Michael Hyman

Marketing can increase your sales and profits. To optimize your sales and target the best customers, you need to conduct research to pinpoint the best approach for your marketing communications and strategies. Ensure that you’re conducting the best research possible, recognize and question standard marketing research terms so you understand every step of the process, and practice good research ethics to protect your business and guarantee its success.

Successful marketing research helps you make good marketing decisions and run a successful business. The following are some ideas for those moments when you decide you really need to concentrate on marketing to boost sales to a higher level. This simple checklist can ensure that you’re conducting good marketing research: You have well-defined research questions.

Conducting marketing research involves working with professionals who use a variety of terms to describe the parts or steps of the research process. The following are common terms you’re likely to encounter in your research, along with definitions. Close-ended question: A survey question that asks you to choose from a variety of answers — like a multiple-choice question.

Often, the success of marketing research depends on cooperative respondents. So when a researcher behaves unethically and abuses those respondents, he not only hurts the future of his business, but he also potentially hurts the success of future research because abusive or questionable treatment tends to discourage respondents from participating in future studies.