Don't Be Penny Wise and Pound Foolish With Marketing Research

 There's no denying that marketing research is costly. Even if your organization does marketing research in-house, it takes time and resources. Even if the study is completely secondary and may be obtained in libraries or on the Internet, someone must gather the data. Because the time an employee spends accumulating, summarizing, evaluating, and presenting material cannot be committed to other initiatives, performing marketing research in-house has a significant opportunity cost. Budget limits, on the other hand, frequently force marketing research projects to make sacrifices, and these tradeoffs are frequently made haphazardly.

Selecting a provider primarily on the basis of cost and preferring to conduct the research in-house are two apparent ways organisations save corners on their research expenses. Companies also make tradeoffs by conducting surveys with smaller sample sizes, preferring nonprobability sampling methods over probability sampling methods, and conducting secondary research rather than primary research, among other things.

None of these compromises are intrinsically undesirable. When funds are limited, you may need to make numerous decisions to balance the scope of your project with your financial limits. When compared to completely unaided judgement, a conclusion based on a little decent marketing research is still more solid. However, the operative word here is "good." Companies risk tossing out the baby with the bathwater when cost becomes the primary restriction for marketing research.