Explain the different types of marketing research firms.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Marketing research providers can be classified as either internal or external, custom or standardized, or brokers/facilitators. Internal research providers are typically organizational units that reside within a company. The benefits of using internal research providers include research method consistency, shared information across the company, lower research costs, and ability to produce actionable research results.
Some firms choose to use external sources for marketing research. External sources, usually referred to as marketing research suppliers, perform all aspects of the research, including study design, questionnaire production, interviewing, data analysis, and report preparation. These firms operate on a fee basis and commonly submit a research proposal to be used by a client for evaluation and decision purposes.
Customized research firms provide specialized, highly tailored services to their clients. Many customized research firms concentrate their activities in one specific area such as brand-name testing, test marketing, or new-product development. Standardized research firms provide more general services. These firms also follow an established, common approach in research design so the results of a study conducted for one client can be compared to norms from studies done for other clients. Many standardized research firms also provide syndicated business services, which include the purchase of diary panels, audits, and advertising recall data made or developed from a common data pool or database.