October 17, 2002 | Read Time: 1 minute
Marketing Research That Won’t Break the Bank: a Practical Guide to Getting the Information You Need
by Alan R. Andreasen
Marketing research helps nonprofit organizations, small businesses, and others on a tight budget develop a crucial understanding of “their target markets, their competitors, and the environment in which they all operate,” writes William A. Smith, an executive vice president at the Academy for Educational Development, in Washington, in this book’s foreword.
Yet many managers are daunted by the concept of such research, writes Alan R. Andreasen, a marketing professor at Georgetown University, in Washington, because they believe that research is only for big decisions, or that it is too expensive and a waste of money and resources.
This book offers tips on the creative use of low-cost information sources and simple experiments to test marketing methods. One such suggestion: Test a new approach to direct-mail solicitation by mailing only a small portion of the intended mailing list to gauge reaction.
“The marketing research community is sometimes guilty of making the research process seem so subtle and complicated that it scares off too many people who could make valuable use of low-cost techniques,” the author says. “Anyone can do perfectly decent and useful research without fancy probability samples, complex questionnaires, highly trained interviewers, or the latest in computerized statistical software.”
Chapters outline how to plan a research program, evaluate research projects, design low-cost surveys, and produce valid data. The book also describes a range of specific research techniques that are low cost, such as using existing records and documents as well as “predigested” data from sources like the Census Bureau.
Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 989 Market Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94103-1741; (415) 433-1740 or (800) 956-7739; fax (415) 433-0499 or (800) 605-2665; http://www.josseybass.com; 277 pages; $27.95; I.S.B.N. 0-7879-6419-0.
