I’ve been hearing a lot about this recently. What kind of careers can you pursue after doing your graduate work in this field? Is it really feasible?
Re: Marketing Research
Marketing research, business intelligence, competitive intelligence, consumer behavior etc are major drivers behind every move that major companies make, ranging from product development, to product redesign, positioning, pricing etc etc etc.
The field is growing by leaps and bounds. the sheet number of people, prodcuts and promotional vehicles make it critical for all companies from manufacturer to retailer to understand which people buy what, when, how much, why and how.
so whether your focus on new product development related reseach where you are assessing unmet needs, or gaps in product offerings versus consumer wants, or whether within a company you are helping prioritize different product lines to see who gets wat funding, or you are engaged in launch of new products..to post launch assessments to understand how your strategy is playing out.
so having a marketing research background does not mean you will be some egghead in the backffice crunching numbers. Its a critical and strategic role..budgets of hundreds of millions are developed by understanding market dynamics, product design, development, campaigns, promotions are all based in quantitative data, volumes of info to help marketers pinpoint their strategy.
marketing resaech folks also go into ad agencies, because ad development, placement, is also based on real quantitiative stuff. the creative types come in later and are given a defined sandbox to play in. by the time they get engaged, market intelligence groups have put together an entire profile of teh company, its competition, product view, product competitors, consumer needs, gaps, target market by age, income, location, media preferences…and then campaigns are developed based on that.
when people think of marketing research they often think of custom research, developing questionairres, getting answers tabulating data, and while that happens, the technology is too advanced now.
Here are some company sites for you to see what type of stuff is hapening. Let me tell you its exciting stuff. if you are going to be in marketing strategy..or strategic marketing, a background in research is a huge plus.
check a few sites out, some major company sites, take a quick look and see what they do, it will give u a good idea of some paths.
http://www2.acnielsen.com/site/index.shtml