BM380 Assignment: Importance of a Marketing Research Report

Marketing Research Report
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Marketing Research Report
More often do people get confused between a marketing research and a market research. Market research is when one is studying a specific target while marketing research is when one is studying about new products and distribution methods. Therefore, the difference between the two is that marketing research is researching about the marketing process of an organization and not about their target niche which is done by a market research.
Importance of a marketing research report
A marketing research report is the last aspect of the marketing research process. The main objective of any research is to help managers of an organization in the decision making process and this depends on how the researcher communicates the findings of the research to the management. If the results are not communicated in an effective way, the decision making may not be effective. Having an effective research report will help in overcoming this challenge.
The marketing research report acts as the bond between the researcher and the managers. If the research findings are not well communicated, the research will not be a success even though meticulous design and methodologies are used. The findings of the research will not help to achieve the objectives of a research, which is to help the decision making process. A marketing research report is an important and tangible output of a research that does not only assist the decision making process but also provides documentary evidence that will be used for future references (Crouch, & Housden, 2012). Since the managers are not involved in other steps of the marketing research process, they are only involved in the reporting stage where they judge the quality of the research by looking at the quality of the research report. Finally, the marketing research report provides the information of all the things that were done during the research process.
Components of a marketing research report
A professional and formal marketing research report must address several issues ranging from effective communication of the research results to the management to providing sound and logical recommendations based on the results. As the management requires, the problem definition, objectives, and methods of the research varies in every situation; therefore, every report is different depending on the situation. However, many components of marketing remain the same in all the situations. The following are some of the components that are universal:
* Title page- it indicates the subject of the report, information of the researcher, who the recipient of the report is as well as the details of the organization.
* Table of contents- this provides the list of the topics that are covered in the report with their respective page numbers. It is followed by a list of tables and figures.
* Executive summary- it is considered to be the soul of the report since it reads the summary of the whole report and provides the quality of the report since decisions might be made based on the summary provided. Therefore, it is a brief summary of the report that addresses why the research was carried out, findings, inte...