Insights Gathered Could Be Inadequate or Even Inaccurate

Another problem often faced in marketing research is a lack of respondents. While you can figure out who is your target audience, getting them to fill out surveys and questionnaires can indeed be challenging. Plus, you’re using data you collected for drawing conclusions, which may be unreliable.

For example, by the time you act on the data you collected, it may have become outdated. This translates into poor decision making and the whole process may become counterproductive.

How to Prepare Market Research Report

Now, here are some concrete steps and guidelines for writing a marketing research report.

Step 1: Cluster the Data

First off, compile all the relevant data you’ve accumulated from your primary and/or secondary research efforts. Survey results, interview answers, statistics from third-party sources – bring it all together and then analyze the information to sketch out the profile of your target market.

Step 2: Prepare an Outline

Next, create a skeleton of the report so that you understand what information will go where. An outline with sections and subsections will help you structure your marketing research report properly. A typical report includes an introduction, background and methodology, executive summary, results, and a conclusion with links to all references.

With an outline in front of you, start by writing the front matter of your report – an introduction that provides a brief overview of your business and the reason you conducted the market research. Include a summary of the market research process and the results you have analyzed. For instance, you might have been gauging the feasibility of a new product, so summarize that your market research report is for a new product launch.

Step 3: Mention the Research Methods

An important next step is to clearly mention the methods used to conduct the research. That is, if you conducted polls, specify the number of polls, the percentage of responses, the types of people or businesses targeted, and the questions included in the poll. Tag all the resources for demographic information, such as census data.

Step 4: Include Visuals With Narrative Explanation

Visuals such as charts and graphs are an important part of any research paper. They make sure that the findings are easy to comprehend.

So, create tables, graphs, and/or charts illustrating the results of the research. Accompany it with a narrative explanation of the visual data. Highlight the inferences you made based on this data.

Step 5: Conclude the Report With Recommendations

Finally, conclude your report with a section that lists actionable recommendations based on the research results to facilitate decision making. For example, all the numbers may point to the conclusion that your customers desire a particular feature that no other product on the market is currently offering. In this case, it is clear that it’s a good idea to invest your resources in providing that feature and gain a competitive edge.

At the very end of the report, include reference links to all the sources and an appendix for supplementary materials and further reading.

Marketing Research Report Templates

Before you go, check out some templates and samples you can use to better understand the marketing research report structure, and maybe even use them to kickstart your report instead of preparing one from scratch.

• Market Research Report for New Product Launch
• Market Research Report for Restaurant (competitor analysis)
• Social Media Market Research Report

Writing a marketing research report is a tried-and-true way to gain a solid understanding of your target audience and competitors while enabling you to make more informed decisions and minimize investment risks. Sure, it may take considerable time, effort, and even money to conduct thorough research and prepare a report, but when done well, the ROI of it all is well worth it.

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10.2 Steps in the Marketing Research Process

Learning objective.

• Describe the basic steps in the marketing research process and the purpose of each step.

The basic steps used to conduct marketing research are shown in Figure 10.6 “Steps in the Marketing Research Process” . Next, we discuss each step.

Figure 10.6 Steps in the Marketing Research Process

Step 1: Define the Problem (or Opportunity)

There’s a saying in marketing research that a problem half defined is a problem half solved. Defining the “problem” of the research sounds simple, doesn’t it? Suppose your product is tutoring other students in a subject you’re a whiz at. You have been tutoring for a while, and people have begun to realize you’re darned good at it. Then, suddenly, your business drops off. Or it explodes, and you can’t cope with the number of students you’re being asked help. If the business has exploded, should you try to expand your services? Perhaps you should subcontract with some other “whiz” students. You would send them students to be tutored, and they would give you a cut of their pay for each student you referred to them.

Both of these scenarios would be a problem for you, wouldn’t they? They are problems insofar as they cause you headaches. But are they really the problem? Or are they the symptoms of something bigger? For example, maybe your business has dropped off because your school is experiencing financial trouble and has lowered the number of scholarships given to incoming freshmen. Consequently, there are fewer total students on campus who need your services. Conversely, if you’re swamped with people who want you to tutor them, perhaps your school awarded more scholarships than usual, so there are a greater number of students who need your services. Alternately, perhaps you ran an ad in your school’s college newspaper, and that led to the influx of students wanting you to tutor them.

Businesses are in the same boat you are as a tutor. They take a look at symptoms and try to drill down to the potential causes. If you approach a marketing research company with either scenario—either too much or too little business—the firm will seek more information from you such as the following:

• In what semester(s) did your tutoring revenues fall (or rise)?
• In what subject areas did your tutoring revenues fall (or rise)?
• In what sales channels did revenues fall (or rise): Were there fewer (or more) referrals from professors or other students? Did the ad you ran result in fewer (or more) referrals this month than in the past months?
• Among what demographic groups did your revenues fall (or rise)—women or men, people with certain majors, or first-year, second-, third-, or fourth-year students?

The key is to look at all potential causes so as to narrow the parameters of the study to the information you actually need to make a good decision about how to fix your business if revenues have dropped or whether or not to expand it if your revenues have exploded.

The next task for the researcher is to put into writing the research objective. The research objective is the goal(s) the research is supposed to accomplish. The marketing research objective for your tutoring business might read as follows:

To survey college professors who teach 100- and 200-level math courses to determine why the number of students referred for tutoring dropped in the second semester.

This is admittedly a simple example designed to help you understand the basic concept. If you take a marketing research course, you will learn that research objectives get a lot more complicated than this. The following is an example:

“To gather information from a sample representative of the U.S. population among those who are ‘very likely’ to purchase an automobile within the next 6 months, which assesses preferences (measured on a 1–5 scale ranging from ‘very likely to buy’ to ‘not likely at all to buy’) for the model diesel at three different price levels. Such data would serve as input into a forecasting model that would forecast unit sales, by geographic regions of the country, for each combination of the model’s different prices and fuel configurations (Burns & Bush, 2010).”

Now do you understand why defining the problem is complicated and half the battle? Many a marketing research effort is doomed from the start because the problem was improperly defined. Coke’s ill-fated decision to change the formula of Coca-Cola in 1985 is a case in point: Pepsi had been creeping up on Coke in terms of market share over the years as well as running a successful promotional campaign called the “Pepsi Challenge,” in which consumers were encouraged to do a blind taste test to see if they agreed that Pepsi was better. Coke spent four years researching “the problem.” Indeed, people seemed to like the taste of Pepsi better in blind taste tests. Thus, the formula for Coke was changed. But the outcry among the public was so great that the new formula didn’t last long—a matter of months—before the old formula was reinstated. Some marketing experts believe Coke incorrectly defined the problem as “How can we beat Pepsi in taste tests?” instead of “How can we gain market share against Pepsi?” (Burns & Bush, 2010)

New Coke Is It! 1985

(click to see video)

This video documents the Coca-Cola Company’s ill-fated launch of New Coke in 1985.

1985 Pepsi Commercial—“They Changed My Coke”

This video shows how Pepsi tried to capitalize on the blunder.

Step 2: Design the Research

The next step in the marketing research process is to do a research design. The research design is your “plan of attack.” It outlines what data you are going to gather and from whom, how and when you will collect the data, and how you will analyze it once it’s been obtained. Let’s look at the data you’re going to gather first.

There are two basic types of data you can gather. The first is primary data. Primary data is information you collect yourself, using hands-on tools such as interviews or surveys, specifically for the research project you’re conducting. Secondary data is data that has already been collected by someone else, or data you have already collected for another purpose. Collecting primary data is more time consuming, work intensive, and expensive than collecting secondary data. Consequently, you should always try to collect secondary data first to solve your research problem, if you can. A great deal of research on a wide variety of topics already exists. If this research contains the answer to your question, there is no need for you to replicate it. Why reinvent the wheel?

Sources of Secondary Data

Your company’s internal records are a source of secondary data. So are any data you collect as part of your marketing intelligence gathering efforts. You can also purchase syndicated research. Syndicated research is primary data that marketing research firms collect on a regular basis and sell to other companies. J.D. Power & Associates is a provider of syndicated research. The company conducts independent, unbiased surveys of customer satisfaction, product quality, and buyer behavior for various industries. The company is best known for its research in the automobile sector. One of the best-known sellers of syndicated research is the Nielsen Company, which produces the Nielsen ratings. The Nielsen ratings measure the size of television, radio, and newspaper audiences in various markets. You have probably read or heard about TV shows that get the highest (Nielsen) ratings. (Arbitron does the same thing for radio ratings.) Nielsen, along with its main competitor, Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), also sells businesses scanner-based research . Scanner-based research is information collected by scanners at checkout stands in stores. Each week Nielsen and IRI collect information on the millions of purchases made at stores. The companies then compile the information and sell it to firms in various industries that subscribe to their services. The Nielsen Company has also recently teamed up with Facebook to collect marketing research information. Via Facebook, users will see surveys in some of the spaces in which they used to see online ads (Rappeport, Gelles, 2009).

By contrast, MarketResearch.com is an example of a marketing research aggregator. A marketing research aggregator is a marketing research company that doesn’t conduct its own research and sell it. Instead, it buys research reports from other marketing research companies and then sells the reports in their entirety or in pieces to other firms. Check out MarketResearch.com’s Web site. As you will see there are a huge number of studies in every category imaginable that you can buy for relatively small amounts of money.

Figure 10.7

Market research aggregators buy research reports from other marketing research companies and then resell them in part or in whole to other companies so they don’t have to gather primary data.

Source: http://www.marketresearch.com .

Your local library is a good place to gather free secondary data. It has searchable databases as well as handbooks, dictionaries, and books, some of which you can access online. Government agencies also collect and report information on demographics, economic and employment data, health information, and balance-of-trade statistics, among a lot of other information. The U.S. Census Bureau collects census data every ten years to gather information about who lives where. Basic demographic information about sex, age, race, and types of housing in which people live in each U.S. state, metropolitan area, and rural area is gathered so that population shifts can be tracked for various purposes, including determining the number of legislators each state should have in the U.S. House of Representatives. For the U.S. government, this is primary data. For marketing managers it is an important source of secondary data.

The Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan also conducts periodic surveys and publishes information about trends in the United States. One research study the center continually conducts is called the “Changing Lives of American Families” ( http://www.isr.umich.edu/home/news/research-update/2007-01.pdf ). This is important research data for marketing managers monitoring consumer trends in the marketplace. The World Bank and the United Nations are two international organizations that collect a great deal of information. Their Web sites contain many free research studies and data related to global markets. Table 10.1 “Examples of Primary Data Sources versus Secondary Data Sources” shows some examples of primary versus secondary data sources.

Table 10.1 Examples of Primary Data Sources versus Secondary Data Sources

Gauging the Quality of Secondary Data

When you are gathering secondary information, it’s always good to be a little skeptical of it. Sometimes studies are commissioned to produce the result a client wants to hear—or wants the public to hear. For example, throughout the twentieth century, numerous studies found that smoking was good for people’s health. The problem was the studies were commissioned by the tobacco industry. Web research can also pose certain hazards. There are many biased sites that try to fool people that they are providing good data. Often the data is favorable to the products they are trying to sell. Beware of product reviews as well. Unscrupulous sellers sometimes get online and create bogus ratings for products. See below for questions you can ask to help gauge the credibility of secondary information.

Gauging the Credibility of Secondary Data: Questions to Ask

• Who gathered this information?
• For what purpose?
• What does the person or organization that gathered the information have to gain by doing so?
• Was the information gathered and reported in a systematic manner?
• Is the source of the information accepted as an authority by other experts in the field?
• Does the article provide objective evidence to support the position presented?

Types of Research Design

Now let’s look specifically at the types of research designs that are utilized. By understanding different types of research designs, a researcher can solve a client’s problems more quickly and efficiently without jumping through more hoops than necessary. Research designs fall into one of the following three categories:

• Exploratory research design
• Descriptive research design
• Causal research design (experiments)

An exploratory research design is useful when you are initially investigating a problem but you haven’t defined it well enough to do an in-depth study of it. Perhaps via your regular market intelligence, you have spotted what appears to be a new opportunity in the marketplace. You would then do exploratory research to investigate it further and “get your feet wet,” as the saying goes. Exploratory research is less structured than other types of research, and secondary data is often utilized.

One form of exploratory research is qualitative research. Qualitative research is any form of research that includes gathering data that is not quantitative, and often involves exploring questions such as why as much as what or how much . Different forms, such as depth interviews and focus group interviews, are common in marketing research.

The depth interview —engaging in detailed, one-on-one, question-and-answer sessions with potential buyers—is an exploratory research technique. However, unlike surveys, the people being interviewed aren’t asked a series of standard questions. Instead the interviewer is armed with some general topics and asks questions that are open ended, meaning that they allow the interviewee to elaborate. “How did you feel about the product after you purchased it?” is an example of a question that might be asked. A depth interview also allows a researcher to ask logical follow-up questions such as “Can you tell me what you mean when you say you felt uncomfortable using the service?” or “Can you give me some examples?” to help dig further and shed additional light on the research problem. Depth interviews can be conducted in person or over the phone. The interviewer either takes notes or records the interview.

Focus groups and case studies are often utilized for exploratory research as well. A focus group is a group of potential buyers who are brought together to discuss a marketing research topic with one another. A moderator is used to focus the discussion, the sessions are recorded, and the main points of consensus are later summarized by the market researcher. Textbook publishers often gather groups of professors at educational conferences to participate in focus groups. However, focus groups can also be conducted on the telephone, in online chat rooms, or both, using meeting software like WebEx. The basic steps of conducting a focus group are outlined below.

The Basic Steps of Conducting a Focus Group

• Establish the objectives of the focus group. What is its purpose?
• Identify the people who will participate in the focus group. What makes them qualified to participate? How many of them will you need and what they will be paid?
• Obtain contact information for the participants and send out invitations (usually e-mails are most efficient).
• Develop a list of questions.
• Choose a facilitator.
• Choose a location in which to hold the focus group and the method by which it will be recorded.
• Conduct the focus group. If the focus group is not conducted electronically, include name tags for the participants, pens and notepads, any materials the participants need to see, and refreshments. Record participants’ responses.
• Summarize the notes from the focus group and write a report for management.

A case study looks at how another company solved the problem that’s being researched. Sometimes multiple cases, or companies, are used in a study. Case studies nonetheless have a mixed reputation. Some researchers believe it’s hard to generalize, or apply, the results of a case study to other companies. Nonetheless, collecting information about companies that encountered the same problems your firm is facing can give you a certain amount of insight about what direction you should take. In fact, one way to begin a research project is to carefully study a successful product or service.

Two other types of qualitative data used for exploratory research are ethnographies and projective techniques. In an ethnography , researchers interview, observe, and often videotape people while they work, live, shop, and play. The Walt Disney Company has recently begun using ethnographers to uncover the likes and dislikes of boys aged six to fourteen, a financially attractive market segment for Disney, but one in which the company has been losing market share. The ethnographers visit the homes of boys, observe the things they have in their rooms to get a sense of their hobbies, and accompany them and their mothers when they shop to see where they go, what the boys are interested in, and what they ultimately buy. (The children get seventy-five dollars out of the deal, incidentally.) (Barnes, 2009)

Projective techniques are used to reveal information research respondents might not reveal by being asked directly. Asking a person to complete sentences such as the following is one technique:

People who buy Coach handbags __________.

(Will he or she reply with “are cool,” “are affluent,” or “are pretentious,” for example?)

KFC’s grilled chicken is ______.

Or the person might be asked to finish a story that presents a certain scenario. Word associations are also used to discern people’s underlying attitudes toward goods and services. Using a word-association technique, a market researcher asks a person to say or write the first word that comes to his or her mind in response to another word. If the initial word is “fast food,” what word does the person associate it with or respond with? Is it “McDonald’s”? If many people reply that way, and you’re conducting research for Burger King, that could indicate Burger King has a problem. However, if the research is being conducted for Wendy’s, which recently began running an advertising campaign to the effect that Wendy’s offerings are “better than fast food,” it could indicate that the campaign is working.

Completing cartoons is yet another type of projective technique. It’s similar to finishing a sentence or story, only with the pictures. People are asked to look at a cartoon such as the one shown in Figure 10.8 “Example of a Cartoon-Completion Projective Technique” . One of the characters in the picture will have made a statement, and the person is asked to fill in the empty cartoon “bubble” with how they think the second character will respond.

Figure 10.8 Example of a Cartoon-Completion Projective Technique

In some cases, your research might end with exploratory research. Perhaps you have discovered your organization lacks the resources needed to produce the product. In other cases, you might decide you need more in-depth, quantitative research such as descriptive research or causal research, which are discussed next. Most marketing research professionals advise using both types of research, if it’s feasible. On the one hand, the qualitative-type research used in exploratory research is often considered too “lightweight.” Remember earlier in the chapter when we discussed telephone answering machines and the hit TV sitcom Seinfeld ? Both product ideas were initially rejected by focus groups. On the other hand, relying solely on quantitative information often results in market research that lacks ideas.

The Stone Wheel—What One Focus Group Said

Watch the video to see a funny spoof on the usefulness—or lack of usefulness—of focus groups.

Descriptive Research

Anything that can be observed and counted falls into the category of descriptive research design. A study using a descriptive research design involves gathering hard numbers, often via surveys, to describe or measure a phenomenon so as to answer the questions of who , what , where , when , and how . “On a scale of 1–5, how satisfied were you with your service?” is a question that illustrates the information a descriptive research design is supposed to capture.

Physiological measurements also fall into the category of descriptive design. Physiological measurements measure people’s involuntary physical responses to marketing stimuli, such as an advertisement. Elsewhere, we explained that researchers have gone so far as to scan the brains of consumers to see what they really think about products versus what they say about them. Eye tracking is another cutting-edge type of physiological measurement. It involves recording the movements of a person’s eyes when they look at some sort of stimulus, such as a banner ad or a Web page. The Walt Disney Company has a research facility in Austin, Texas, that it uses to take physical measurements of viewers when they see Disney programs and advertisements. The facility measures three types of responses: people’s heart rates, skin changes, and eye movements (eye tracking) (Spangler, 2009).

Figure 10.9

A woman shows off her headgear for an eye-tracking study. The gear’s not exactly a fashion statement but . . .

lawrencegs – Google Glass – CC BY 2.0.

A strictly descriptive research design instrument—a survey, for example—can tell you how satisfied your customers are. It can’t, however, tell you why. Nor can an eye-tracking study tell you why people’s eyes tend to dwell on certain types of banner ads—only that they do. To answer “why” questions an exploratory research design or causal research design is needed (Wagner, 2007).

Causal Research

Causal research design examines cause-and-effect relationships. Using a causal research design allows researchers to answer “what if” types of questions. In other words, if a firm changes X (say, a product’s price, design, placement, or advertising), what will happen to Y (say, sales or customer loyalty)? To conduct causal research, the researcher designs an experiment that “controls,” or holds constant, all of a product’s marketing elements except one (or using advanced techniques of research, a few elements can be studied at the same time). The one variable is changed, and the effect is then measured. Sometimes the experiments are conducted in a laboratory using a simulated setting designed to replicate the conditions buyers would experience. Or the experiments may be conducted in a virtual computer setting.

You might think setting up an experiment in a virtual world such as the online game Second Life would be a viable way to conduct controlled marketing research. Some companies have tried to use Second Life for this purpose, but the results have been somewhat mixed as to whether or not it is a good medium for marketing research. The German marketing research firm Komjuniti was one of the first “real-world” companies to set up an “island” in Second Life upon which it could conduct marketing research. However, with so many other attractive fantasy islands in which to play, the company found it difficult to get Second Life residents, or players, to voluntarily visit the island and stay long enough so meaningful research could be conducted. (Plus, the “residents,” or players, in Second Life have been known to protest corporations invading their world. When the German firm Komjuniti created an island in Second Life to conduct marketing research, the residents showed up waving signs and threatening to boycott the island.) (Wagner, 2007)

Why is being able to control the setting so important? Let’s say you are an American flag manufacturer and you are working with Walmart to conduct an experiment to see where in its stores American flags should be placed so as to increase their sales. Then the terrorist attacks of 9/11 occur. In the days afterward, sales skyrocketed—people bought flags no matter where they were displayed. Obviously, the terrorist attacks in the United States would have skewed the experiment’s data.

An experiment conducted in a natural setting such as a store is referred to as a field experiment . Companies sometimes do field experiments either because it is more convenient or because they want to see if buyers will behave the same way in the “real world” as in a laboratory or on a computer. The place the experiment is conducted or the demographic group of people the experiment is administered to is considered the test market . Before a large company rolls out a product to the entire marketplace, it will often place the offering in a test market to see how well it will be received. For example, to compete with MillerCoors’ sixty-four-calorie beer MGD 64, Anheuser-Busch recently began testing its Select 55 beer in certain cities around the country (McWilliams, 2009).

Figure 10.10

Select 55 beer: Coming soon to a test market near you? (If you’re on a diet, you have to hope so!)

Martine – Le champagne – CC BY-NC 2.0.

Many companies use experiments to test all of their marketing communications. For example, the online discount retailer O.co (formerly called Overstock.com) carefully tests all of its marketing offers and tracks the results of each one. One study the company conducted combined twenty-six different variables related to offers e-mailed to several thousand customers. The study resulted in a decision to send a group of e-mails to different segments. The company then tracked the results of the sales generated to see if they were in line with the earlier experiment it had conducted that led it to make the offer.

Step 3: Design the Data-Collection Forms

If the behavior of buyers is being formally observed, and a number of different researchers are conducting observations, the data obviously need to be recorded on a standardized data-collection form that’s either paper or electronic. Otherwise, the data collected will not be comparable. The items on the form could include a shopper’s sex; his or her approximate age; whether the person seemed hurried, moderately hurried, or unhurried; and whether or not he or she read the label on products, used coupons, and so forth.

The same is true when it comes to surveying people with questionnaires. Surveying people is one of the most commonly used techniques to collect quantitative data. Surveys are popular because they can be easily administered to large numbers of people fairly quickly. However, to produce the best results, the questionnaire for the survey needs to be carefully designed.

Questionnaire Design

Most questionnaires follow a similar format: They begin with an introduction describing what the study is for, followed by instructions for completing the questionnaire and, if necessary, returning it to the market researcher. The first few questions that appear on the questionnaire are usually basic, warm-up type of questions the respondent can readily answer, such as the respondent’s age, level of education, place of residence, and so forth. The warm-up questions are then followed by a logical progression of more detailed, in-depth questions that get to the heart of the question being researched. Lastly, the questionnaire wraps up with a statement that thanks the respondent for participating in the survey and information and explains when and how they will be paid for participating. To see some examples of questionnaires and how they are laid out, click on the following link: http://cas.uah.edu/wrenb/mkt343/Project/Sample%20Questionnaires.htm .

How the questions themselves are worded is extremely important. It’s human nature for respondents to want to provide the “correct” answers to the person administering the survey, so as to seem agreeable. Therefore, there is always a hazard that people will try to tell you what you want to hear on a survey. Consequently, care needs to be taken that the survey questions are written in an unbiased, neutral way. In other words, they shouldn’t lead a person taking the questionnaire to answer a question one way or another by virtue of the way you have worded it. The following is an example of a leading question.

Don’t you agree that teachers should be paid more ?

The questions also need to be clear and unambiguous. Consider the following question:

Which brand of toothpaste do you use ?

The question sounds clear enough, but is it really? What if the respondent recently switched brands? What if she uses Crest at home, but while away from home or traveling, she uses Colgate’s Wisp portable toothpaste-and-brush product? How will the respondent answer the question? Rewording the question as follows so it’s more specific will help make the question clearer:

Which brand of toothpaste have you used at home in the past six months? If you have used more than one brand, please list each of them 1 .

Sensitive questions have to be asked carefully. For example, asking a respondent, “Do you consider yourself a light, moderate, or heavy drinker?” can be tricky. Few people want to admit to being heavy drinkers. You can “soften” the question by including a range of answers, as the following example shows:

How many alcoholic beverages do you consume in a week ?

• __0–5 alcoholic beverages
• __5–10 alcoholic beverages
• __10–15 alcoholic beverages

Many people don’t like to answer questions about their income levels. Asking them to specify income ranges rather than divulge their actual incomes can help.

Other research question “don’ts” include using jargon and acronyms that could confuse people. “How often do you IM?” is an example. Also, don’t muddy the waters by asking two questions in the same question, something researchers refer to as a double-barreled question . “Do you think parents should spend more time with their children and/or their teachers?” is an example of a double-barreled question.

Open-ended questions , or questions that ask respondents to elaborate, can be included. However, they are harder to tabulate than closed-ended questions , or questions that limit a respondent’s answers. Multiple-choice and yes-and-no questions are examples of closed-ended questions.

Testing the Questionnaire

You have probably heard the phrase “garbage in, garbage out.” If the questions are bad, the information gathered will be bad, too. One way to make sure you don’t end up with garbage is to test the questionnaire before sending it out to find out if there are any problems with it. Is there enough space for people to elaborate on open-ended questions? Is the font readable? To test the questionnaire, marketing research professionals first administer it to a number of respondents face to face. This gives the respondents the chance to ask the researcher about questions or instructions that are unclear or don’t make sense to them. The researcher then administers the questionnaire to a small subset of respondents in the actual way the survey is going to be disseminated, whether it’s delivered via phone, in person, by mail, or online.

Getting people to participate and complete questionnaires can be difficult. If the questionnaire is too long or hard to read, many people won’t complete it. So, by all means, eliminate any questions that aren’t necessary. Of course, including some sort of monetary incentive for completing the survey can increase the number of completed questionnaires a market researcher will receive.

Step 4: Specify the Sample

Once you have created your questionnaire or other marketing study, how do you figure out who should participate in it? Obviously, you can’t survey or observe all potential buyers in the marketplace. Instead, you must choose a sample. A sample is a subset of potential buyers that are representative of your entire target market, or population being studied. Sometimes market researchers refer to the population as the universe to reflect the fact that it includes the entire target market, whether it consists of a million people, a hundred thousand, a few hundred, or a dozen. “All unmarried people over the age of eighteen who purchased Dirt Devil steam cleaners in the United States during 2011” is an example of a population that has been defined.

Obviously, the population has to be defined correctly. Otherwise, you will be studying the wrong group of people. Not defining the population correctly can result in flawed research, or sampling error. A sampling error is any type of marketing research mistake that results because a sample was utilized. One criticism of Internet surveys is that the people who take these surveys don’t really represent the overall population. On average, Internet survey takers tend to be more educated and tech savvy. Consequently, if they solely constitute your population, even if you screen them for certain criteria, the data you collect could end up being skewed.

The next step is to put together the sampling frame , which is the list from which the sample is drawn. The sampling frame can be put together using a directory, customer list, or membership roster (Wrenn et. al., 2007). Keep in mind that the sampling frame won’t perfectly match the population. Some people will be included on the list who shouldn’t be. Other people who should be included will be inadvertently omitted. It’s no different than if you were to conduct a survey of, say, 25 percent of your friends, using friends’ names you have in your cell phone. Most of your friends’ names are likely to be programmed into your phone, but not all of them. As a result, a certain degree of sampling error always occurs.

There are two main categories of samples in terms of how they are drawn: probability samples and nonprobability samples. A probability sample is one in which each would-be participant has a known and equal chance of being selected. The chance is known because the total number of people in the sampling frame is known. For example, if every other person from the sampling frame were chosen, each person would have a 50 percent chance of being selected.

A nonprobability sample is any type of sample that’s not drawn in a systematic way. So the chances of each would-be participant being selected can’t be known. A convenience sample is one type of nonprobability sample. It is a sample a researcher draws because it’s readily available and convenient to do so. Surveying people on the street as they pass by is an example of a convenience sample. The question is, are these people representative of the target market?

For example, suppose a grocery store needed to quickly conduct some research on shoppers to get ready for an upcoming promotion. Now suppose that the researcher assigned to the project showed up between the hours of 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. on a weekday and surveyed as many shoppers as possible. The problem is that the shoppers wouldn’t be representative of the store’s entire target market. What about commuters who stop at the store before and after work? Their views wouldn’t be represented. Neither would people who work the night shift or shop at odd hours. As a result, there would be a lot of room for sampling error in this study. For this reason, studies that use nonprobability samples aren’t considered as accurate as studies that use probability samples. Nonprobability samples are more often used in exploratory research.

Lastly, the size of the sample has an effect on the amount of sampling error. Larger samples generally produce more accurate results. The larger your sample is, the more data you will have, which will give you a more complete picture of what you’re studying. However, the more people surveyed or studied, the more costly the research becomes.

Statistics can be used to determine a sample’s optimal size. If you take a marketing research or statistics class, you will learn more about how to determine the optimal size.

Of course, if you hire a marketing research company, much of this work will be taken care of for you. Many marketing research companies, like ResearchNow, maintain panels of prescreened people they draw upon for samples. In addition, the marketing research firm will be responsible for collecting the data or contracting with a company that specializes in data collection. Data collection is discussed next.

Step 5: Collect the Data

As we have explained, primary marketing research data can be gathered in a number of ways. Surveys, taking physical measurements, and observing people are just three of the ways we discussed. If you’re observing customers as part of gathering the data, keep in mind that if shoppers are aware of the fact, it can have an effect on their behavior. For example, if a customer shopping for feminine hygiene products in a supermarket aisle realizes she is being watched, she could become embarrassed and leave the aisle, which would adversely affect your data. To get around problems such as these, some companies set up cameras or two-way mirrors to observe customers. Organizations also hire mystery shoppers to work around the problem. A mystery shopper is someone who is paid to shop at a firm’s establishment or one of its competitors to observe the level of service, cleanliness of the facility, and so forth, and report his or her findings to the firm.

Make Extra Money as a Mystery Shopper

Watch the YouTube video to get an idea of how mystery shopping works.

Survey data can be collected in many different ways and combinations of ways. The following are the basic methods used:

• Face-to-face (can be computer aided)
• Telephone (can be computer aided or completely automated)
• Mail and hand delivery
• E-mail and the Web

A face-to-face survey is, of course, administered by a person. The surveys are conducted in public places such as in shopping malls, on the street, or in people’s homes if they have agreed to it. In years past, it was common for researchers in the United States to knock on people’s doors to gather survey data. However, randomly collected door-to-door interviews are less common today, partly because people are afraid of crime and are reluctant to give information to strangers (McDaniel & Gates, 1998).

Nonetheless, “beating the streets” is still a legitimate way questionnaire data is collected. When the U.S. Census Bureau collects data on the nation’s population, it hand delivers questionnaires to rural households that do not have street-name and house-number addresses. And Census Bureau workers personally survey the homeless to collect information about their numbers. Face-to-face surveys are also commonly used in third world countries to collect information from people who cannot read or lack phones and computers.

A plus of face-to-face surveys is that they allow researchers to ask lengthier, more complex questions because the people being surveyed can see and read the questionnaires. The same is true when a computer is utilized. For example, the researcher might ask the respondent to look at a list of ten retail stores and rank the stores from best to worst. The same question wouldn’t work so well over the telephone because the person couldn’t see the list. The question would have to be rewritten. Another drawback with telephone surveys is that even though federal and state “do not call” laws generally don’t prohibit companies from gathering survey information over the phone, people often screen such calls using answering machines and caller ID.

Probably the biggest drawback of both surveys conducted face-to-face and administered over the phone by a person is that they are labor intensive and therefore costly. Mailing out questionnaires is costly, too, and the response rates can be rather low. Think about why that might be so: if you receive a questionnaire in the mail, it is easy to throw it in the trash; it’s harder to tell a market researcher who approaches you on the street that you don’t want to be interviewed.

By contrast, gathering survey data collected by a computer, either over the telephone or on the Internet, can be very cost-effective and in some cases free. SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang are two Web sites that will allow you to create online questionnaires, e-mail them to up to one hundred people for free, and view the responses in real time as they come in. For larger surveys, you have to pay a subscription price of a few hundred dollars. But that still can be extremely cost-effective. The two Web sites also have a host of other features such as online-survey templates you can use to create your questionnaire, a way to set up automatic reminders sent to people who haven’t yet completed their surveys, and tools you can use to create graphics to put in your final research report. To see how easy it is to put together a survey in SurveyMonkey, click on the following link: http://help.surveymonkey.com/app/tutorials/detail/a_id/423 .

Like a face-to-face survey, an Internet survey can enable you to show buyers different visuals such as ads, pictures, and videos of products and their packaging. Web surveys are also fast, which is a major plus. Whereas face-to-face and mailed surveys often take weeks to collect, you can conduct a Web survey in a matter of days or even hours. And, of course, because the information is electronically gathered it can be automatically tabulated. You can also potentially reach a broader geographic group than you could if you had to personally interview people. The Zoomerang Web site allows you to create surveys in forty different languages.

Another plus for Web and computer surveys (and electronic phone surveys) is that there is less room for human error because the surveys are administered electronically. For instance, there’s no risk that the interviewer will ask a question wrong or use a tone of voice that could mislead the respondents. Respondents are also likely to feel more comfortable inputting the information into a computer if a question is sensitive than they would divulging the information to another person face-to-face or over the phone. Given all of these advantages, it’s not surprising that the Internet is quickly becoming the top way to collect primary data. However, like mail surveys, surveys sent to people over the Internet are easy to ignore.

Lastly, before the data collection process begins, the surveyors and observers need to be trained to look for the same things, ask questions the same way, and so forth. If they are using rankings or rating scales, they need to be “on the same page,” so to speak, as to what constitutes a high ranking or a low ranking. As an analogy, you have probably had some teachers grade your college papers harder than others. The goal of training is to avoid a wide disparity between how different observers and interviewers record the data.

Figure 10.11

Training people so they know what constitutes different ratings when they are collecting data will improve the quality of the information gathered in a marketing research study.

Ricardo Rodriquez – Satisfaction survey – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

For example, if an observation form asks the observers to describe whether a shopper’s behavior is hurried, moderately hurried, or unhurried, they should be given an idea of what defines each rating. Does it depend on how much time the person spends in the store or in the individual aisles? How fast they walk? In other words, the criteria and ratings need to be spelled out.

Collecting International Marketing Research Data

Gathering marketing research data in foreign countries poses special challenges. However, that doesn’t stop firms from doing so. Marketing research companies are located all across the globe, in fact. Eight of the ten largest marketing research companies in the world are headquartered in the United States. However, five of these eight firms earn more of their revenues abroad than they do in the United States. There’s a reason for this: many U.S. markets were saturated, or tapped out, long ago in terms of the amount that they can grow. Coke is an example. As you learned earlier in the book, most of the Coca-Cola Company’s revenues are earned in markets abroad. To be sure, the United States is still a huge market when it comes to the revenues marketing research firms generate by conducting research in the country: in terms of their spending, American consumers fuel the world’s economic engine. Still, emerging countries with growing middle classes, such as China, India, and Brazil, are hot new markets companies want to tap.

What kind of challenges do firms face when trying to conduct marketing research abroad? As we explained, face-to-face surveys are commonly used in third world countries to collect information from people who cannot read or lack phones and computers. However, face-to-face surveys are also common in Europe, despite the fact that phones and computers are readily available. In-home surveys are also common in parts of Europe. By contrast, in some countries, including many Asian countries, it’s considered taboo or rude to try to gather information from strangers either face-to-face or over the phone. In many Muslim countries, women are forbidden to talk to strangers.

And how do you figure out whom to research in foreign countries? That in itself is a problem. In the United States, researchers often ask if they can talk to the heads of households to conduct marketing research. But in countries in which domestic servants or employees are common, the heads of households aren’t necessarily the principal shoppers; their domestic employees are (Malhotra).

Translating surveys is also an issue. Have you ever watched the TV comedians Jay Leno and David Letterman make fun of the English translations found on ethnic menus and products? Research tools such as surveys can suffer from the same problem. Hiring someone who is bilingual to translate a survey into another language can be a disaster if the person isn’t a native speaker of the language to which the survey is being translated.

One way companies try to deal with translation problems is by using back translation. When back translation is used, a native speaker translates the survey into the foreign language and then translates it back again to the original language to determine if there were gaps in meaning—that is, if anything was lost in translation. And it’s not just the language that’s an issue. If the research involves any visual images, they, too, could be a point of confusion. Certain colors, shapes, and symbols can have negative connotations in other countries. For example, the color white represents purity in many Western cultures, but in China, it is the color of death and mourning (Zouhali-Worrall, 2008). Also, look back at the cartoon-completion exercise in Figure 10.8 “Example of a Cartoon-Completion Projective Technique” . What would women in Muslim countries who aren’t allowed to converse with male sellers think of it? Chances are, the cartoon wouldn’t provide you with the information you’re seeking if Muslim women in some countries were asked to complete it.

One way marketing research companies are dealing with the complexities of global research is by merging with or acquiring marketing research companies abroad. The Nielsen Company is the largest marketing research company in the world. The firm operates in more than a hundred countries and employs more than forty thousand people. Many of its expansions have been the result of acquisitions and mergers.

Step 6: Analyze the Data

Step 6 involves analyzing the data to ensure it’s as accurate as possible. If the research is collected by hand using a pen and pencil, it’s entered into a computer. Or respondents might have already entered the information directly into a computer. For example, when Toyota goes to an event such as a car show, the automaker’s marketing personnel ask would-be buyers to complete questionnaires directly on computers. Companies are also beginning to experiment with software that can be used to collect data using mobile phones.

Once all the data is collected, the researchers begin the data cleaning , which is the process of removing data that have accidentally been duplicated (entered twice into the computer) or correcting data that have obviously been recorded wrong. A program such as Microsoft Excel or a statistical program such as Predictive Analytics Software (PASW, which was formerly known as SPSS) is then used to tabulate, or calculate, the basic results of the research, such as the total number of participants and how collectively they answered various questions. The programs can also be used to calculate averages, such as the average age of respondents, their average satisfaction, and so forth. The same can done for percentages, and other values you learned about, or will learn about, in a statistics course, such as the standard deviation, mean, and median for each question.

The information generated by the programs can be used to draw conclusions, such as what all customers might like or not like about an offering based on what the sample group liked or did not like. The information can also be used to spot differences among groups of people. For example, the research might show that people in one area of the country like the product better than people in another area. Trends to predict what might happen in the future can also be spotted.

If there are any open-ended questions respondents have elaborated upon—for example, “Explain why you like the current brand you use better than any other brand”—the answers to each are pasted together, one on top of another, so researchers can compare and summarize the information. As we have explained, qualitative information such as this can give you a fuller picture of the results of the research.

Part of analyzing the data is to see if it seems sound. Does the way in which the research was conducted seem sound? Was the sample size large enough? Are the conclusions that become apparent from it reasonable?

The two most commonly used criteria used to test the soundness of a study are (1) validity and (2) reliability. A study is valid if it actually tested what it was designed to test. For example, did the experiment you ran in Second Life test what it was designed to test? Did it reflect what could really happen in the real world? If not, the research isn’t valid. If you were to repeat the study, and get the same results (or nearly the same results), the research is said to be reliable . If you get a drastically different result if you repeat the study, it’s not reliable. The data collected, or at least some it, can also be compared to, or reconciled with, similar data from other sources either gathered by your firm or by another organization to see if the information seems on target.

Stage 7: Write the Research Report and Present Its Findings

If you end up becoming a marketing professional and conducting a research study after you graduate, hopefully you will do a great job putting the study together. You will have defined the problem correctly, chosen the right sample, collected the data accurately, analyzed it, and your findings will be sound. At that point, you will be required to write the research report and perhaps present it to an audience of decision makers. You will do so via a written report and, in some cases, a slide or PowerPoint presentation based on your written report.

The six basic elements of a research report are as follows.

• Title Page . The title page explains what the report is about, when it was conducted and by whom, and who requested it.
• Table of Contents . The table of contents outlines the major parts of the report, as well as any graphs and charts, and the page numbers on which they can be found.
• Executive Summary . The executive summary summarizes all the details in the report in a very quick way. Many people who receive the report—both executives and nonexecutives—won’t have time to read the entire report. Instead, they will rely on the executive summary to quickly get an idea of the study’s results and what to do about those results.

Methodology and Limitations . The methodology section of the report explains the technical details of how the research was designed and conducted. The section explains, for example, how the data was collected and by whom, the size of the sample, how it was chosen, and whom or what it consisted of (e.g., the number of women versus men or children versus adults). It also includes information about the statistical techniques used to analyze the data.

Every study has errors—sampling errors, interviewer errors, and so forth. The methodology section should explain these details, so decision makers can consider their overall impact. The margin of error is the overall tendency of the study to be off kilter—that is, how far it could have gone wrong in either direction. Remember how newscasters present the presidential polls before an election? They always say, “This candidate is ahead 48 to 44 percent, plus or minus 2 percent.” That “plus or minus” is the margin of error. The larger the margin of error is, the less likely the results of the study are accurate. The margin of error needs to be included in the methodology section.

• Findings . The findings section is a longer, fleshed-out version of the executive summary that goes into more detail about the statistics uncovered by the research that bolster the study’s findings. If you have related research or secondary data on hand that back up the findings, it can be included to help show the study did what it was designed to do.
• Recommendations . The recommendations section should outline the course of action you think should be taken based on the findings of the research and the purpose of the project. For example, if you conducted a global market research study to identify new locations for stores, make a recommendation for the locations (Mersdorf, 2009).

As we have said, these are the basic sections of a marketing research report. However, additional sections can be added as needed. For example, you might need to add a section on the competition and each firm’s market share. If you’re trying to decide on different supply chain options, you will need to include a section on that topic.

As you write the research report, keep your audience in mind. Don’t use technical jargon decision makers and other people reading the report won’t understand. If technical terms must be used, explain them. Also, proofread the document to ferret out any grammatical errors and typos, and ask a couple of other people to proofread behind you to catch any mistakes you might have missed. If your research report is riddled with errors, its credibility will be undermined, even if the findings and recommendations you make are extremely accurate.

Many research reports are presented via PowerPoint. If you’re asked to create a slideshow presentation from the report, don’t try to include every detail in the report on the slides. The information will be too long and tedious for people attending the presentation to read through. And if they do go to the trouble of reading all the information, they probably won’t be listening to the speaker who is making the presentation.

Instead of including all the information from the study in the slides, boil each section of the report down to key points and add some “talking points” only the presenter will see. After or during the presentation, you can give the attendees the longer, paper version of the report so they can read the details at a convenient time, if they choose to.

Key Takeaway

Step 1 in the marketing research process is to define the problem. Businesses take a look at what they believe are symptoms and try to drill down to the potential causes so as to precisely define the problem. The next task for the researcher is to put into writing the research objective, or goal, the research is supposed to accomplish. Step 2 in the process is to design the research. The research design is the “plan of attack.” It outlines what data you are going to gather, from whom, how, and when, and how you’re going to analyze it once it has been obtained. Step 3 is to design the data-collection forms, which need to be standardized so the information gathered on each is comparable. Surveys are a popular way to gather data because they can be easily administered to large numbers of people fairly quickly. However, to produce the best results, survey questionnaires need to be carefully designed and pretested before they are used. Step 4 is drawing the sample, or a subset of potential buyers who are representative of your entire target market. If the sample is not correctly selected, the research will be flawed. Step 5 is to actually collect the data, whether it’s collected by a person face-to-face, over the phone, or with the help of computers or the Internet. The data-collection process is often different in foreign countries. Step 6 is to analyze the data collected for any obvious errors, tabulate the data, and then draw conclusions from it based on the results. The last step in the process, Step 7, is writing the research report and presenting the findings to decision makers.

Review Questions

• Explain why it’s important to carefully define the problem or opportunity a marketing research study is designed to investigate.
• Describe the different types of problems that can occur when marketing research professionals develop questions for surveys.
• How does a probability sample differ from a nonprobability sample?
• What makes a marketing research study valid? What makes a marketing research study reliable?
• What sections should be included in a marketing research report? What is each section designed to do?

1 “Questionnaire Design,” QuickMBA , http://www.quickmba.com/marketing/research/qdesign (accessed December 14, 2009).

Barnes, B., “Disney Expert Uses Science to Draw Boy Viewers,” New York Times , April 15, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/arts/television/14boys.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 (accessed December 14, 2009).

Burns A. and Ronald Bush, Marketing Research , 6th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2010), 85.

Malhotra, N., Marketing Research: An Applied Approach , 6th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall), 764.

McDaniel, C. D. and Roger H. Gates, Marketing Research Essentials , 2nd ed. (Cincinnati: South-Western College Publishing, 1998), 61.

McWilliams, J., “A-B Puts Super-Low-Calorie Beer in Ring with Miller,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch , August 16, 2009, http://www.stltoday.com/business/next-matchup-light-weights-a-b-puts-super-low-calorie/article_47511bfe-18ca-5979-bdb9-0526c97d4edf.html (accessed April 13, 2012).

Mersdorf, S., “How to Organize Your Next Survey Report,” Cvent , August 24, 2009, http://survey.cvent.com/blog/cvent-survey/0/0/how-to-organize-your-next-survey-report (accessed December 14, 2009).

Rappeport A. and David Gelles, “Facebook to Form Alliance with Nielsen,” Financial Times , September 23, 2009, 16.

Spangler, T., “Disney Lab Tracks Feelings,” Multichannel News 30, no. 30 (August 3, 2009): 26.

Wagner, J., “Marketing in Second Life Doesn’t Work…Here Is Why!” GigaOM , April 4, 2007, http://gigaom.com/2007/04/04/3-reasons-why-marketing-in-second-life-doesnt-work (accessed December 14, 2009).

Wrenn, B., Robert E. Stevens, and David L. Loudon, Marketing Research: Text and Cases , 2nd ed. (Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press, 2007), 180.

Zouhali-Worrall, M., “Found in Translation: Avoiding Multilingual Gaffes,” CNNMoney.com , July 14, 2008, http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/07/smallbusiness/language_translation.fsb/index.htm (accessed December 14, 2009).

Principles of Marketing Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Learn How to Write a Market Research Report: 10 Steps to Follow for Success

Dec, 2023 - by CMI

A market research report is an integral part of the coursework for many business programs. It explores the understanding of subjective views of customers towards a product or service. Still, many students struggle to create market reports that effectively address the business question. So, how do you avoid the deer-in-the-headlights reaction when presenting a market research report?  

In most cases, marketers fail to create impactful research reports because they don’t know the actionable steps to follow. 10 main steps occur in a typical market research study and reporting process, from problem identification to acting on the result. Read on to get all the information you need to write a top-notch market research report.

What Is a Market Research Report?

A market research report is a document prepared to evaluate the feasibility of a new product or service to potential customers. Companies do market research reports to paint a picture of what products, services, or actions may be the most profitable to pursue. Actionable information is obtained through market research prepared in a formal report that reveals the characteristics of customers, the value of a product or service, buying habits, and a list of top competitors.

Writing a market research report helps businesses make calculated decisions about what ideas to pursue or not. It focuses on studying consumer behavior that influences spending decisions, including cultural, economic, societal, and personal factors. As a result, businesses can assimilate critical information and tips about prospective customers and target markets.

10 Steps to Write a Market Research Report That Accurately Highlights Market Opportunities

Identify the problem and objectives.

In market research, there’s a famous saying that a problem half defined is a problem half solved. So defining the potential problem, causes, or opportunities in the market is a great place to start your marketing research papers. The information will help you narrow down the parameters of the study, such as the business objective and research objectives. Whether you want to test a hypothesis about consumer opinion or how consumers will react to a new pricing model, they all require identifying a solid objective.  

Develop your research strategy

This is a crucial step in preparing a market research report because it will define the quality of data collection and the reliability of results. Choose between primary research or secondary research methods. Also, you will need to decide whether you will utilize quantitative or qualitative research methods. The most effective research strategy depends on your sample size and profile as well as the desired outcomes based on the objectives.

Use the help of writing services

In case you feel inefficient in handling crucial market research writing steps, such as defining the problem, identifying research objectives, or developing a research strategy, get the help you need from a professional. Reputable academic paper writing services, such as CustomWritings, have plenty of certified academic writers with extensive knowledge and experience in custom research paper writing of any complexity. You can get one written from scratch by an expert in a stipulated time to make your work easier.

Prepare an outline and set a deadline

If you can write a market research report yourself, develop an outline with sections and subsections you will cover in your paper. A typical market research report includes the following sections:

• Introduction
• Methodology

Market research reports also come with a fixed due date. So, allocate time for completing each section to ensure you finish the task before the deadline.

Specify the sample

Before you can start collecting data, you need to specify who will participate in the study. Start by defining your population correctly and defining a sampling frame from which you will draw the sample. For example, you can use a customer list, directory, or membership roster to get a good sample. Large samples produce more reliable results, but the more data you have, the costlier and more time-consuming your research will be. Use statistics to define an optimal sample size.

Gather data and information

Next, conduct fieldwork to collect relevant data. If you’re conducting quantitative research, use text, emails, websites, and social media to reach respondents. For qualitative research, primary data collection typically involves interviews or ethnographic research through video surveys. Find ways to record and organize responses from each source. You can complement each type of research with secondary data that relates to your topic.

Technology has made data analysis a breeze for researchers. Students can use programs such as Excel, STATA, and SPSS to organize, clean, analyze, and interpret basic results of their market research. The type of analysis you’ll adopt will depend on your hypothesis. Some good marketing analyses that you can conduct include:

• Market segmentation analysis
• Conjoint analysis
• Price sensitivity analysis
• TURF analysis

Present findings in a written report

It’s time to put your study together in a well-written market research analysis report that you will present to an audience of decision-makers. The goal is to make your findings come alive so that the audience understands your objectives and insights uncovered in the research. While data analysis could be complex, the final report should only point to the concrete actions and results. Ensure your college research report includes a title page, table of contents, executive summary, methodology, findings, and recommendations. In some cases, you can accompany your report with a slide presentation, charts, case summaries, and graphs.  

Cross-check

When you’re done with your market research report, take time to read through all the details to see if you’ve missed anything, have made mistakes, or if it has a good flow. Your first draft is never your final product. University students can get editing help from professional editing services, or online editing tools, or just ask a friend to double-check the report. Edit the report as many times as you want to make it clear and concise.

Act on your findings

Local and international businesses prepare market research reports for many reasons. Maybe they want to enter a new market or launch a new product. With a research report in hand, it’s time to act on the findings and the recommendations. This could involve commissioning the production of a product, setting up a social media framework, or taking actions to monitor customer loyalty. Still, stay alert to changes in trends that might require new research to be launched in the future.

Wrapping Up

When a busy business executive or professor grabs your market research report, they want to see something that will give them an idea of the research design, the results, and the big picture that addresses company goals. Follow the guide provided in this article to prepare a clear and actionable market research report.

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A Guide on How to Create a Market Research Report

A market research report provides valuable insights into consumer behaviors, market trends, competitive analysis, and the overall health of specific industries.

This document serves as a roadmap for businesses to strategize effectively, identify new opportunities, and mitigate risks.

In this article, we will walk you through the essential components of a market research report, the steps to create one, and best practices to ensure that your findings are actionable and accurate.

What is a Market Research Report?

A market research report is a comprehensive document that gathers data about market conditions, customer preferences, competition, and other factors affecting an industry or business. It synthesizes primary and secondary research to present an analysis that helps companies make strategic decisions. The report covers various aspects, from demographic data and consumer surveys to industry trends and competitive dynamics.

Types of Market Research Reports

Market research reports can vary based on the objectives and the scope of the study. Here are some common types:

• Consumer Analysis Reports: Focus on customer demographics, preferences, and behavior to tailor products and marketing strategies.
• Competitive Analysis Reports: Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of competitors within the market, offering insights into competitive advantages and potential opportunities.
• Industry Analysis Reports: Provide a broad overview of the industry, including trends, size, and growth forecasts.
• Product Testing Reports: Gather feedback from users about a new or existing product to inform product development and improvement.
• Brand Loyalty Reports: Analyze customer loyalty and satisfaction to help develop strategies to enhance customer retention.

What Does a Market Research Report Include?

A well-rounded market research report generally contains the following elements:

• Executive Summary: A concise overview of key findings and recommendations, allowing readers to quickly understand the report's essence.
• Introduction: Contextualizes the research, including objectives and questions that the report aims to address.
• Methodology: Describes the research methods used to collect data, whether through surveys, interviews, focus groups, or secondary data sources.
• Market Analysis: Detailed analysis of the market, including size, trends, growth patterns, and environmental factors.
• Competitive Landscape: Assessment of key players in the industry, their market share, strategies, and products.
• Customer Insights: Analysis of customer demographics, buying behaviors, preferences, and needs.
• Conclusions and Recommendations: Summarize the insights derived from the research and suggest actionable strategies based on the findings.

How to Create a Market Research Report in 5 Steps

Creating an effective market research report involves a structured approach:

• Define the Purpose: Clearly articulate what you want to achieve with the report. This will guide your research focus and methodology.
• Gather Information: Use both primary and secondary research to collect comprehensive data. Primary research could include surveys and interviews, while secondary research may involve reviewing existing studies, industry reports, and competitive data.
• Analyze Data: Interpret the data to identify patterns, insights, and correlations. Use statistical tools and software for accurate analysis.
• Draft the Report: Organize the findings in a structured format. Start with the executive summary, followed by the introduction, methodology, detailed findings, and conclusions.
• Review and Revise: Ensure the report is clear, accurate, and free from bias. It may be helpful to have peers or stakeholders review the document before finalizing it.

Best Practices for Creating a Market Research Report

To enhance the effectiveness of your market research report, consider these best practices:

• Stay Objective: Maintain impartiality to ensure the report is unbiased and reliable.
• Use Visuals: Incorporate charts, graphs, and infographics to make data easier to understand and more engaging.
• Keep It Concise: Be clear and concise, avoiding overly complex language or excessive detail that may distract from the key insights.
• Segment the Data: Provide segmented analysis to offer more detailed insights into different customer groups or market segments.
• Update Regularly: Market conditions change rapidly, so it’s important to update your reports periodically to keep them relevant.

Create a Market Research Report Using Tome

Presenting your market research effectively is key to influencing strategic decisions.

With Tome, you can effortlessly craft detailed, insightful presentations that communicate complex data in an understandable and engaging manner.

Start leveraging Tome today to enhance the impact of your market research reports and drive meaningful action.

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How to Write a Market Research Report

• Small Business
• Advertising & Marketing
• Market Research
• ')" data-event="social share" data-info="Pinterest" aria-label="Share on Pinterest">
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Characteristics of a Good Business Report

What is an r&d report, how to write an executive summary on a marketing plan.

• How to Arrange an Information Agenda After a Meeting
• What Is an Appendix in a Business Plan?

Your blood is pumping. A new opportunity has emerged on your business radar, and it could propel your business in a captivating and profitable direction. It could be a new product or service line, a group of untapped consumers or even – keep your voice down now – a potential merger with a smaller competitor.

Before you get too far ahead of yourself, you know that it's smart to thoroughly vet this opportunity by commissioning a market research report . At some point -- probably after your staff has finished gathering the necessary quantitative and qualitative data – you must lay out your expectations for the written report. How you approach this task should get their blood pumping, too.

Issue Three Dictates

If your marketing team is new to the task, they're probably going to love your top three directives:

• Tell a story. Tell a visual story, with lots of charts and graphs. Keep it brief.

They may not think they heard you right; after all, you did say you want a market research report, didn't you? And aren't most reports long, voluminous and yes, sometimes dull products?

Tell them to make no mistake: you expect a comprehensive effort that assesses every angle of this new business opportunity. You want the report, as they say, to “see around corners.” But there are valid reasons that drive your directives.

Tell a Story

The most compelling market research reports pivot on a story – about why that new product or service line holds such promise, why that group of untapped consumers could benefit from your offerings or why that merger would be a wise investment.

Like all good stories, this one might start with an anecdote or focus on one person – the “main character” – who could serve as your ideal customer. Telling the story of your research through his or her eyes, and with plenty of dynamic quotes, should flow directly into how pursuing this new opportunity would advance your business objectives. This is a crucial part of the story, too, since the opportunity wouldn't even be worth considering if it didn't conform with your business plan.

At this point, you might wish to share with your staff the experience of a well-known manufacturer of a men's fragrance that was ready to embark on a marketing campaign – targeted to men. Then the market research revealed that women, not men, make most of these purchases, and the finding transformed the campaign. Now there was an entirely different story to tell because the main characters shifted to women – who they are, what they do for a living, when they purchase men's fragrances and how they persuade the men in their lives to acquiesce to wearing a fragrance in the first place.

Tell a Visual Story

As much of the quantitative data as possible should be consigned to charts and graphs in the market research repor t, not the actual written content. Numbers are easier to read, and evaluate, when they're displayed in a graph rather than tucked into a dense paragraph, where the reader may struggle to interpret their meaning.

This point underscores another reality about market research reports: you may think it's being written for your benefit and that of your staff. And for now, it may be. Your audience may also include your business attorney and accountant. But some day, if it's appropriate, new stakeholders may read the report, too, and charts and graphs will make it easier for them to digest.

Of course, you can always overdo a good thing. Only relevant charts and graphs – or those that advance the fundamental story – should be included in the body of the market research report. Ancillary information should be relegated to the appendix – that document repository that comes at the end of a report.

Keep it Brief

By focusing on a compelling story and relying on visuals, your staff should find it easier to address your third cardinal rule. They should know that you will judge the value of their effort on its quality, not the number of pages. (It's up to you if you wish to tell them that many market research reports run from between 10 and 50 pages.) It will also help if they:

• Use bullet points when they can.* Read each other's work and “peer edit” for clarity and concision.
• Challenge each paragraph to the relevancy test. In other words, if a paragraph doesn't advance the basic story, strike it.

Heed Two Other Tips

You may hesitate to call it an “outline,” but you should convey to your staff that the true value of their report will depend on its organization. So if they don't like the sound of establishing a step-by-step progression of the report, then turn them loose on PowerPoint, which will force the issue (in a good way). In the end, they may decide that this format – and not a paper report – is the best one for their findings.

As liberating as this may be, most market research reports hew to tradition, and necessity, by including:

• A table of contents. A section on the research objectives. A section on the research methods. An executive summary. Detailed findings and, perhaps, the implications. Told in a dynamic manner, the fascinating finish should get everyone's blood pumping.
• InfoSurv: 10 Tips for Marketing Research Reports That Get Read
• C+R Research: 5 Things to Remember When Writing a Market Research Report

Mary Wroblewski earned a master's degree with high honors in communications and has worked as a reporter and editor in two Chicago newsrooms. Then she launched her own small business, which specialized in assisting small business owners with “all things marketing” – from drafting a marketing plan and writing website copy to crafting media plans and developing email campaigns. Mary writes extensively about small business issues and especially “all things marketing.”

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5 Things to Remember When Writing a Market Research Report

Filed Under: Best Practices , Market Research , Reporting , Tools & Techniques , Quantitative Research

Lynne Bartos

Vice President and Marketing Content Strategist, Marketing

There is nothing more embarrassing for a researcher than to hear a client say “…this doesn’t really address the business questions that we set out to answer.” This is more common an occurrence in research reporting than most of us would care to admit. But unfortunately, much report writing these days falls short of expectations for those on the client side. This is likely due to more emphasis on methodology or analytic technique at the expense of clear graphics, creative story-telling and actionable direction.

What often happens during the report-writing process is that market researchers have their direct research client in mind. They neglect the fact that their direct contact must present these findings to the ultimate stakeholder in the process — someone in senior management or the head of marketing who does not function in the research realm.

We need to take conscious steps to break out of our little bubble to avoid some of the lingo that is prevalent in research circles. You know what I mean if you’ve ever found yourself presenting your findings to marketing folks. While peppering them with terms such as “mean,” “monadic,” “DK/NS,” “latent class,” and the like, you suddenly notice the deer-in-the-headlights reaction. Worse yet, your audience’s eyes glaze over completely. These terms are foreign to many marketers and, frankly, most of them couldn’t care less about such things. They simply want a viable solution to the particular business need they set out to address.

So, when writing a research report for my clients it helps me to keep a few things in mind….

Speak to Marketers in Their Language

Focus on what marketers care most about — getting customers, keeping customers, and increasing their share of the customer’s wallet. So tell them what is meaningful to them….

• How to position their brand
• How best to price it
• Who their best prospects are and how to reach them
• What message should they be communicating
• Who are their most loyal and valuable customers
• How do they keep them loyal to their service or brand

Net, net — put some Marketing-Speak into your report, and leave out the Research-speak.

Tell a good story

A good report tells a good story. So, how do you tell a compelling story? Start by getting organized!

• Develop an analytic plan that focuses on business issues and objectives — the questions that need to be answered.
• Outline how the questions will be.
• Once the data is in, all team members should know how the data relates to those question, and they can craft the best story together.

Remember, every page in the report should contribute to the story! If something doesn’t contour well with your story, stick it in the Appendix. How many hundred-page reports have you been subjected to where the charts are all in the same order as the questionnaire? Where is the story?

It’s also important to stick closely to your analytic plan when crafting your story. The analytic plan is what helps to keep everyone focused on why the research was conducted in the first place.

Insightful Headlines and Bullets

What I also find helpful in getting my arms around the story is to write effective bullets and headlines for the data presented. Too many people think an insight is reiterating the numbers that are in the charts. Remember, anyone can read the numbers on a chart – our job, as researchers, is to pull the deeper insights from seemingly obvious data.

Be Creative and Have a Llittle Fun

Creativity also comes into play! Package the story in a creative way. No one wants to see rows and rows of data. Make the report visually appealing so you don’t intimidate those who are going to be using the findings to help drive strategy. Avoid too much text and too many numbers.

And, don’t be afraid to insert some humor here and there. It reminds your clients that you are human and helps to lighten the tone and keep things relaxed.

Get to the Heart of It

And finally, probably the hardest part of the report process for any researcher is to get straight to the heart of it… what is the story – conclusions, implications, and recommendations. Go to the next step to tell them what the data MEANS, and what they might consider doing to maximize their investment.

And there is nothing sweeter to a market researcher’s ears than to hear a client voice saying, “Thanks, this really addresses the business questions that we set out to answer!”

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Chapter 6: Marketing Research

6.1 Steps in the Marketing Research Process

Learning Objectives

• Describe the basic steps in the marketing research process and the purpose of each step.

The basic steps used to conduct marketing research are shown in figure 6.1 . Next, we discuss each step.

Step 1: Define the Problem (or Opportunity)

There’s a saying in marketing research that a problem half defined is a problem half solved. Defining the “problem” of the research sounds simple, doesn’t it? Suppose your “product” is tutoring other students in a subject you enjoy. You have been tutoring for a while, and people have begun to realize you’re very good at it. Then, suddenly, your business declines. Or it explodes, and you can’t cope with the number of students you’re being asked to help. If the business has exploded, should you try to expand your services? Perhaps you should subcontract with some other smart students. You would send them students to be tutored, and they would give you a cut of their pay for each student you referred to them.

Both of these scenarios would be a problem for you, wouldn’t they? They are problems insofar as they cause you headaches. But are they really the problem? Or are they the symptoms of something bigger? For example, maybe your business has dropped off because your school is experiencing decreased enrollment so there are fewer total students on campus who need your services. Conversely, if you’re swamped with people who want you to tutor them, perhaps your school has increased enrollment so there are a greater number of students who need your services. Alternately, perhaps you posted your services on social media and that led to the influx of students wanting you to tutor them.

Businesses are in the same boat. They take a look at symptoms and try to narrow down the potential causes. If you approach a marketing research company with either scenario—either too much or too little business—the firm will seek more information from you such as the following:

• In what semester(s) did your tutoring revenues fall (or rise)?
• In what subject areas did your tutoring revenues fall (or rise)?
• In what sales channels did revenues fall (or rise): Were there fewer (or more) referrals from professors or other students? Did the social media post result in fewer (or more) referrals this month than in the past months?
• Among what demographic groups did your revenues fall (or rise)— people with certain majors, or first-year, second-, third-, or fourth-year students, local or international students?

The key is to look at all potential causes so as to narrow the parameters of the study to the information you actually need to make a good decision about how to fix your business if revenues have dropped or whether or not to expand it if your revenues have exploded.

The next task for the researcher is to put the research objective into writing. The research objective is the goal(s) the research is supposed to accomplish. The marketing research objective for your tutoring business might read as follows:

To survey university professors who teach 100- and 200-level math courses to determine why the number of students referred for tutoring dropped in the second semester.

This is admittedly a simple example designed to help you understand the basic concept. If you take a marketing research course, you will learn that research objectives get a lot more complicated than this. The following is an example:

“To gather information from a sample representative of the U.S. population among those who are ‘very likely’ to purchase an automobile within the next 6 months, which assesses preferences (measured on a 1–5 scale ranging from ‘very likely to buy’ to ‘not likely at all to buy’) for the model diesel at three different price levels. Such data would serve as input into a forecasting model that would forecast unit sales, by geographic regions of the country, for each combination of the model’s different prices and fuel configurations.” (Burns & Bush, 2010) [1]

Now do you understand why defining the problem is complicated and half the battle? Many a marketing research effort has been doomed from the start because the problem was improperly defined. Coke’s ill-fated decision to change the formula of Coca-Cola in 1985 is a case in point: Pepsi had been creeping up on Coke in terms of market share over the years as well as running a successful promotional campaign called the “Pepsi Challenge,” in which consumers were encouraged to do a blind taste test to see if they agreed that Pepsi was better. Coke spent four years researching “the problem.” Indeed, people seemed to like the taste of Pepsi better in blind taste tests. Thus, the formula for Coke was changed. But the outcry among the public was so great that the new formula didn’t last long—a matter of months—before the old formula was reinstated. Some marketing experts believe Coke incorrectly defined the problem as “How can we beat Pepsi in taste tests?” instead of “How can we gain market share against Pepsi?” (Burns & Bush, 2010) [2]

Video 6.1 documents the Coca-Cola Company’s ill-fated launch of New Coke in 1985.

Video 6.1. New Coke Is It! 1985. Source: The 1985 launch of New Coke on Christian Budtz .

Video 6.2 shows how Pepsi tried to capitalize on the mistake.

Video 6.2. 1985 Pepsi Commercial “They Changed My Coke”. Source: 1985 Pepsi commercial: They changed my Coke on eyeh8cbs .

Step 2: Design the Research

The next step in the marketing research process is to do a research design. The research design outlines what data you are going to gather and from whom, how and when you will collect the data, and how you will analyze them once they’ve been obtained. Let’s look at the data you’re going to gather first.

There are two basic types of data you can gather. The first is primary data. Primary data is information you collect yourself, using hands-on tools such as interviews or surveys, specifically for the research project you’re conducting. Secondary data are data that have already been collected by someone else, or data you have already collected for another purpose. Collecting primary data is more time-consuming, work-intensive, and expensive than collecting secondary data. Consequently, you should always try to collect secondary data first to solve your research problem, if you can. A great deal of research on a wide variety of topics already exists. If this research contains the answer to your question, there is no need for you to replicate it. Why reinvent the wheel?

Sources of Secondary Data

Your company’s internal records are a source of secondary data. So are any data you collect as part of your regular marketing intelligence-gathering efforts. You can also purchase syndicated research. Syndicated research is primary data that marketing research firms collect on a regular basis and sell to other companies. J.D. Power & Associates is a provider of syndicated research. The company conducts independent, unbiased surveys of customer satisfaction, product quality, and buyer behaviour for various industries. The company is best known for its research in the automobile sector. One of the best-known sellers of syndicated research is the Nielsen Company, which produces the Nielsen ratings. The Nielsen ratings measure the size of television, radio, and newspaper audiences in various markets. You have probably read or heard about TV shows that get the highest (Nielsen) ratings (Arbitron does the same thing for radio ratings). Nielsen, along with its main competitor, Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), also sells businesses scanner-based research . Scanner-based research is information collected by scanners at checkout stands in stores. Each week, Nielsen and IRI collect information on the millions of purchases made at stores. The companies then compile the information and sell it to firms in various industries that subscribe to their services. The Nielsen Company has also recently teamed up with Facebook to collect marketing research information. Via Facebook, users will see surveys in some of the spaces in which they used to see online ads (Rappeport & Gelles, 2009). [3]

By contrast, MarketResearch.com is an example of a marketing research aggregator. A marketing research aggregator is a marketing research company that doesn’t conduct its own research and sell it; instead, it buys research reports from other marketing research companies and then sells the reports in their entirety or in pieces to other firms. Check out MarketResearch.com’s website ( figure 6.2 ). As you will see, there are a huge number of studies in every category imaginable that you can buy for relatively small amounts of money.

Your school library is a good place to gather free secondary data. It has searchable databases as well as handbooks, dictionaries, and books, some of which you can access online. Government agencies also collect and report information on demographics, economic and employment data, health information, and balance-of-trade statistics, among a lot of other information. Statistics Canada collects census data every ten years to gather information about who lives where. Basic demographic information about sex, age, race, and types of housing in which people live in each province, metropolitan area, and rural area is gathered so that population shifts can be tracked for various purposes.

The World Bank and the United Nations are two international organizations that collect a great deal of information. Their websites contain many free research studies and data related to global markets. Table 6.1 shows some examples of primary versus secondary data sources.

Gauging the Quality of Secondary Data

When you are gathering secondary information, it’s always good to be a little skeptical. Sometimes, studies are commissioned to produce the result a client wants to hear—or wants the public to hear. For example, throughout the twentieth century, numerous studies found that smoking was good for people’s health. The problem was the studies were commissioned by the tobacco industry. Web research can also pose certain hazards. There are many biased sites that try to fool people into thinking they are providing good data. Often, the data are favourable to the products they are trying to sell. Beware of product reviews as well. Unscrupulous sellers sometimes get online and create bogus ratings for products. See below for questions you can ask to help gauge the credibility of secondary information.

Gauging the Credibility of Secondary Data: Questions to Ask

• Who gathered this information?
• For what purpose?
• What does the person or organization that gathered the information have to gain by doing so?
• Was the information gathered and reported in a systematic manner?
• Is the source of the information accepted as an authority by other experts in the field?
• Does the article provide objective evidence to support the position presented?

Types of Research Designs

Now let’s look at the most common type of research design: exploratory.

An exploratory research design is useful when you are initially investigating a problem but you haven’t defined it well enough to do an in-depth study of it. Perhaps via your regular market intelligence, you have spotted what appears to be a new opportunity in the marketplace. You would then do exploratory research to investigate it further. Exploratory research is less structured than other types of research, and secondary data are often utilized.

One form of exploratory research is qualitative research. Qualitative research is any form of research that includes gathering data that are not quantitative, and it often involves exploring questions such as why as much as what or how much . Different forms, such as in-depth interviews and focus group interviews, are common in marketing research.

Interviews —engaging in detailed, one-on-one, question-and-answer sessions with potential buyers—is an exploratory research technique. However, unlike surveys, the people being interviewed aren’t asked a series of standard questions. Instead, the interviewer is armed with some general topics and asks questions that are open ended, meaning that they allow the interviewee to elaborate. “How did you feel about the product after you purchased it?” is an example of a question that might be asked. An interview also allows a researcher to ask logical follow-up questions such as “Can you tell me what you mean when you say you felt uncomfortable using the service?” or “Can you give me some examples?” to help dig further and shed additional light on the research problem. Interviews can be conducted in person or over the phone. The interviewer either takes notes or records the interview.

Focus groups and case studies are often utilized for exploratory research as well. A focus group is a group of potential buyers who are brought together to discuss a marketing research topic with one another. A moderator is used to focus the discussion, the sessions are recorded, and the main points of consensus are later summarized by the market researcher. Textbook publishers often gather groups of professors at educational conferences to participate in focus groups. However, focus groups can also be conducted on the telephone or online using meeting software like Zoom. The basic steps of conducting a focus group are outlined below.

The Basic Steps of Conducting a Focus Group

• Establish the objectives of the focus group. What is its purpose?
• Identify the people who will participate in the focus group. What makes them qualified to participate? How many of them will you need and what they will be paid?
• Obtain contact information for the participants and send out invitations (e-mails are usually most efficient).
• Develop a list of questions.
• Choose a facilitator.
• Choose a location in which to hold the focus group and the method by which it will be recorded.
• Conduct the focus group. If the focus group is not conducted electronically, include name tags for the participants, pens and notepads, any materials the participants need to see, and refreshments. Record participants’ responses.
• Summarize the notes from the focus group and write a report for management.

A case study looks at how another company solved the problem that’s being researched. Sometimes, multiple cases, or companies, are used in a study. Case studies nonetheless have a mixed reputation. Some researchers believe it’s hard to generalize, or apply, the results of a case study to other companies. Nonetheless, collecting information about companies that encountered the same problems your firm is facing can give you a certain amount of insight about what direction you should take. In fact, one way to begin a research project is to carefully study a successful product or service.

Two other types of qualitative data used for exploratory research are ethnographies and projective techniques. In ethnography , researchers interview, observe, and often videotape people while they work, live, shop, and play. The Walt Disney Company has recently begun using ethnographers to uncover the likes and dislikes of boys aged six to fourteen, a financially attractive market segment for Disney, but one in which the company has been losing market share. The ethnographers visit the homes of boys, observe the things they have in their rooms to get a sense of their hobbies, and accompany them and their mothers when they shop to see where they go, what the boys are interested in, and what they ultimately buy (Barnes, 2009). [4]

Projective techniques are used to reveal information research respondents might not reveal by being asked directly. Asking a person to complete sentences such as the following is one technique:

People who buy Gucci handbags __________. (Will he or she reply with “are cool,” “are affluent,” or “are pretentious,” for example?)

KFC’s grilled chicken is ______.

Or the person might be asked to finish a story that presents a certain scenario. Word associations are also used to discern people’s underlying attitudes toward goods and services. When using a word-association technique, a market researcher asks a person to say or write the first word that comes to his or her mind in response to another word. If the initial word is “fast food,” what word does the person associate it with or respond with? Is it “McDonald’s”? If many people reply that way, and you’re conducting research for Burger King, that could indicate Burger King has a problem. However, if the research is being conducted for Wendy’s, which recently began running an advertising campaign with the message that Wendy’s offerings are “better than fast food,” it could indicate that the campaign is working.

In some cases, your research might end with exploratory research. Perhaps you have discovered your organization lacks the resources needed to produce the product. In other cases, you might decide you need more in-depth, quantitative research such as descriptive research or causal research, which are discussed next. Most marketing research professionals suggest using both types of research, if it’s feasible. On the one hand, the qualitative type of research used in exploratory research is often considered too “lightweight.” On the other hand, relying solely on quantitative information often results in market research that lacks ideas.

Watch video 6.3 to see a funny spoof on the usefulness—or lack of usefulness—of focus groups.

Video 6.3. The Stone Wheel: What One Focus Group Said. Source: stone and stone wheel on smack1313 .

Step 3: Design the Data-Collection Forms

If the behaviour of buyers is being formally observed and a number of different researchers are conducting observations, the data obviously need to be recorded on a standardized data-collection form that’s either paper or electronic; otherwise, the data collected will not be comparable. The items on the form could include a shopper’s sex; his or her approximate age; whether the person seemed hurried, moderately hurried, or unhurried; and whether or not he or she read the label on products, used coupons, and so forth.

The same is true when it comes to surveying people with questionnaires. Surveying people is one of the most commonly used techniques to collect quantitative data. Surveys are popular because they can be easily administered to large numbers of people fairly quickly. However, to produce the best results, the questionnaire for the survey needs to be carefully designed.

Questionnaire Design

Most questionnaires follow a similar format: They begin with an introduction describing what the study is for, followed by instructions for completing the questionnaire and, if necessary, returning it to the market researcher. The first few questions that appear on the questionnaire are usually basic, warm-up questions their respondent can readily answer, such as the respondent’s age, level of education, place of residence, and so forth. The warm-up questions are then followed by a logical progression of more detailed, in-depth questions that get to the heart of the question being researched. Lastly, the questionnaire wraps up with a statement that thanks the respondent for participating in the survey and providing information and explains when and how they will be paid for participating.

How the questions themselves are worded is extremely important. It’s human nature for respondents to want to provide the “correct” answers to the person administering the survey so as to seem agreeable. Therefore, there is always a hazard that people will try to tell you what you want to hear on a survey. Consequently, care needs to be taken that the survey questions are written in an unbiased, neutral way. In other words, they shouldn’t lead a person taking the questionnaire to answer a question one way or another by virtue of the way you have worded it. The following is an example of a leading question.

Do you agree that teachers should be paid more ?

The questions also need to be clear and unambiguous. Consider the following question:

Which brand of toothpaste do you use ?

The question sounds clear enough, but is it really? What if the respondent recently switched brands? What if she uses Crest at home, but while away from home or travelling she uses Colgate’s Wisp portable toothpaste-and-brush product? How will the respondent answer the question? Rewording the question as follows so it’s more specific will help make the question clearer:

Which brand of toothpaste have you used at home in the past six months? If you have used more than one brand, please list each of them (“Questionnaire Design,” n.d.). [5]

Sensitive questions have to be asked carefully. For example, asking a respondent, “Do you consider yourself a light, moderate, or heavy drinker?” can be tricky. Few people want to admit to being heavy drinkers. You can “soften” the question by including a range of answers, as the following example shows:

How many alcoholic beverages do you consume in a week ?

• __0–5 alcoholic beverages
• __5–10 alcoholic beverages
• __10–15 alcoholic beverages

Many people don’t like to answer questions about their income levels. Asking them to specify income ranges rather than divulge their actual incomes can help.

Other research question “don’ts” include using jargon and acronyms that could confuse people. “How often do you Snap?” is an example. Also, don’t confuse people by asking two questions in the same question, something researchers refer to as a double-barrelled question . “Do you think parents should spend more time with their children and/or their teachers?” is an example of a double-barrelled question.

Open-ended questions , or questions that ask respondents to elaborate, can be included. However, they are harder to tabulate than closed-ended questions , or questions that limit a respondent’s answers. Multiple-choice, true/false and yes/no questions are examples of closed-ended questions.

Testing the Questionnaire

If the questions are bad, the information gathered will also be bad. One way to avoid this is to test the questionnaire before sending it out to find out if there are any problems with it. Is there enough space for people to elaborate on open-ended questions? Is the font readable? To test the questionnaire, marketing research professionals first administer it to a number of respondents face to face. This gives the respondents the chance to ask the researcher about questions or instructions that are unclear or don’t make sense to them. The researcher then administers the questionnaire to a small subset of respondents in the actual way the survey is going to be disseminated, whether it’s delivered via phone, in person, by mail, or online.

Getting people to participate and complete questionnaires can be difficult. If the questionnaire is too long or hard to read, many people won’t complete it. So, by all means, eliminate any questions that aren’t necessary. Of course, including some sort of monetary incentive for completing the survey can increase the number of completed questionnaires a market researcher will receive.

Step 4: Specify the Sample

Once you have created your questionnaire or other marketing study, how do you figure out who should participate in it? Obviously, you can’t survey or observe all potential buyers in the marketplace; instead, you must choose a sample. A sample is a subset of potential buyers that are representative of your entire target market or population being studied. Sometimes market researchers refer to the population as the universe to reflect the fact that it includes the entire target market, whether it consists of a million people, a hundred thousand, a few hundred, or a dozen. “All single people over the age of eighteen who purchased an air fryer in Canada during 2020” is an example of a population that has been defined.

Obviously, the population has to be defined correctly. Otherwise, you will be studying the wrong group of people. Not defining the population correctly can result in flawed research or a sampling error. A sampling error is any type of marketing research mistake that occurs because a sample was utilized. One criticism of Internet surveys is that the people who take these surveys don’t really represent the overall population. On average, Internet survey takers tend to be more educated and tech savvy. Consequently, if they solely constitute your population, even if you screen them for certain criteria, the data you collect could end up being skewed.

There are two main categories of samples in terms of how they are drawn: probability samples and nonprobability samples. A probability sample is one in which each would-be participant has a known and equal chance of being selected. The chance is known because the total number of people in the sampling frame is known. For example, if every other person from the sampling frame were chosen, each person would have a 50 percent chance of being selected.

A nonprobability sample is any type of sample that’s not drawn in a systematic way, so the chances of each would-be participant being selected can’t be known. A convenience sample is one type of nonprobability sample. It is a sample a researcher draws because it’s readily available and convenient to do so. Surveying people on the street as they pass by is an example of a convenience sample. The question is, are these people representative of the target market?

Lastly, the size of the sample has an effect on sampling error. Larger samples generally produce more accurate results. The larger your sample is, the more data you will have, which will give you a more complete picture of what you’re studying. However, the more people surveyed or studied, the more costly the research becomes.

Statistics can be used to determine a sample’s optimal size. If you take a marketing research or statistics class, you will learn more about how to determine the optimal size.

Of course, if you hire a marketing research company, much of this work will be taken care of for you. Many marketing research companies maintain panels of prescreened people they draw upon for samples. In addition, the marketing research firm will be responsible for collecting the data or contracting with a company that specializes in data collection. Data collection is discussed next.

Step 5: Collect the Data

As we have explained, primary marketing research data can be gathered in a number of ways. Surveys, taking physical measurements, and observing people are just three of the ways we discussed. If you’re observing customers as part of gathering the data, keep in mind that if shoppers are aware of the fact, it can have an effect on their behaviour. For example, if a customer shopping for feminine hygiene products in a supermarket aisle realizes she is being watched, she could become embarrassed and leave the aisle, which would adversely affect your data. To get around problems such as these, some companies set up cameras or two-way mirrors to observe customers. Organizations also hire mystery shoppers to work around the problem. A mystery shopper is someone who is paid to shop at a firm’s establishment or one of its competitors to observe the level of service, cleanliness of the facility, and so forth and report his or her findings to the firm.

Watch the YouTube video 6.4 to get an idea of how mystery shopping works.

Video 6.4. Make Extra Money as a Mystery Shopper by KSSAyisha .

Survey data can be collected in many different ways and combinations of ways. The following are the basic methods used:

• Face-to-face (can be computer aided)
• Telephone (can be computer aided or completely automated)
• Mail and hand delivery
• E-mail and the Web

A face-to-face survey is, of course, administered by a person. The surveys are conducted in public places such as in shopping malls, on the street, or in people’s homes if they have agreed to it. In years past, it was common for researchers to knock on people’s doors to gather survey data. However, randomly collected door-to-door interviews are less common today, partly because people are afraid of crime and are reluctant to give information to strangers (McDaniel & Gates, 1998). [6]

Nonetheless, knocking on doors is still a legitimate way questionnaire data are collected. When Statistics Canada collects data on the nation’s population, it hand delivers questionnaires to rural households that do not have street-name and house-number addresses. And workers personally survey the homeless to collect information about their numbers. Face-to-face surveys are also commonly used in some countries to collect information from people who cannot read or lack phones and computers.

An advantage of face-to-face surveys is that they allow researchers to ask lengthier, more complex questions because the people being surveyed can see and read the questionnaires. The same is true when a computer is utilized. For example, the researcher might ask the respondent to look at a list of ten retail stores and rank the stores from best to worst. The same question wouldn’t work so well over the telephone because the person couldn’t see the list. The question would have to be rewritten. Another drawback with telephone surveys is that even though federal and state “do not call” laws generally don’t prohibit companies from gathering survey information over the phone, people often screen such calls using answering machines and caller ID.

Probably the biggest drawback of both surveys conducted face-to-face and administered over the phone by a person is that they are labour intensive and therefore costly. Mailing out questionnaires is costly, too, and the response rates can be rather low. Think about why that might be so: if you receive a questionnaire in the mail, it is easy to throw it in the trash; it’s harder to tell a market researcher who approaches you on the street that you don’t want to be interviewed.

By contrast, gathering survey data collected by a computer, either over the telephone or on the Internet, can be cost-effective and in some cases free. SurveyMonkey and Qualtrics are two websites that will allow you to create online questionnaires, e-mail them to up to one hundred people for free, and view the responses in real time as they come in. For larger surveys, you have to pay a subscription price of a few hundred dollars. But that still can be extremely cost-effective. See how easy it is to put together a survey in SurveyMonkey .

Like a face-to-face survey, an Internet survey can enable you to show buyers different visuals such as ads, pictures, and videos of products and their packaging. Web surveys are also fast, which is a major plus. While face-to-face and mailed surveys often take weeks to collect, you can conduct a web survey in a matter of days or even hours. And, of course, because the information is electronically gathered it can be automatically tabulated. You can also potentially reach a broader geographic group than you could if you had to personally interview people.

Another plus for web and computer surveys (and electronic phone surveys) is that there is less room for human error because the surveys are administered electronically. For instance, there’s no risk that the interviewer will ask a question wrong or use a tone of voice that could mislead the respondents. Respondents are also likely to feel more comfortable inputting the information into a computer if a question is sensitive than they would divulging the information to another person face to face or over the phone. Given all of these advantages, it’s not surprising that the Internet is quickly becoming the top way to collect primary data. However, like mail surveys, surveys sent to people over the Internet are easy to ignore.

Lastly, before the data collection process begins, the surveyors and observers need to be trained to look for the same things, ask questions the same way, and so forth. If they are using rankings or rating scales, they need to agree as to what constitutes a high ranking or a low ranking. The goal of training is to avoid a wide disparity between how different observers and interviewers record the data.

For example, if an observation form asks the observers to describe whether a shopper’s behaviour is hurried, moderately hurried, or unhurried, they should be given an idea of what defines each rating. Does it depend on how much time the person spends in the store or in the individual aisles? Is how fast they walk taken into account? In other words, the criteria and ratings need to be spelled out.

Step 6: Analyze the Data

Step 6 involves analyzing the data to ensure they’re as accurate as possible. If the research is collected by hand using a pen and pencil, it’s entered into a computer. Or respondents might have already entered the information directly into a computer. For example, when Toyota goes to an event such as a car show, the automaker’s marketing personnel ask would-be buyers to complete questionnaires directly on computers. Companies are also beginning to experiment with software that can be used to collect data using mobile phones.

The information generated by the programs can be used to draw conclusions, such as what all customers might like or not like about an offering based on what the sample group liked or did not like. The information can also be used to spot differences among groups of people. For example, the research might show that people in one area of the country like the product better than people in another area. Trends to predict what might happen in the future can also be spotted.

If there are any open-ended questions respondents have elaborated upon—for example, “Explain why you like the current brand you use better than any other brand”—the answers to each are pasted together, one on top of another, so researchers can compare and summarize the information. As we have explained, qualitative information such as this can give you a fuller picture of the results of the research.

Part of analyzing the data is to see if they seem sound. Does the way in which the research was conducted seem sound? Was the sample size large enough? Are the conclusions reached from it reasonable?

Step 7: Write the Research Report and Present Its Findings

If you end up becoming a marketing professional and conducting a research study after you graduate, hopefully you will do a great job putting the study together. You will have defined the problem correctly, chosen the right sample, collected the data accurately, analyzed them, and your findings will be sound. At that point, you will be required to write the research report and perhaps present it to an audience of decision makers. You will do so via a written report and, in some cases, a slide or PowerPoint presentation based on your written report.

The six basic elements of a research report are as follows.

• Title Page . The title page explains what the report is about, when it was conducted and by whom, and who requested it.
• Table of Contents . The table of contents outlines the major parts of the report as well as any graphs and charts and their page numbers.
• Executive Summary . The executive summary summarizes all the details in the report in a quick way. Many people who receive the report—both executives and nonexecutives—won’t have time to read the entire report. Instead, they will rely on the executive summary to quickly get an idea of the study’s results and what to do about those results.
• Methodology and Limitations . The methodology section of the report explains the technical details of how the research was designed and conducted. The section explains, for example, how the data were collected and by whom, the size of the sample, how it was chosen, and whom or what it consisted of (e.g., the number of women versus men or children versus adults). It also includes information about the statistical techniques used to analyze the data. Every study has errors—sampling errors, interviewer errors, and so forth. The methodology section should explain these details so decision makers can consider their overall impact. The margin of error is the overall tendency of the study to be off kilter—that is, how far it could have gone wrong in either direction. Remember how newscasters present the presidential polls before an election? They always say, “This candidate is ahead 48 to 44 percent, plus or minus 2 percent.” That “plus or minus” is the margin of error. The larger the margin of error is, the less likely the results of the study are accurate. The margin of error needs to be included in the methodology section.
• Findings . The findings section is a longer, fleshed-out version of the executive summary that goes into more detail about the statistics uncovered by the research that bolster the study’s findings. If you have related research or secondary data on hand that back up the findings, they can be included to help show the study did what it was designed to do.
• Recommendations . The recommendations section should outline the course of action you think should be taken based on the findings of the research and the purpose of the project. For example, if you conducted a global market research study to identify new locations for stores, make a recommendation for the locations (Mersdorf, 2009). [7]

As we have said, these are the basic sections of a marketing research report. However, additional sections can be added as needed. For example, you might need to add a section on the competition and each firm’s market share. If you’re trying to decide on different supply chain options, you will need to include a section on that topic.

As you write the research report, keep your audience in mind. Don’t use technical jargon decision makers and other people reading the report won’t understand. If technical terms must be used, explain them. Also, proofread the document to identify any grammatical errors and typos and ask a couple of other people to proofread it to catch any mistakes you might have missed. If your research report is riddled with errors, its credibility will be undermined, even if the findings and recommendations you make are extremely accurate.

Many research reports are presented via PowerPoint. If you’re asked to create a slideshow presentation from the report, don’t try to include every detail in the report on the slides. The information will be too long and tedious for people attending the presentation to read through. And if they do go to the trouble of reading all the information, they probably won’t be listening to the speaker who is making the presentation.

Instead of including all the information from the study in the slides, boil each section of the report down to key points and add some “talking points” only the presenter will see. After or during the presentation, you can give the attendees the longer, paper version of the report so they can read the details at a convenient time.

Key Takeaways

• Step 1 in the marketing research process is to define the problem. Businesses look at what they believe are symptoms and drill down to the potential causes so as to precisely define the problem. The next task for the researcher is to put into writing the research objective, or goal, the research is supposed to accomplish.
• Step 2 in the process is to design the research. The research design is the “plan of attack.” It outlines what data you are going to gather, from whom, how, and when, and how you’re going to analyze it once it has been obtained.
• Step 3 is to design the data-collection forms, which need to be standardized so the information gathered on each is comparable. Surveys are a popular way to gather data because they can be quickly and easily administered to large numbers of people. However, to produce the best results, survey questionnaires need to be carefully designed and pretested before they are used.
• Step 4 is drawing the sample, or a subset of potential buyers who are representative of your entire target market. If the sample is not correctly selected, the research will be flawed.
• Step 5 is to actually collect the data, whether they’re collected by a person face to face, over the phone, or with the help of computers or the Internet. The data-collection process is often different in foreign countries.
• Step 6 is to analyze the data collected for any obvious errors, tabulate the data, and then draw conclusions from them based on the results. The last step in the process,
• Step 7 is writing the research report and presenting the findings to decision makers.

Review and Reflect

• Explain why it’s important to carefully define the problem or opportunity a marketing research study is designed to investigate.
• Describe the different types of problems that can occur when marketing research professionals develop questions for surveys.
• What sections should be included in a marketing research report? What is each section designed to do?

Media Attributions

• Steps in the Marketing Research Process © University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA (Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike) license
• Burns, A., & Bush, R. (2010). Marketing research (6th ed.). Prentice Hall. ↵
• Rappeport, A., & Gelles, D. (2009, September 23). Facebook to form alliance with Nielsen. Financial Times, 16 . ↵
• Barnes, B. (2009, April 15). Disney expert uses science to draw boy viewers . New York Times . Accessed December 14, 2009. ↵
• Questionnaire design . (n.d.). QuickMBA. Accessed December 14, 2009. ↵
• McDaniel, C. D., & Gates, R. H. (1998). Marketing research essentials (2nd ed.). South-Western College Publishing. ↵
• Mersdorf, S. (2009, August 24). How to organize your next survey report . Cvent. Accessed July 31, 2023). ↵

the goal(s) the research is supposed to accomplish

what data you are going to gather and from whom, how and when you will collect the data, and how you will analyze them once they’ve been obtained

information you collect yourself, using hands-on tools such as interviews or surveys, specifically for the research project you’re conducting

data that have already been collected by someone else, or data you have already collected for another purpose

primary data that marketing research firms collect on a regular basis and sell to other companies

information collected by scanners at checkout stands in stores

a marketing research company that buys research reports from other marketing research companies and then sells the reports in their entirety or in pieces to other firms

when you are initially investigating a problem but you haven’t defined it well enough to do an in-depth study of it

any form of research that includes gathering data that are not quantitative, and it often involves exploring questions such as why as much as what or how much

engaging in detailed, one-on-one, question-and-answer sessions with potential buyers

a group of potential buyers who are brought together to discuss a marketing research topic with one another

analyzes how another company solved the problem that’s being researched

researchers interview, observe, and often videotape people while they work, live, shop, and play

used to reveal information research respondents might not reveal by being asked directly

asking two questions in the same question

questions that ask respondents to elaborate

questions that limit a respondent’s answers

a subset of potential buyers that are representative of your entire target market

from which you derive your target market

any type of marketing research mistake that occurs because a sample was utilized

each would-be participant has a known and equal chance of being selected

any type of sample that’s not drawn in a systematic way

a sample a researcher draws because it’s readily available and convenient to do so

someone who is paid to shop at a firm’s establishment or one of its competitors to observe the level of service, cleanliness of the facility, and so forth and report his or her findings to the firm

the overall tendency of the study to be off kilter

Introduction to Marketing Copyright © 2024 by Pamela Ip is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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The Anatomy of a Successful Marketing Report: Key Components (+Examples)

Marketing reports play a crucial role in helping businesses make informed decisions about their marketing strategies. A well-crafted marketing report not only summarizes the performance of marketing campaigns but also provides actionable insights to improve future marketing efforts.

In this article, we will delve into the anatomy of a successful marketing report , examining the key components that are essential for creating an effective report. We will also provide examples of marketing reports from different industries, showcasing how these components are applied in real-life scenarios.

Key Components of a Successful Marketing Report

• Executive Summary

An executive summary is a brief overview of the entire report, highlighting the key findings and recommendations. It should be concise, informative, and engaging, grabbing the attention of the reader and giving them a sense of what to expect from the report.

• Introduction

The introduction sets the stage for the rest of the report, providing context and background information about the marketing campaign or initiative being analyzed. It should clearly define the objectives of the campaign, the target audience, and the metrics used to measure its success.

• Methodology

The methodology section explains the research methods used to gather and analyze data. It should include details about the sample size, data collection techniques, and analytical tools employed.

The results section presents the findings of the study, using tables, charts, and graphs to illustrate the data. It should provide an objective and thorough analysis of the data, highlighting both the strengths and weaknesses of the campaign.

• Analysis and Insights

The analysis and insights section interprets the data presented in the results section, providing an explanation of the underlying trends and patterns. It should also offer actionable insights that can be used to improve future marketing efforts.

• Recommendations

The recommendations section provides specific actions that can be taken based on the insights and analysis presented in the report. It should be practical, achievable, and aligned with the overall goals of the business.

The conclusion summarizes the key findings of the report and emphasizes its importance for the business. It should also provide a sense of closure, leaving the reader with a clear understanding of the implications of the report’s findings.

Real-Life Examples of Successful Marketing Reports

Coca-Cola’s marketing report, titled “Taste the Feeling,” is a great example of a successful marketing report. The report analyzed the effectiveness of the company’s marketing campaigns across various channels, including television, social media, and experiential marketing.

The report’s executive summary provided a compelling overview of the campaign’s success, highlighting the growth in sales and brand awareness. The introduction provided a brief history of Coca-Cola’s marketing efforts, setting the stage for the rest of the report.

The methodology section explained the research methods used to gather data, including surveys and social media analytics. The results section presented the data using colorful and engaging visuals, illustrating the success of the campaign.

The analysis and insights section provided a detailed explanation of the underlying trends and patterns in the data, emphasizing the importance of emotional connections in marketing. The recommendations section offered practical and achievable actions that could be taken to improve future marketing efforts.

HubSpot’s marketing report, titled “State of Inbound,” is another excellent example of a successful marketing report. The report analyzed the effectiveness of inbound marketing tactics, including blogging, social media, and email marketing.

The executive summary provided a concise overview of the report’s findings, emphasizing the importance of inbound marketing for businesses. The introduction provided context for the report, explaining the significance of inbound marketing in today’s digital landscape.

The methodology section explained the research methods used to gather data, including surveys and interviews with industry experts. The results section presented the data using informative charts and graphs, illustrating the success of inbound marketing tactics.

The analysis and insights section provided a detailed interpretation of the data, highlighting the most effective inbound marketing tactics for different industries. The recommendations section provided actionable steps that businesses could take to improve their inbound marketing efforts.

• What makes a marketing report successful?

A successful marketing report should be informative, engaging, and provide actionable insights for future marketing efforts. It should also be tailored to the specific objectives of the business and provide a thorough analysis of the data collected.

• What are some common mistakes to avoid when creating a marketing report?

Some common mistakes to avoid when creating a marketing report include failing to define clear objectives, using inadequate research methods, and presenting data in an unclear or unengaging way.

• How can businesses use marketing reports to improve their marketing strategies?

Businesses can use marketing reports to identify areas of strengths and weaknesses in their marketing strategies and make data-driven decisions to improve their marketing efforts. Marketing reports can also help businesses stay on top of trends and developments in their industry.

In conclusion, a successful marketing report is an essential tool for businesses to measure the success of their marketing campaigns and make informed decisions about their marketing strategies. The key components of a successful marketing report include an executive summary, introduction, methodology, results, analysis and insights, recommendations, and conclusion. By studying real-life examples of successful marketing reports, businesses can gain valuable insights into how to create effective reports that drive business success.

Useful Resources –

B2B Marketing: The Ultimate Guide To Drive Business Growth

The Importance of B2B Testers in Your Marketing Strategy

Creating a Killer Marketing Report: Tips and Best Practices for B2B Marketers

Marketing Research 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Gathering Customer Insights

Streamlining Your Marketing with Automation Services: A Guide for B2B Companies

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Table of contents, market research report examples that inspire success.

• 7 May, 2024

Importance of Market Research Reports

Market research reports play a vital role in helping businesses, organizations, and individuals make informed decisions by providing valuable insights into the market landscape. These reports offer a comprehensive analysis of various factors that influence business strategies, enabling them to adapt and thrive in a constantly changing operational environment. Understanding the importance of market research reports can greatly benefit marketing students and professionals alike.

Benefits of Market Research Reports

Market research reports offer a multitude of benefits that contribute to the success and growth of businesses. Some key benefits include:

Minimizing Business Risk : Market research provides a deeper understanding of the market, customers, and competitors, helping businesses minimize risk. By gathering qualitative and quantitative data, market research enables informed decision-making aligned with user needs and preferences, reducing the chances of potential failures or setbacks ( Think Turquoise ).

Identifying Opportunities and Threats : Through competitor analysis, market research reports help identify both opportunities and threats in the market. This analysis involves comparing pricing strategies, understanding competitor strengths and weaknesses, and determining areas for potential growth.

Understanding Pricing Strategies : Pricing analysis is another essential component of market research. By examining competitor pricing, evaluating consumer reactions to different price points, and understanding pricing models, businesses can make informed decisions about their own pricing strategies. This is crucial for maintaining competitiveness and ensuring profitability.

Identifying Market Potential and Growth Trends : Market research reports provide insights into market potential, growth trends, and consumer behavior. Understanding these factors helps businesses project future market conditions and make strategic decisions accordingly. This knowledge is crucial for developing effective marketing plans, launching new products, or expanding into new markets ( Joorney ).

Types of Market Research Services

Market research is available as a service, offering various techniques and research methodologies to cater to different needs. Some common types of market research services include:

Surveys : Surveys collect data from a target audience through questionnaires, helping businesses gather valuable insights into consumer preferences and opinions.

Focus Groups : Focus groups involve in-depth discussions with a small group of participants to gain qualitative insights and understand their perceptions, experiences, and preferences.

Interviews : Interviews can be conducted in person, over the phone, or online to gather detailed information from individuals and experts in specific fields.

Observational Research : Observational research involves direct observation of consumers or market behavior to gain insights into their actions, habits, and preferences.

Secondary Research : Secondary research involves analyzing existing data and information gathered from various sources such as reports, studies, and databases.

By utilizing these different market research services, businesses can gather comprehensive data and insights to inform their decision-making processes and stay ahead in the market.

Understanding the benefits of market research reports and the various types of market research services available is crucial for marketing students and professionals. These reports offer valuable insights into market dynamics, consumer behavior, and competitor strategies, enabling businesses to make well-informed decisions and drive success in their respective industries.

Key Components of Market Research

Market research plays a vital role in helping businesses make informed decisions and gain a competitive edge. A comprehensive market research report consists of several key components that provide valuable insights into the market landscape. In this section, we will explore four essential components of market research: competitor analysis, pricing analysis, location analysis, and distribution channels analysis.

Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis is a critical component of market research that helps businesses identify threats and opportunities in the market. By examining competitors’ strategies, strengths, and weaknesses, companies can gain insights into their own positioning and make informed decisions. Competitor analysis involves comparing pricing strategies, understanding product offerings, studying marketing tactics, and determining where growth opportunities lie ( Joorney ).

Pricing Analysis

Pricing analysis is another crucial aspect of market research. Understanding pricing models, evaluating consumer reactions to different price points, and examining competitor pricing are all part of pricing analysis. This analysis helps businesses set competitive prices, optimize profitability, and identify pricing strategies that resonate with target customers ( Joorney ).

Location Analysis

Location analysis is essential for businesses, particularly those considering setting up new operations or expanding into new markets. This analysis involves evaluating factors such as the availability of an employee pool, shipping costs, taxes, and rent or purchase prices. By conducting location analysis, companies can make informed decisions about where to establish their operations, ensuring they leverage optimal conditions for success and growth ( Joorney ).

Distribution Channels Analysis

Distribution channels analysis helps businesses determine the most effective and efficient ways to bring their products or services to customers. This analysis involves evaluating different distribution channels, such as direct sales, third-party retailers, or e-commerce platforms. By understanding customer preferences and balancing costs, businesses can optimize their distribution strategies to reach their target audience effectively.

By conducting comprehensive research and analysis in these key areas, businesses can gather valuable insights that inform their decision-making processes. Market research reports provide a holistic view of the market landscape, enabling businesses to better understand their customers, identify opportunities, mitigate risks, and make data-driven decisions. However, it’s important to note that market research reports may come with costs and the insights gathered must be carefully analyzed to ensure accuracy and relevance to the business’s specific goals and objectives.

Case Studies: Brands and Market Research

Examining real-world examples of how brands utilize market research can provide valuable insights into the power of data-driven decision making. The following case studies showcase how companies like Starbucks, Apple, McDonald’s, LEGO, and Dove have leveraged market research to inform their strategies and drive success.

Starbucks, the largest coffeehouse chain globally, attributes much of its success to its commitment to market research. For the past 14 years, Starbucks has actively sought consumer feedback through its My Starbucks Idea platform. This online portal allows customers to share their ideas and suggestions for product improvements, new offerings, and customer experience enhancements. By actively listening to its customers and incorporating their input, Starbucks has been able to stay attuned to evolving consumer demands and preferences. This commitment to market research has played a significant role in Starbucks’ ability to consistently deliver a customer-centric experience.

Apple, renowned for its innovative technology products, understands the importance of market research in driving product development and customer satisfaction. The company maintains an in-house research team called the “Apple Customer Pulse,” which conducts data analysis and customer satisfaction surveys. Through these efforts, Apple gains insights into consumer needs, preferences, and pain points. This valuable market research has guided product enhancements, such as expanding screen sizes on devices to cater to user preferences and improve the overall customer experience.

McDonald’s

McDonald’s, a global fast-food chain, recognizes the significance of market research in understanding and meeting customer expectations. The company employs market research to collect feedback and gauge customer satisfaction. McDonald’s utilizes four key questions to assess customer experiences and make strategic adjustments accordingly. By actively seeking and incorporating customer feedback, McDonald’s has been able to adapt its menu offerings and overall strategy. For example, the addition of healthy options like apple slices to the menu was a direct response to customer input and changing consumer preferences.

LEGO, a leading toy manufacturer, understands the importance of market research in shaping its product development and marketing strategies. The company conducted a comprehensive study involving 3,500 girls and their mothers to gain a deeper understanding of playing habits, preferences, and desires. This research led to the launch of the “Friends” toy line, designed to promote inclusivity and cater to the diverse interests of all children. Additionally, market research data informed packaging decisions, such as selecting colors and determining figurine sizes. By leveraging market research insights, LEGO was able to create products that resonated with its target audience and drive brand loyalty.

Dove, a personal care brand, harnessed the power of market research and social media to launch its #SpeakBeautiful campaign. Collaborating with Twitter, Dove aimed to combat self-negativity among female Twitter users. Through market research, Dove identified the prevalence of negative self-talk on social media platforms. The campaign included encouraging messages and resources to promote self-esteem and positive self-expression. As a result, Dove observed a measurable decrease in negative posts, from 5 million to 3.4 million. This successful initiative exemplifies how market research can drive positive social change and strengthen brand perception.

These case studies highlight the pivotal role that market research plays in informing strategic decisions and driving success for brands across various industries. By understanding consumer needs, preferences, and trends, businesses can tailor their offerings, enhance customer experiences, and maintain a competitive edge in the market.

Structure of a Market Research Report

When it comes to creating a comprehensive and effective market research report, it is crucial to follow a well-defined structure. This structure ensures that the report is organized, easy to navigate, and provides the necessary information to make informed business decisions. The typical structure of a market research report includes the following sections: Introduction, Methodology, Findings, and Recommendations.

# The introduction section of the market research report sets the stage for the entire study. It provides an overview of the research objectives, scope, and purpose of the report. This section may outline the background of the study, describe the target market or audience, and highlight the key questions the research aims to answer. The introduction is designed to engage the reader and provide context for the subsequent sections of the report.

Methodology

The methodology section of the market research report outlines the approach taken to conduct the study. It describes the research design, data collection methods, and tools used to gather information. This section may include details on the sample size, sampling techniques, and any limitations or biases that may have influenced the results. By providing transparency about the research process, the methodology section allows readers to evaluate the credibility and validity of the findings.

The findings section is the heart of the market research report. It presents the results of the study in a clear, concise, and organized manner. This section may include tables, graphs, and charts to visually represent the data and make it easier to comprehend. The findings should address the research objectives and provide insights into consumer behavior, market trends, or any other relevant information. It is essential to present the findings objectively, supported by quantitative or qualitative evidence, and to interpret the data accurately.

Recommendations

The recommendations section of the market research report provides actionable insights and suggestions based on the findings. This section aims to guide decision-makers in implementing strategies or making informed business decisions. Recommendations should be specific, realistic, and directly linked to the research objectives. It is important to support recommendations with evidence from the findings to enhance their credibility and increase the likelihood of implementation.

Following this structure ensures that the market research report is comprehensive, well-organized, and provides valuable insights to the intended audience. However, it is important to note that the structure and sections of the report may vary depending on the specific requirements of the research project and the preferences of the intended audience.

In addition to the main sections discussed above, a market research report may also include an executive summary, limitations of the study, and appendices. The executive summary provides a condensed version of the report, highlighting the key findings and recommendations ( QCC CUNY ). Limitations of the study acknowledge any constraints or challenges faced during the research process. Appendices may include technical materials, additional data, or detailed charts and graphs that support the findings but are not essential to the main body of the report.

Best Practices for Market Research Reports

Producing high-quality market research reports is essential for effective decision-making in the business world. By following best practices, researchers can ensure that their reports are clear, concise, and provide accurate insights. Here are some key best practices to consider when creating market research reports.

Writing Clarity

Writing clarity is crucial to enable decision-makers to understand and utilize the information effectively. Reports should be clear, accurate, and complete, presenting an honest, unbiased review of the research objectives, methodology, and findings. To enhance clarity, researchers should:

• Use plain language and avoid jargon whenever possible.
• Structure the report logically, with clear headings and subheadings.
• Clearly define any technical terms or acronyms used.
• Ensure that the report is free from grammatical errors and typos.

Executive Summary

The executive summary is a vital component of a market research report, particularly for busy senior executives. It serves as a condensed version of the report, providing key highlights of the study. The executive summary should:

• Be concise, typically no more than four pages long.
• Summarize the key objectives, methodology, and findings of the study.
• Highlight the most important insights and recommendations.
• Provide a clear and compelling overview that encourages further reading of the full report.

Data Presentation

Presenting data in a clear and visually appealing manner is essential to facilitate understanding and interpretation. The findings section of the report, where study results are detailed, should include supporting tables, graphs, and visuals to enhance comprehension ( QCC CUNY ). When presenting data:

• Use appropriate charts, graphs, and tables to display numerical information.
• Ensure that the visuals are labeled clearly and easy to interpret.
• Provide captions or brief explanations to accompany the visuals.
• Use consistent formatting and colors for clarity and consistency.

Appendices Review

Appendices contain additional technical materials and data related to specific parts of the study, which may only be of interest to a select few readers. Executives often spend time reviewing the appendices to address questions about the validity, reliability, logic, and conclusions of the research ( QCC CUNY ). When including appendices:

• Clearly label and organize the appendices for easy reference.
• Provide a clear explanation of the content and purpose of each appendix.
• Ensure that the information in the appendices supports and enhances the main findings of the report.

By adhering to these best practices, researchers can create market research reports that are informative, accessible, and impactful. Writing with clarity, crafting an effective executive summary, presenting data visually, and providing relevant appendices will contribute to the overall quality and utility of the report.

Market Research Across Industries

Market research plays a crucial role in various industries, enabling businesses to gain valuable insights, understand consumer behavior, and make informed decisions. Let’s explore how market research is applied in different sectors:

In the retail industry, market research helps businesses understand consumer preferences, shopping habits, and trends. Retailers use market research to identify target markets, assess demand for specific products or services, and optimize pricing strategies. By analyzing market data, retailers can make informed decisions about store locations, product assortments, and promotional activities.

Manufacturing

Market research is essential for manufacturers to identify market opportunities, assess competitive landscapes, and understand customer needs. Manufacturers rely on market research to evaluate demand for their products, identify potential customers, and gather feedback on product performance. This research helps manufacturers make strategic decisions regarding product development, branding, and marketing strategies.

In the automotive industry, market research provides valuable insights into consumer preferences, buying behaviors, and emerging trends. Automakers and dealerships utilize market research to understand customer perceptions, evaluate the demand for specific vehicle models, and identify areas for improvement. Market research also helps automotive companies assess the impact of factors such as fuel efficiency, safety features, and technological advancements on consumer preferences.

Financial Services

Market research is crucial for financial services firms to understand customer needs, preferences, and satisfaction levels. Banks, insurance companies, and investment firms use market research to develop new products and services, enhance customer experiences, and identify potential growth opportunities. Market research helps financial institutions stay competitive by providing insights into consumer expectations, financial literacy, and market trends.

In the technology industry, market research helps companies gain insights into consumer preferences, technological advancements, and emerging markets. Technology companies conduct market research to assess customer needs, evaluate the competitive landscape, and identify opportunities for innovation. Market research also aids in understanding consumer perceptions of security, privacy, and usability in technology products and services.

Market research plays a vital role in the healthcare industry, helping pharmaceutical companies, healthcare providers, and medical device manufacturers understand patient needs, market dynamics, and regulatory requirements. Healthcare organizations utilize market research to assess patient satisfaction, identify unmet medical needs, and evaluate the effectiveness of healthcare interventions. Market research also aids in understanding healthcare provider preferences, insurance coverage, and healthcare trends.

By conducting market research across industries, businesses can gain valuable insights into consumer behavior, market trends, and competitive landscapes. This knowledge empowers organizations to make data-driven decisions, develop effective strategies, and stay ahead in today’s dynamic business environment.

To explore real-life examples of market research reports, check out our case studies on brands such as Starbucks, Apple, McDonald’s, LEGO, and Dove. These case studies highlight how market research has been instrumental in shaping their success.

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Marketing Reports 101: How to Create One + Templates

Written by: Unenabasi Ekeruke

You certainly can't rely on guesswork or gut feeling to answer these questions or make informed decisions. This is where marketing reports come into play.

Marketing reports provide the data you need to monitor activities, assess performance and make smarter decisions that bring better results. According to Think with Google , marketers who leverage tools to analyze, measure and report their marketing programs are 39% more likely to perform better.

If you are sold on creating high-quality marketing reports that captivate your audience, we've got you covered.

In this article, we'll teach you everything you need to know about marketing reports, how to create them and marketing report templates you can use straight away.

Table of Contents

What is a marketing report, the benefits of marketing reporting.

• How to Create a Marketing Report

Marketing Report Best Practices

Marketing report templates, level up your marketing reports with visme.

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A marketing report is a collection of data from different sources to evaluate the progress and performance of your marketing efforts and inform future marketing decisions. Businesses of all sizes create marketing reports to glean valuable into their:

• Overall marketing strategy
• Marketing goals
• Key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Marketing activities like research, promotions, content, ads, email, social media and more
• Expected outcomes and actual results

Not all marketing reports are created equal. The scope of your marketing reports can vary depending on the data you want to track and the number of marketing channels. The common types of marketing reports include:

• General marketing reports
• Social media marketing reports
• SEO marketing reports
• PPC marketing reports
• Email marketing reports

When used effectively, marketing reporting puts you on top of your marketing activities and metrics across all marketing channels. At a glance, you'll get a bird's eye view of which marketing campaigns and channels are delivering the best results.

You're probably wondering why you should create reports, especially when key stakeholders aren't compelling you to present them. Or why add another challenging task to your itinerary when you've got customers and other business activities to attend to.

Here are the major perks of creating a detailed marketing report.

Visualize Customer Purchase Journey

There's no better way to understand the customer journey than by using a marketing report. From your marketing report, you can quickly identify:

• Critical touch points
• Lead magnets or contents that are driving the most impact
• Where your prospects are on their journey
• Prospects who are willing to spend and when they plan to make a purchase
• What steps you should take to speed up the sales process and much more
• How to optimize your sales and marketing funnel to convert better

Measure and Analyze Marketing Efforts

After investing a significant amount of time and money in marketing, how do you know if your efforts are worthwhile? This is precisely where marketing reports come in.

Whether you're looking to generate leads, turn prospects into customers or increase revenue, your marketing reports will show you whether or not your campaigns are achieving the desired results. You'll quickly figure out which strategies will help you maximize return on investment and get more bang for your marketing buck.

Every marketer and data analyst understands that the struggle with reporting is real. But Visme makes writing a report super-easy regardless of your skill level. It doesn't matter what type of data you want to capture. Visme has thousands of compelling report templates , stock images, visual aids and design elements to make your reports pack a punch.

Make Informed Business Decisions

In today's hyper-competitive business environment, you can't rely on wild guesses and gut feelings to make important marketing decisions. If you want to call the right shots or get your decisions spot on, you need rich and quality data.

We're not just talking about gathering a bunch of isolated numbers for the sake of it. Relevant and actionable data shows how your marketing campaigns have fared and impacted your bottom line.

Moreover, be sure this data is digestible and deeply connected to your business outcomes. A detailed marketing report like the one below gives you all of your granular and enriching marketing data in one place.

Keeps Everyone on the Same Page

Misalignments between sales and marketing teams are a struggle for most businesses. It stifles business growth and costs companies more than $1 trillion yearly .

For this alignment to happen, data needs to flow across departments. And marketing reports are often the missing piece of the puzzle. They provide the data that sales and marketing teams need to:

• Optimize marketing content to increase emotional appeal and close more sales
• Achieve their sales and marketing goals
• Nurture leads through each stage of the sales funnel
• Increase conversions and drive revenue over the top

How To Create a Marketing Report

Now you know why you need a marketing report. The next big question is how do you create a comprehensive and useful marketing report?

We'll go over how to create marketing reports to help you make better decisions and benefit your audience.

1. Outline the Purpose of Your Marketing Report

Without a clear-cut purpose, your marketing report is just a bunch of isolated numbers without meaning. Before gathering data and creating a report, ask yourself these questions.

• What is the purpose of this report?
• What message do we want to share and how do we convey it?
• What are we looking to learn from this report?

Are you looking to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns? Do you want to justify marketing expenses or study marketing trends over a period of time?

Let's face it; you can't possibly fit every single piece of data into your marketing report. Answering these questions will help you focus on data that shape your marketing strategy, inform your decisions and help you perform better.

2. Know Your Audience

With a ton of marketing activities going on, you probably have a heap of data that's getting bigger by the hour.

All of this information may be relevant to you. But you want to ask yourself, is it relevant to the management team or people in other departments?

For example, the VP of marketing may be interested in which marketing campaigns bring in more leads, conversions and positive ROI. In contrast, the chief financial officer will want to see how marketing expense translates to sales and impacts the bottom line.

Before writing your marketing report, find out your target audience and what they want to know. This viewpoint will help you decide what data to provide. Plus, your marketing report must reflect the needs of your target audience.

Be sure to make your reports contain valuable information that's easy to understand. Your audience should be able to view the report and have clear direction on the next steps rather than scratching their heads in confusion.

3. Gather Your Data

Once you're clear on your target audience, the next important step is to gather, filter and analyze your data.

As your business grows, keeping tabs on granular data and tracking performance can be daunting. It's always helpful to keep an updated document of relevant documents and spreadsheets showing key metrics.

Using analytics tools like Google Analytics , Mixpanel , Hotjar , SEMRush and more to capture key marketing data can make your job a lot easier. You can also use change data capture (CDC) to track changes in your data warehouse, which will help you see the impact that new features have on the way people interact with your website.

Depending on your reporting process, you can do a daily, monthly or weekly dump and then use the data to build your report.

While gathering your data, you may be tempted to report everything, which isn't a good idea. Remember, your audience is typically only interested in the most critical metrics. Please resist the urge to drown them in a sea of meaningful information and lengthy reports.

Start by defining the period you want to focus on. Is it a weekly , monthly , quarterly or annual report ?

If you want a clear picture of your marketing performance over a period, it's better to draw comparisons between two different periods—current vs. previous. Also, be sure the metrics align with the goals you shared earlier.

4. Write Your Report

You've got reliable data to build your sales report at this stage. Now it's time to craft your report in a digestible, understandable and actionable format.

First, you want to choose a report writing format that captures the critical information and keeps your audience engaged. The next step is to identify what you should include in your report.

Let's look at your marketing report structure and what you should include in your report.

Marketing Report Structure

Marketing report structures aren't one size fits all. They may vary based on the purpose and content of your report, but the most common sections include the following:

Title or Cover Page

This page should be concise and clearly state what your report is analyzing. The cover page should include:

• Report title
• Reporting period and the date it was written

Executive Summary

This section usually comes last. It should summarize the key points of the entire report, highlight successes and failures and discuss future plans.

Introduction

In this section, you want to talk about what your report is about, who it's addressed to, what they'll find it and why they should care.

The body is usually the longest section of your report. Here you'll plug in all the marketing data you collected earlier. Again, make sure to use bullet points and visualizations to enhance readability and visual appeal.

Summarize your marketing report with key takeaways and a clear call to action. Remember to make recommendations and highlight the next steps.

What To Include in Your Report

A well-written marketing report should detail key areas and the performance of your marketing activities. While the level of details may vary based on your strategy or how complex your operations are, you should aim to capture the following critical information.

Overview of your marketing strategy

Here you should discuss your marketing goals, target audience and what channels you're using to reach your prospects. It should also highlight the specific action you're taking to execute your strategy.

Campaigns/Areas of Focus

This section should take a deep dive into your recent marketing efforts, including:

• Projects or campaigns you've run
• Pending, completed and upcoming task

You should aim to capture your win, losses, lessons learned and plans for the next phase.

Metrics and Analytics

This section should capture critical figures that show progress, performance and marketing effectiveness. It should reflect how well your campaigns are edging towards your set goals and key performance indicators.

5. Visualize Your Data

Data-heavy reports can be exhausting, especially when you're slamming your audience with large walls of text and numbers. To keep your audience engaged, visualize your marketing reports with eye-catching charts , graphs , infographics , images, videos and other visual aids .

Using visual aids will make it easier for your audience to digest your report and retain important information. You can create data visualizations such as graphs, charts and maps with the help of Visme's graph maker .

Watch the video below to learn how to create beautiful charts and graphs that make your marketing report effective.

Read this article to learn more about creating charts and other visual aids. Watch the video below to discover how to use data visualization for reporting and business intelligence.

6. Pay Attention to Design

Your marketing report design doesn't have to be dull and uninteresting. Instead, use these design tips to make your report engaging and attractive.

• Enrich and add personality to your marketing reports with images, videos and GIFs
• Use a consistent color scheme and color contrast for your report
• Customize your report using brand elements like colors, logos, fonts and layout
• Make your marketing report more engaging by incorporating animation and interactivity
• To make your report cleaner and easier to read, use headers or page transitions to divide it into sections
• Add notes, callouts and comments to bring context to critical metrics and KPIs

Fortunately, you don't need to be a professional graphic designer to create stunning and interactive marketing report designs that impress your audience. All you need is intuitive software like Visme packed with tons of design tools and templates that make your report shine.

7. Leverage Ready-to-Use Marketing Report Templates

Whether you're a novice or seasoned marketer, report templates are a great starting point. These preset templates help you choose the right data and show you where and how to place them.

Beyond saving you time and effort, they ensure your content and design elements are consistent. In the end, you're sure to have a beautiful and organized marketing report.

Visme offers thousands of fully customizable and user-friendly marketing report templates, layouts and features to suit your specific needs. All you need to do is pick a professionally-designed template and customize it to your taste. And boom, your marketing report is ready to go.

Even if you have little or no design experience, you can fast-track your next marketing report with our stunning, easy-to-use template below.

Writing a useful report requires planning, thoughtful consideration and follow-up. Let's go over some best practices to keep in mind when reporting on your marketing and sales efforts.

1. Schedule Your Reports

If you want to get timely reports for decision-making and ensure that teams are aligned, you need to schedule your reports to run periodically.

One way to ensure you're getting reports at the right time is to set a reminder to compile a report or set it to run automatically. Scheduling your report ahead of time leaves you with enough time to clean your data and reduces the risk of human error.

2. Put Your Most Valuable Data First

Whether you're creating reports to share with your team or top management, you certainly want your audience to read till the end.

Nobody wants to read an entire report only to get the key points on the last page. Make sure to place the most useful information early on. Right off the bat, your content should:

• Educate your audience,
• Highlight compelling figures and interesting insights
• Draw readers' attention to urgent and critical issues
• Provide information for decision-making

Use bullet points, callout quotes and sidebars to effectively grab the reader's attention while breaking up unappealing blocks of text. If you need to capture numbers, you can embed sheets into your documents .

3. Tell a Story

Lumping your reports with endless numbers and charts without context gives limited insight into what your report is all about. Instead, you want to walk your audience through the story behind the report, giving them the information and context they need at every level. This might also call for some interactive marketing techniques as well.

In a nutshell, your story should add more meaning to your data or answer critical questions like:

• What's responsible for the metrics, patterns or trends in your marketing data?
• What marketing tactics are you implementing that would cause the numbers to skyrocket or decline?

While telling your story, keep it succinct and add personality to make it enjoyable to read. Watch the video below to get more tips on telling compelling stories with data.

4. Gather Feedback From Your Audience

After you've presented your marketing reports and engaged your audience, remember to ask for feedback. You can ask for feedback via email or provide a short survey form for them to fill out.

Getting feedback from those using your marketing reports will help you determine whether it's useful or captures everything they need to know and what you can do to improve your marketing report in the future.

Are you ready to create attractive marketing reports that add value to your business? Look no further; you've hit the jackpot.

Here's a selection of professionally designed templates crafted to provide value and actionable insight into your marketing performance.

Template #1: Weekly Marketing Report

If you want to capture your marketing team's performance every week, this template is set up to make your work easier.

This template features a rich blend of bright colors with strong visual contrast. It also uses design elements that draw attention to KPIs and metrics like web analytics, campaigns and social media engagement.

Template #2: Monthly Marketing Report

A monthly marketing report template like this one is a perfect way to show your audience what your marketing team has been up to in the past month.

The template has a simplistic cover design and layout that accommodates key marketing performance highlights, metrics, line graphs and timelines that make your report shine.

You can add compelling images, videos and animations to make your report engaging and interactive. Customize this template with your logo, color and fonts to match your brand identity.

Template #3: Social Media Marketing Report

Assigning tasks to teams and tracking the progress of each task can be daunting, especially when you're dealing with multiple social media channels. But a single-paged report template like this example simplifies the process for your marketing team and brings everyone on the same page.

It has a rich blue and white color combination and a clean, spaced-out design. At a glance, you can capture a wealth of data, instant feedback and comments.

Simply plug in your marketing data, change the font, typography and color to match your brand and you're ready to go.

Template #4: Content Marketing Report

Do you want to share your content marketing plans and see if your efforts are paying off? Then, using this simple, clear and concise weekly report template is your best bet.

You can share your content ideas, competitor analysis and keyword search results. Then, fill in the placeholders with your data and descriptive content and make your data more visually appealing by using color-coded vector icons , shapes, charts and more.

Template #5: Quarterly Email Analytics Report

Keeping track of quarterly email analytics lets you know how your subscribers engage with your emails. With a template like this one, you can track metrics that directly link to your business goals and put your email marketing strategy and performance into perspective.

Visme gives you the creative freedom to make this template your own. Unleash your creativity and level up your email analytics report by incorporating Visme's graphic vector icons and shapes.

Explore our extensive collection of colorful, isometric, flat and outline graphics to find your perfect match and make your report stand out.

Template #6: Promotional Sales Report

This template is a perfect fit for sharing insights into your promotion campaign efforts, results and expected outcomes.

The cover page features a stunning image of the store and a powerful theme that leaves an impression on your readers.

This template moves further away from traditional neutral and corporate blue. However, the bright and bold yellow color scheme is catchy enough to draw readers into the content and show your brand's personality. The report template has four key sections and uses more text and numbers to get the message across.

Template #7: Social Media Analytics Report

This multi-page template has a sophisticated design, modern layout and dynamic elements that grab the audience's attention. It's designed to provide a high-level overview of your overall social media performance.

The template breaks down your report into four sections and beams more light on metrics such as social media reach, interaction and customer gain across multiple social media platforms.

Feel free to tweak colors, gradients, fonts to reflect your brand identity. You can also use charts, images, illustrations, characters, gestures and visualizations to bring your report to life.

Template #8: Promotional Campaign Report

This promotional campaign report template is perfect for businesses of all sizes. You can use it to share updates, progress and results of advertisements and other marketing activities.

The template has an appealing design layout and artistic theme with stylized content blocks, colorful borders, background photos and vector icons, all sourced from Visme's rich design and asset library. The colorful line graph makes the financial data compelling and memorable.

Feel free to cut, copy, paste and adjust anything you like until it fits your unique needs.

Template #9: Retail Weekly Promotional Campaign Report

If you want to ignite new interest in your company's ongoing promotional campaign, this stylish and attractive report template fits the bill.

The template uses a mix of stunning visualizations, color schemes and a uniquely crafted layout to make your information stand out. You can easily customize the template, present information in a compelling way and create an engaging experience for your audience.

Template #10: Annual Marketing Report Template

What overarching theme would you use to highlight marketing performance in the past year? Our final pick is an annual marketing report template that's sure to leave an impression on your audience.

The template caters to any business regardless of size, niche and scope. Likewise, it covers everything key stakeholders need to know, including your marketing efforts, strategy, achievements and plans for the coming years. Make your report stand out with a variety of stylish fonts, high-quality images and stock photos and visual aids from Visme.

This trendy and modern template features a rich combination of two vibrant color schemes: purple and blue. Each of the following pages features colors from the original palette to maintain a consistent appearance.

Marketing reports indicate where your marketing efforts are successful and need to be optimized to yield better results. However, marketing data is enormous and marketing reporting is an ongoing business process. That's why you need a tool like Visme's report maker that makes it super easy for you to create and share marketing reports in seconds.

Visme provides an incredible array of templates, high-quality images, design and data visualization tools to make your report impactful. With the dynamic field feature , you can ensure your reports are always accurate.

Once done, you can share your marketing report online using a link, embed it on your website, or download it for offline use in multiple formats, like PDF and HTML5. You can track how people are engaging with your report from your analytics tab .

Congratulations and happy reporting!

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About the Author

Unenabasi is a content expert with many years of experience in digital marketing, business development, and strategy. He loves to help brands tell stories that drive engagement, growth, and competitive advantage. He’s adept at creating compelling content on lifestyle, marketing, business, e-commerce, and technology. When he’s not taking the content world by storm, Unenabasi enjoys playing or watching soccer.

Explore 6 Stunning Marketing Report Examples with Free Templates

Marketing reporting is a crucial element of your marketing strategy. It shows whether your campaigns are hitting their targets or need to be redefined. 

But although reports are important, you don’t want to spend much of your time visualizing and analyzing your marketing performance. 

This is where reporting tools come into play. 

With automated reporting, you have plenty of time to develop actual marketing campaigns while essential metrics are collected and visualized in real time. 

We bring you the six most popular marketing report examples based on our template usage.

Mar 29 2023 ● 6 min read

Table of Contents

What is a marketing report, 6 reasons you need a marketing report, 1. access your data easily, 2. track the customer journey, 3. make data-driven decisions, 4. align marketing and sales team goals, 5. speed up your reporting, 6. proving your efforts, how often should you create a marketing report, how to visualize your clients’ marketing data, 6 essential marketing report examples + templates, 1. marketing campaign report, 2. social media marketing report, 3. seo marketing report, 4. ppc marketing report, 5. ecommerce marketing report, 6. email marketing report, why use whatagraph to create marketing performance reports, automated data sourcing, unlimited reports, stunning report templates, drag-and-drop to edit templates, automated delivery, are you ready to start reporting.

A marketing report is a type of report that sources data from your marketing channels in real-time, visualizes it using different graphs, charts, and tables, and allows you to share the insights with your co-workers, clients, managers, etc.

With a marketing report at your fingertips, you can easily stay on top of your marketing performance across all your channels and identify areas of improvement.

As a marketing specialist, you need a way to access data on your essential marketing KPIs easily. A digital marketing report helps you easily connect your data.

You can include key performance indicators from all the important marketing channels, from social media to email, from SEO to paid ads, and Google Analytics 4.

As a marketer, you want to know where exactly your prospective customers are on their journey. You want to know what device they’re using, when they’ll purchase your product, etc. A marketing report is a source of high-quality data that you can use to offer your prospects exactly what they’re looking for.

You can shape and reshape your entire marketing strategy thanks to your marketing reports. No matter how good you are at your job, your intuition and experience only get you half the way. But to back up your strategy, you need to rely on solid data that comes from your marketing reports.

For a company to reach its business goals, it’s important that data flows freely across the entire organization. Marketing reports can help in this aspect, as well. For example, let’s say that in the midst of a campaign, the sales team finds out that the revenue is less than the set target.

They might not know the reason behind it, but they can pass the ball to the marketing team to look into the issue.

The marketing team can look into the report, identify the issue, make improvements to their strategy, and bring sales back on track.

With so many marketing metrics available, selecting the right ones can be challenging. Luckily, you don’t have to make hard choices today.

Instead of building marketing reports from scratch, you can use our marketing report templates , each with preset KPIs, visualization elements, and a ton of customization options. If you have a different idea, just add different metrics or rearrange the existing ones.

You and I might be aware that marketing is worth the investment and that quality marketing leads to business growth. However, for many people, it’s still a support function and a risky expense. That’s where your marketing reports come in. If you can show that your campaigns are generating leads, turning your prospects into customers, and bringing in revenue, you can prove the value of your marketing efforts.

You should create a marketing report at least on a monthly basis . Weekly or daily reports can be helpful for marketers, as well, but less so for clients, who could easily get overwhelmed by the number of reports and start ignoring them.

Our own research actually shows that a majority of clients would prefer monthly reports or real-time insights via a shared dashboard they can access at wish.

Monthly marketing reports allow you to collect just enough data to see how changes have affected marketing results while also ensuring that faulty campaigns don’t run for too long.

Of course, you don’t have to stick to a monthly or weekly reporting plan. Whatagraph allows you to send reports at your own custom intervals or give the clients a link to access a dashboard in real-time.

But that shouldn’t concern you either. Whether you choose to create a daily, weekly , or monthly report, with Whatagraph, you only need to create the report once, and the data updates automatically.

Presenting clients with a clear and concise marketing report goes a long way to keeping them not only informed of your marketing efforts but also telling them whether they are getting a solid return on investment on their marketing budget.

Here’s what a comprehensive marketing report should include:

• Visuals : Graphs, charts, and value widgets are much better than tables or rows of data.
• Upfront key results : This is what most clients came for in the first place. This can either be the header section or even the entire first page of your report. Apart from these single-value widgets, Whatagraph reports allow you to include notes and commentaries as to why things happen the way they do so your clients can understand the campaign performance as a whole.

• Bad results as well : Don’t shy away from the bad results. Include them upfront as well, and make sure to explain what happened and what you’re going to do about it.
• Use headers for sections : They make it easier to follow what each section is talking about in the report.
• Keep it to the point : Whether you have two or seven pages of materials, try to keep your report short and concise. You should also add a summary at the top of the report that would outline the high-level results for the client.

At all times, you should have a great all-around marketing campaign report in your library, the one that encompasses all your marketing activities — from content marketing to SEO, to eCommerce and everything in between.

This kind of general marketing report is more of an overview. If you need to delve deeper into the metrics, you better check some of the report templates below.

A general marketing report should include:

• Campaign performance
• Bounce rate
• Conversion rate
• Channel performance by source
• Goal completion

The best way to start is with Whatagraph’s Ultimate Cross Channel Analytics Report Template .

It’s a one-stop report for presenting all your marketing results from social to email, SEO, and PPC data with attractive visuals.

• Performance overview : Time passed, Goal completions, Number of leads, Media spend, Conversions, and Cost per conversion
• Acquisition overview : Top channels conversions vs. users (direct, organic, paid, referral)
• Website overview : Users, New users, Bounce rate, Average session duration, and Page performance
• Target audience overview : Users per device, Demographics, and Interests: In-market segments
• Google Ads overview : Time passed, Impressions, Clicks, Conversions, and Cost
• Organic traffic overview : Time passed, Users, New users, Average rank, Goal completions, and Conversion rate
• Facebook Ads overview : Time passed, Impressions, Link clicks, Pixel leads, Conversions, Cost per conversion, and Total spend

As you can see, our cross-channel report template allows you to overview and optimize the performance of individual channels without digging deep for each channel

Instead, present your stakeholders with the most important KPIs and report on your progress.

When it comes to social media reporting, you’re generally interested in two aspects:

• Paid — such as Facebook Ads
• Organic — such as photos, videos, and blogs

You’re most likely to use the most popular social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn, so you need to include them in your reports.

The most important metrics in this type of report include:

• Likes and follows
• Demographics
• Impressions
• Top performing posts

However, in this case, it is important to organize your data by channel.

To help you with that, Whatagraph’s Social Media Report Template handles all your social media data analytics and evaluates the campaign effectiveness for each client.

Our social media template has the following default sections:

• Overview : Sources, Impressions, Clicks, Engagements, and CTR by source
• Paid channels overview : Sources, Impressions, Clicks, Engagements, and Click-through rate (CTR) by channel
• Facebook page : Total page likes, New page likes, Page impressions, Reach, Likes over time, Page engagement, Top performing Facebook posts
• Instagram : Followers, Engagement rate, New followers, Reach, Activity (website clicks, phone call clicks, get direction clicks, profile visits, etc.), Top locations, and Top Instagram media
• Twitter : Total followers, Following, New followers, Retweets, and Top tweets
• LinkedIn : Total followers, Post impressions, New followers, Engaged users, and Network by industry
• Snapchat : Swipes, Screen time, Shares, Saves, Engagement, and Engagement by device
• Pinterest : Followers, Views, Likes, Profile reach, Profile performance, and Performance by gender.

Of course, if you don’t need all the social media channels, you can easily remove them and add others like TikTok and YouTube.

Search engine optimization is an important part of any long-term digital marketing plan. It’s time to upgrade your reporting with an all-in SEO marketing dashboard that includes the SEO overview, website traffic report, Ahrefs links, backlink status report, etc.

When creating an SEO marketing report, you need to include

• Organic sessions
• Organic conversions
• Organic landing pages
• Keyword rankings

Luckily, you don’t need to create one from scratch. Whatagraph’s SEO Report Template can become your go-to reporting source for keeping an eye on your SEO and organic performance, changes in keyword rankings, organic CTR, branded and unbranded search terms, and many more SEO-related metrics.

Our SEO marketing report by default has the following sections:

• Google WEB search impressions
• Google WEB search clicks
• Percent new organic sessions
• Organic goal completions
• Organic search funnel: Sessions, Users, and Goal completions
• Organic traffic compared to the previous year
• Ahrefs metrics: Backlinks, Refpages, Links internal, Linked root domains, Dofollow
• Google Search Console: Keyword performance by rank
• Ahrefs backlinks
• Ahrefs page information

But this list of channels and metrics is not set in stone. If needed, you can add more channels, such as SEMrush and their metrics, ultimately turning this SEO marketing report into a true cross-channel marketing report.

PPC is one of my favorite marketing strategies because the return on investment is so easy to track. However, in order to drive conversions, PPC results need to be monitored and optimized.

Whatagraph’s PPC Report Template helps you gather key metrics such as cost per click, conversions, and click-through rate from platforms like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Microsoft Ads, LinkedIn Ads , and more.

Our consolidated PPC overview by default has the following sections:

• Main KPIs : Time passed, Conversions, Clicks, Impressions, and Cost;
• Insights : A textbox where you can write your own insights into the results;
• Further actions : A textbox where you can suggest further actions;
• Channel split : Traffic and conversions per Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Microsoft Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and Cost per conversion.

Using our PPC report template, you can create an engaging paid media report for your clients in minutes and have it delivered to them automatically.

As your clients’ products and services change and evolve, so should your eCommerce marketing strategy evolve to support them.

Ecommerce marketing depends on a number of marketing channels, so there’s never a shortage of metrics to track. However, every eCommerce report worth its ink should include

• Transactions
• Pages per session
• Average order value

It’s a good thing that you don’t have to extract all those metrics from social media and Google Analytics 4 manually.

Email marketing is a shortcut to getting your clients’ products and services in front of people. But you can’t just dispatch a series of emails and hope for the best.

An email marketing report helps you track the email campaign performance and how the changes you make affect your bottom line.

Some of the most essential KPIs you should report include

• Number of emails sent
• Unique open rate
• Overall campaign performance

In other words, you want to know how many people opened your email and converted as a result.

Our Email Report Template does just that. Keep all your key email marketing metrics in one place to report on the progress of your marketing campaigns.

• Total subscribers
• Unsubscribed total
• Emails sent
• Successful deliveries
• Unique opens
• Unique clicks

No manual work is needed. With our expert data visualization, the progress of your email campaigns becomes easily visible.

Every single one of these six types of marketing reports includes a large number of KPIs to the point that visualizing all that data would take too much time. Imagine doing that every month or even week for multiple clients.

With Whatagraph, you can connect your data sources once and get instant insights into your marketing results.

Because every time you create a new report, the data is refreshed — as simple as that.

No need to go back and forth through different reports for hours to make a cross-channel overview. Connect your accounts once, and the data fills in and updates automatically every time.

Whatagraph allows you to create cross-channel analytics reports with data from a range of social media, web analytics, SEO strategy, PPC, eCommerce, and email marketing platforms.

If you don’t have time to create a report from scratch, pick a report template from our library and connect your sources. Each template comes with pre-loaded visualization elements that will come to life once you connect your account.

You can choose to edit the template by introducing additional widgets for different dimensions and metrics. Customize your report template by adding graphs and charts, images, text boxes, funnels, calendars, and more.

Add your or your client’s logo or change the color scheme of the design elements to make the report more in line with your client’s branding. For a fully professional look, you can use the white-labeling option and remove Whatagraph’s logo from your reports for good.

Once you’ve customized your marketing report to your client’s liking. The only thing that remains is to schedule the delivery. It makes little difference if the clients want your report in their mailbox once a month or every week.

Set the sending interval for each account, the period to report on, and the number of recipients, and every report will be delivered automatically .

Whether it’s social media, SEO, or cross-channel reporting, getting hold of your clients’ marketing data would be hard to imagine without marketing reporting software that automates the bulk of reporting tasks and, in the end, makes the whole report look smart and engaging.

Visit our library of marketing report templates and pick the ones you need.

Published on Mar 29 2023

Nikola is a content marketer at Whatagraph with extensive writing experience in SaaS and tech niches. With a background in content management apps and composable architectures, it's his job to educate readers about the latest developments in the world of marketing data, data warehousing, headless architectures, and federated content platforms.

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How to Prepare a Complete Marketing Report: The KPIs, Analysis, & Action Plan You Need

Table of contents

To see what Databox can do for you, including how it helps you track and visualize your performance data in real-time, check out our home page. Click here .

Keeping an eye on changes in trends and data is one of the most effective ways to ensure the ship stays on its charted course.

For most companies, this means the creation and presentation of marketing reports to bring departments and clients into the loop, help steer decision-making, and prove (or disprove) the viability of changes in approach post-mortem. And for the majority, marketing is the most monitored and reported operation, according to Databox’s state of business reporting .

But how can you be sure you’re getting the best, most actionable data out of your reports? There’s a lot of ground to cover, as omnichannel marketing encompasses a host of moving parts, platforms, and rationales. You can’t expect to develop a report that tackles all of it. So what do you include?

We went to some of our favorite marketing professionals for the answers. They provided us with several different perspectives and over 40 actionable pieces of advice for how to craft a useful, insightful marketing report that will move your efforts in the right direction.

While most of our experts focused on different tips with regard to their report development, much of the insight they provided could be separated into four general types of advice:

Narratives, Summaries, Overviews, and Action Plans

Focus on specific kpis, metric, or goal, data analysis and historicals, use good data tools.

Click on the links above to jump to a specific section, or read on to get every tip and observation on this important reporting practice. 

Getting a full picture of the campaign, its goals, outcomes, and plans of action serve as the most prevalent piece of advice. From tip to tail, creating a quality report becomes much easier when integrating these elements into your reporting. 

Ernie Santeralli of ActiveCampaign gets things off the ground by establishing the reason at the outset. “Start by determining the purpose of the report. What story do you want to tell? Include the metrics and numbers that add details or context to the story. Don’t include metrics just because you have access to them.”

Simon Nowak of 3 Credit Scores gets information from the internal stakeholders that matter most. “Consult with your sales team. They’re on the front lines when it comes to things like leads and revenue. Their input on the data has value.”

Sales isn’t the only important department for quality reporting, however. As Deepshikha Dhankhar of Transfunnel Consulting explains. “ Don’t forget to include content marketing efforts. If your content has helped solve your prospects’ pain points, then it deserves a place in your overall marketing report. 

Says Dhankhar. “Consistent content strategies and measuring the impact is imperative in identifying where you are in your overall marketing journey and how much of those goals you are achieving on a regular basis. Many businesses miss out on this crucial element and the impact it’s making on their overall growth.”

Once you get this input, says Dwayne Hogan of Evie Digital , it’s time to turn your attention to the data. “Remove black holes in data by explaining the full search marketing funnel, starting with rankings, impressions, CTR, sessions, behavior (bounce rates, exit rates, cart additions, etc) and conversions.”

Melanie Musson of 360quoteLLC then suggests getting the report off on the right foot by arranging those findings in a digestible format. “Make the first page visually-based. A good summary of the past quarter (or whatever timeframe you’re looking at) with tables and charts indicating trends is easy to understand and will help the explanation and data throughout the report make sense.”

From thee, tackle what’s happening right now, says Andrea Cruz of KoMarketing “Always start with current strategy, goals, and performance. These steps will layout where we didn’t hit the mark, what was learned and what we should be doing next.”

When you make your overall marketing strategy, you definitely make a multi-channel plan.” Says Zarar Amen of CANZ Marketing . “You, as the planner and executor, can see the bigger picture and how the channels fit together, working for the common goal.

For the reporting to be useful, however, you have to be able to translate that vision and goal, reminding us, ”others can’t see the integration. They don’t know the impact of the results of an Adwords campaign over your Facebook campaign. So, while you make a report, make sure to include the complete picture for the readers, whoever they are. Show them how the pieces of your jigsaw puzzle (campaigns of your strategy from different channels) fit in together.”

Colin Harrison of Nivo Digital recommends using “80/20 rule” in developing your reporting. “Focus 20% of your attention on what happened —whether positive or negative— and 80% to what you learned and what the next actions are to improve performance.”

Alysha Schultz of Intuitive Digital agrees with this bias to action. “You should already be prepared to present your strategy and the next steps to reach these goals (or exceed them) to the partner based on your expert analysis of the data. You should come to the meeting prepared to explain how the work your agency has done has produced the current results, and what work you’re going to do in the coming months to push ahead.”

Thomas Astrup of We.Care says that in high-quality reporting and planning, “For every 10 insights, there should be at least 10 actions. If that is not possible, it’s not a useful insight and it should be left out of the report. Focus should be on actions that lead to more conversions.”

Don’t get bogged down, though, says Charly Mostert of SmartBug Media “I’ve seen a lot of marketing reports (including some of my own in the past) go so far into the weeds that even explaining the report becomes a slog.” To avoid this issue, “Be sure to keep your marketing report story-driven and simple, with plenty of links to more drill-down reporting you can point to if questions pop up. This will also ensure you have time at the end to cover those all-new initiatives you’re trying to get buy-in for.”

Editor’s Note: Want to know if your hard work is translating to sales from your marketing efforts? Get the Hubspot Marketing – Marketer Drilldown (sessions) dashboard to understand the relationship between content and conversions.

This narrative should be cohesive and easy to follow, according to Christina Hunt at Haus von Albe , who recommends having “a red thread throughout the entire report – meaning all data points, summaries, and learnings center around ONE point. That point can be sales, it can be audience demographics, it can be the change in user behavior. Whatever it is, remain consistent on that point or risk others having no take away from your work.” 

Hunt observes, “As marketers, it’s key to remember who will be reading this report as often times it’s not another marketer, it’s finance or sales or another department. Think of how they can best take your findings and create actionables.”

Toni JV of JVT Media has a different word for this important concept. “Empathy. As a marketing expert (especially in the digital field) you have to have empathy for the fact that a lot of business owners don’t understand what all this technical mumbo jumbo means and what it’s about.”

“So to combat this,” JV recommends, “keep it simple and explain things in layman’s terms, and most importantly talk about what actually matters to the business owner.”

“So if you’re doing Facebook ads, talk about how many clients it got them, and how we can increase that number to get them even more clients in the future. They don’t care how many impressions you got or what someone’s dwell time was on your video ad, they care about results.”

Vishal Rewari of Innovation and Research Foundation recommends to then “summarise the key metrics (leading and lagging indicators) in a manner that clear action can be deduced.”

And Nick Hollinger of Visitor Queue Inc. reminds us to wrap it up well. “Ensure that you have a conclusion section that summarizes key insights and action items. From this conclusion section, create and communicate your plan of action, time frame, cost, etc.

Where you’re headed is more important than where you are (or have been) according to Tasmin Lockwood of Radial Path . “Don’t just report on what you’ve done, but suggest next steps. Pulling together reports is important to highlight what you’ve achieved, but so many people stop there and don’t use it as an opportunity to present next steps. So what, that CTA wasn’t as effective as it was the previous month? What are you going to do about it?”

After you’ve framed a great report, use that framework to draw attention to a specific KPI or metric that will best serve the overall reporting structure and planning. 

Manny Zarate of MDZ It Solutions Inc. likes to get right to the most recognizable metric! “Show what is important to the client! How your work is making them money, money!”

“Tie it back to the big picture,” says Tina Arnoldi of 360 Internet Strategy . “If your goals are direct conversions, a high volume of traffic is not necessarily a success”

PRO TIP: How Are Users Engaging on My Site? Which Content Drives the Most Online Activity?

If you want to discover how visitors engage with your website, and which content drives the most engagement and conversions, there are several on-page events and metrics you can track from Google Analytics 4 that will get you started:

• Sessions by channel. Which channels are driving the most traffic to your website? 
• Average session duration. How long do visitors spend on your website on average? 
• Pageviews and pageviews by page . Which pages on your website are viewed the most? 
• Total number of users . How many users engaged with your website? 
• Engagement rate . Which percentage of your website visitors have interacted with a piece of content and spent a significant amount of time on the site?
• Sessions conversion rate . How many of your website visitors have completed the desired or expected action(s) and what percentage of them completed the goals you’ve set in Google Analytics 4?

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It’s all about knowing where the movement needs to be, according to Dominic Kent of Mio . “Know what your company needs to measure most effectively. It’s no good presenting 20 slides of stats if the one thing you genuinely need to grow your business is hidden away or still needs to be worked out after.”

Editor’s note: Want to stay updated on your teams’ performance without scheduling extra meetings or sending long emails? Keep everyone in the loop on your most important KPIs with Databox Alerts feature .

Romy Fuchs of BEE Inbound AG agrees. “Before you can create a marketing report, you should be clear about the goals of marketing, which in turn is derived from the company’s objectives.” Goals aren’t nebulous, however. “Only if there are smart goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Reasonable, Time-bound) a report can be compiled. The goals can be used to define the appropriate key figures and KPIs, which are a basic component of the report. 

“In addition, you should never lose yourself in a multitude of KPIs. Less is more!”

Stating goals and accomplishing them should be the main focus, says Julia Tiedt of SmartBug Media . “Every strategy and tactic in your marketing plan and report should revert back to your goals. How are each of the items you are reporting on helping you accomplish each of your goals? I typically break down my reporting into high-level goal dashboards and then have subsequent KPI dashboards following. 

“But remember, these dashboards are living things,” says Tiedt. “Continue to update them and make them even better and more useful for your team.”

Some experts we interviewed chose to focus on a specific metric, based on the type of reporting they needed to accomplish, and for what purposes. “ 

Faizan Ali of WPBeginner looks at SEO. “I’ll always include the SEO goals report in my actionable marketing report. The report is not just about rankings; we also analyze our content and outreach approach. We look for improvements based on our KPIs and take it up from there in the next quarter.”

Andrew Ruditser of Maxburst also regards SEO as an MVP metric. “It is very important to keep track of your website metrics and what has increased/decreased over that period of time. This will help you see what strategies you used helped benefit your company on the web and those that did not. Knowing those that helped your company will give you an advantage by continuing to use those same strategies and help your metrics continue to increase over time.”

Meanwhile, Pete Watson-Wailes of Tough & Competent focuses on the buyer. “For us, it’s about tying the report back to user personas. All marketing activity, whether it’s comms, pricing, product, experience or distribution-based, should be geared around positively affecting the journey of a segment of either current or potential customers.”

“Therefore,” says Watson-Wailes, “it should be tied back to a specific KPI with defined success and failure criteria, chosen to show first or second-order effects on effectiveness, judged by revenue. Without a hard metric tied to a group of users that demonstrates actual business value, it’s impossible to say that movement on any metric in any direction is positive. It’s about making reporting specific and actionable, and showing effectiveness as well as efficiency, so you can see the effect of any work, whether positive or negative.”

Alicia Mayle of InnerAction Media goes by a user request for. “Oftentimes, we find that our clients are most interested in customer geographic and demographic information. I would recommend including this information at the beginning of your report to catch your stakeholder’s attention.”

Lauren Walter of Social Media Optimism In order to prepare a complete and actionable marketing report, it’s important to determine your goals and KPIs. Make sure you’re tracking and reporting on metrics that will inform you about your progress toward your goals, how you can adjust to better meet your goals, and when your goals have been completed.

“For example,” says Walter, “If you are creating content on your website and promoting it on your social media in order to collect interested users’ emails, then you will want to set up conversion goal tracking for email sign-ups and include that in your report. Not only that; you will also want to track which content is performing best and leading to the most conversions.”

“You may want to include information from your goals in Google Analytics to see which content pieces are resulting in the most conversions. This can help inform your content strategy by telling you which types of content work best, as well as your social strategy by indicating which content pieces should receive more promotion.”

Jonathan Aufray of Growth Hackers takes a hard look at how marketing is integrated into the business and its success as a whole. “When preparing a complete and actionable marketing report, you need to highlight how marketing is impacting the business, especially how it impacts the KPIs. If your main KPI is to generate leads, you want to show how each channel (Content, SEO, emails, Ads, etc.) moved the needle.”

All that data is useful, but only if it’s in a useful format, says Caroline Scholten of Chocolate Films . “Keep a spreadsheet with data on your main Key Performance Indicators, to be able to compare your Marketing performance through time and make the right decisions based on that.”

It’s not just about the hard numbers, either, says Alexander Lewis of Paes s ler AG . “It’s important to track what people are saying about your company. Not everyone will link back to your website or email you about features in the media. Sometimes, you have to track that information down yourself.”

“One easy way to find mentions of your company,” recommends Lewis, “is to use Google search. Simply type your company name (with parentheses) into Google, like so: ‘Paessler.’ Then, sort your results by News instead of All. You should see a simple list of publications and blogs that have mentioned your brand recently. You may discover mentions your team didn’t even know about.”

Jane Prizer of Hausera looks at win/loss numbers to gauge things, as well. “Be sure to constantly monitor customer/client retention to make sure your ratio between loss of customers/clients and the acquisition of new clients/customers doesn’t sway too far in favor of the former’s direction. Whatever methods you are using to monitor this, make sure there is a strong sense of consistency, or else you’ll be making comparing data points down the road much more difficult.

Ed Loyal Entrepreneur of Loyal Entrepreneur says, “Focus on behavior stats. This is the key to creating a great user interface and a fantastic user experience.

Keep it simple, says Kenneth Zhu of Complete Business Online “An overwhelming report with 100 different metrics does not help your client in reading your report. You want your client to understand your importance in generating tangible results for them to build a close, long term relationship.”

“For example, if your goal is to tackle conversions, you should be addressing only conversions data and metrics that influence or are being influenced by conversions. For instance, relevant metrics to track with the help of a marketing dashboard software could include cost per click, cost per conversion, conversion rate, interaction rate. Total cost should be highlighted separately and not be combined with conversion data & recommendations.”

When all else fails, you can always rely on the data. Several of our experts dig into the numbers first from their marketing dashboards for guidance on what comes next. 

Natalia Luneva says, “Compare the numbers to the previous month, previous quarter and previous year to get a full picture of where we are and to avoid the numbers to be skewed.”

Storm McManus of Virtual Storm also looks at historicals, comparing apples to apples. “In it’s simplest form, keep your headings the same each month and report on the same data points, modifying the date range for each. This will help when it comes to reviewing metrics over a long period of time to inform any change in strategy or new action plans.”

Varun Celly of Geeks Of Digital reminds us that data is not just an inbound phenomenon. “To take more actionable steps, have all your data from different sources come to a central platform. Your measurement should be in 2 formats – Output metrics and Input metrics.”

As Celly explains, “Output metrics are outcomes like traffic increase or drop, conversions, etc. Input metrics are those metrics that were done in order to achieve output metrics. Like content update, page-level optimization, etc.”

“If you use a top-bottom approach you will be able to define actions for every analysis you do. That said, it is important to have scalability for analysis that can help you implement changes at scale.” You don’t have to go it alone, however. “At this stage, automation plays a huge role.” Check out these free marketing automation dashboard examples.

Editor’s note: Are you tired of digging around to find the data insights that you need? With Databox’s integration with Slack, you can schedule dashboard snapshots and performance alerts to any Slack channel .

Juli Durante of Impulse Creative gets deep into the data as a way to look under the hood. “I’ve found that the best marketing reports don’t just show what happened, they dig in several layers to uncover *why* something happened. For example, if organic traffic has decreased 5% month over month, you know that you have less organic traffic. But is that decrease the result of seasonality, or trending keywords? Change in organic rank? A tweak in your meta description or page title that decreased your click-through rate from organic? A combination of all of these? An actionable marketing report will look at historical data to inform next steps and pivots that may need to happen with future tactics.”

Giselle Bardwell of Kiwi Creative agrees. “Here at Kiwi Creative, we strive to always use the “W4 formula” in every report; What the numbers are, Why the numbers are, What the numbers tell us about the business results, and What we can do in the future to improve the numbers.”

“The best tip we can give is to keep the methodology simple,” says Bardwell. “In our reports, we begin with the raw data, followed by analysis as to possible causes. Then, and perhaps most importantly, we explain the significance of this data tied to the business objectives or overarching goals. This helps clients understand when there might be an incentive to implement revisions and improve results or move away from particular marketing activity. Our final step is to offer executable solutions. By guiding clients through this funnel in a marketing report, you guarantee that they understand the data, why it is important, what it tells us about the larger picture and what needs to be done next.”

While several of our experts have spoken on the merits of manual reporting, sometimes to get a better look, you need some help. This is where having access to great analytics tools and reporting software can help. 

Nirmala Santhakumar of WPGlossy keeps it basic. “Integrate Google Analytics to gather data like Traffic Sources, Conversions, and bounce rates.”

For SEO, Daniel Tannenbaum of Tudor Lodge Consultants say,s “Finding a good reporting tool (such as SEMrush and AWR) and being able to explain this report such as keyword positions and manage expectations for the client.”

“SEO is a very long term game,” observes Tannenbaum, “and you need to put results into perspective over the course a 1-month, 3-month or 6-month period. e.g ‘This is what to expect after 3 months, and by 6 months, we will be at…’”

Shawn Lim of New Age Polish uses these tools to get the best possible view in overall reporting. “Beware of the unknown unknowns! You may be so used to looking at a certain set of data that you might miss something simply because you didn’t know about it. Make use of intelligence tools that are available to avoid this scenario. For example, in Google Analytics, you can make use of Google Analytics Intelligence to get insights into your data.”

With these new tools and tips in hand, you’ll be able to create marketing reports that give you the best possible visibility into your marketing efforts and outcomes. Combining one or more of these actionable tools, you’ll be able to demonstrate the growth from your current efforts, and plot the course ahead in confidence. 

Are you ready to track the performance of your department wherever you are? With daily or weekly scorecards , you can select up to 15 metrics and automate performance updates of those metrics to your whole company or specific departments.

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Research Reports: Definition and How to Write Them

Reports are usually spread across a vast horizon of topics but are focused on communicating information about a particular topic and a niche target market. The primary motive of research reports is to convey integral details about a study for marketers to consider while designing new strategies.

Certain events, facts, and other information based on incidents need to be relayed to the people in charge, and creating research reports is the most effective communication tool. Ideal research reports are extremely accurate in the offered information with a clear objective and conclusion. These reports should have a clean and structured format to relay information effectively.

What are Research Reports?

Research reports are recorded data prepared by researchers or statisticians after analyzing the information gathered by conducting organized research, typically in the form of surveys or qualitative methods .

A research report is a reliable source to recount details about a conducted research. It is most often considered to be a true testimony of all the work done to garner specificities of research.

The various sections of a research report are:

• Background/Introduction
• Implemented Methods
• Results based on Analysis
• Deliberation

Learn more: Quantitative Research

Components of Research Reports

Research is imperative for launching a new product/service or a new feature. The markets today are extremely volatile and competitive due to new entrants every day who may or may not provide effective products. An organization needs to make the right decisions at the right time to be relevant in such a market with updated products that suffice customer demands.

The details of a research report may change with the purpose of research but the main components of a report will remain constant. The research approach of the market researcher also influences the style of writing reports. Here are seven main components of a productive research report:

• Research Report Summary: The entire objective along with the overview of research are to be included in a summary which is a couple of paragraphs in length. All the multiple components of the research are explained in brief under the report summary.  It should be interesting enough to capture all the key elements of the report.
• Research Introduction: There always is a primary goal that the researcher is trying to achieve through a report. In the introduction section, he/she can cover answers related to this goal and establish a thesis which will be included to strive and answer it in detail.  This section should answer an integral question: “What is the current situation of the goal?”.  After the research design was conducted, did the organization conclude the goal successfully or they are still a work in progress –  provide such details in the introduction part of the research report.
• Research Methodology: This is the most important section of the report where all the important information lies. The readers can gain data for the topic along with analyzing the quality of provided content and the research can also be approved by other market researchers . Thus, this section needs to be highly informative with each aspect of research discussed in detail.  Information needs to be expressed in chronological order according to its priority and importance. Researchers should include references in case they gained information from existing techniques.
• Research Results: A short description of the results along with calculations conducted to achieve the goal will form this section of results. Usually, the exposition after data analysis is carried out in the discussion part of the report.

Learn more: Quantitative Data

• Research Discussion: The results are discussed in extreme detail in this section along with a comparative analysis of reports that could probably exist in the same domain. Any abnormality uncovered during research will be deliberated in the discussion section.  While writing research reports, the researcher will have to connect the dots on how the results will be applicable in the real world.
• Research References and Conclusion: Conclude all the research findings along with mentioning each and every author, article or any content piece from where references were taken.

Learn more: Qualitative Observation

15 Tips for Writing Research Reports

Writing research reports in the manner can lead to all the efforts going down the drain. Here are 15 tips for writing impactful research reports:

• Prepare the context before starting to write and start from the basics:  This was always taught to us in school – be well-prepared before taking a plunge into new topics. The order of survey questions might not be the ideal or most effective order for writing research reports. The idea is to start with a broader topic and work towards a more specific one and focus on a conclusion or support, which a research should support with the facts.  The most difficult thing to do in reporting, without a doubt is to start. Start with the title, the introduction, then document the first discoveries and continue from that. Once the marketers have the information well documented, they can write a general conclusion.
• Keep the target audience in mind while selecting a format that is clear, logical and obvious to them:  Will the research reports be presented to decision makers or other researchers? What are the general perceptions around that topic? This requires more care and diligence. A researcher will need a significant amount of information to start writing the research report. Be consistent with the wording, the numbering of the annexes and so on. Follow the approved format of the company for the delivery of research reports and demonstrate the integrity of the project with the objectives of the company.
• Have a clear research objective: A researcher should read the entire proposal again, and make sure that the data they provide contributes to the objectives that were raised from the beginning. Remember that speculations are for conversations, not for research reports, if a researcher speculates, they directly question their own research.
• Establish a working model:  Each study must have an internal logic, which will have to be established in the report and in the evidence. The researchers’ worst nightmare is to be required to write research reports and realize that key questions were not included.

Learn more: Quantitative Observation

• Gather all the information about the research topic. Who are the competitors of our customers? Talk to other researchers who have studied the subject of research, know the language of the industry. Misuse of the terms can discourage the readers of research reports from reading further.
• Read aloud while writing. While reading the report, if the researcher hears something inappropriate, for example, if they stumble over the words when reading them, surely the reader will too. If the researcher can’t put an idea in a single sentence, then it is very long and they must change it so that the idea is clear to everyone.
• Check grammar and spelling. Without a doubt, good practices help to understand the report. Use verbs in the present tense. Consider using the present tense, which makes the results sound more immediate. Find new words and other ways of saying things. Have fun with the language whenever possible.
• Discuss only the discoveries that are significant. If some data are not really significant, do not mention them. Remember that not everything is truly important or essential within research reports.

Learn more: Qualitative Data

• Try and stick to the survey questions. For example, do not say that the people surveyed “were worried” about an research issue , when there are different degrees of concern.
• The graphs must be clear enough so that they understand themselves. Do not let graphs lead the reader to make mistakes: give them a title, include the indications, the size of the sample, and the correct wording of the question.
• Be clear with messages. A researcher should always write every section of the report with an accuracy of details and language.
• Be creative with titles – Particularly in segmentation studies choose names “that give life to research”. Such names can survive for a long time after the initial investigation.
• Create an effective conclusion: The conclusion in the research reports is the most difficult to write, but it is an incredible opportunity to excel. Make a precise summary. Sometimes it helps to start the conclusion with something specific, then it describes the most important part of the study, and finally, it provides the implications of the conclusions.
• Get a couple more pair of eyes to read the report. Writers have trouble detecting their own mistakes. But they are responsible for what is presented. Ensure it has been approved by colleagues or friends before sending the find draft out.

Learn more: Market Research and Analysis

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