Problems and Prospects of Marketing Research in Nigeria

Every successful organization thrives on well planned strategies, and this is a function of management, and management is all about making good and reliable decision.

This decision by the management of an organization can be characterized by some form of uncertainties. To avert these uncertainties in decision making, organization’s management need to device means of curbing uncertainties in decision making. One of those methods of averting uncertainties while making decision in an organization is through ‘marketing research’.

However, an uncertainty in decision making is inevitable, but with a good application of marketing research, such uncertainties could be reduced. All things being equal, a good marketing research will ensure that the decision made by the management is geared towards achieving the goal of the organization.

Marketing research professionals are the ones who fete marketing managers with relevant information for decision making in the organization, and this information do have alternative options that may possibly guarantees success, where the other is not working.

And moreso, although, the decision made in the organization by the marketing managers are based on the information from marketing research experts, such information in the real sense does not guarantee success hence, the definition of marketing research.

Read Also: Problems and Prospects of Marketing Regulation in Nigeria

Definition of Marketing Research

Marketing research is a methodical and independent inquiry for, and study of information that are important in  helping in sorting out problems, and as well proffering solutions in the discipline of marketing.

Problems of Marketing Research in Nigeria

Through marketing research, business organization can use some indexes to handle some problems, while intending to expand the horizon of their businesses, in terms of producing new products or services, because the purpose of setting up a business is to make profit, and these organizations do not want to take any decision that will undermined the objectives of their businesses.

However, there are some problems that prevailed in the cause of managing a business organization, and some of the problems are:

1. Error in survey

Through business survey, business organization can identify the needs of the customers and what they want, and the survey is all about collecting information in a market place, the information can be numerical or descriptive in nature.

So when there is error in the information collected, the likelihood is that, marketing research problem will float up. For instance, if a business organization assemble a random sample to determine the needs of a particular consumers’ populace, and the process was not randomly access, there is going to be problem in generalizing the result to represent the target population.

Read Also: 10 Best Digital Marketing Training Providers in Nigeria

2. Customers’ apathy in responding to survey

Another problem encountered in marketing research is that, when survey is designed by marketers, sometimes the customers will show lack of concern in taking part in the survey, and when they take into consideration why customers do not want to participate, they will arrived at the conclusion that perhaps, the survey enticement was not attractive to induce response from the part of the customers.

3. Interfering with customers’ experience

Sometimes, conducting marketing research will involve taking into consideration the customers’ actions and preferences. In this survey however, marketing researcher will discard customers’ preferences and observe his actions.

In the cause of observing customers’ actions, the researcher may be found inquisitive with the customers’ experience, in such a way that the customer may feel dismayed, and decide to go away from the place.

I will give example, for instance, a marketing researcher in a supermarket, want to know if there is need for a new department of the supermarket to be established in another place within the city, so he survey customers coming in and out of the supermarket, perhaps to determine the customers’ purchasing power, they may make worse customers’ experience in the supermarket.

Read Also: Problems of Agricultural Marketing in Nigeria

Prospects of Marketing Research in Nigeria

1. Understanding clients’ and competitors’ needs

In marketing research, the work of a researcher is to study and understand his clients’ needs and the competitors in the market place, and he is duty bound to advise his client on what to do, which decision to take that will be of utmost profitable to its clients.

As a result, this will make the client understand the position and the activities of the competitors in the market place, as well as the needs and the wants of his customers, which he will readily make available to his customers so as to have edge over his competitors in the market place, by so doing, will discourage his customers from patronizing his competitors in the market place.

2. Determine goods and services that are in demand and their prices

in a survey finding, the market researcher will be able to gather enough information in order to advise his client with respect to market activities, it is in the process, that the researcher will come by some information to advise his client, which in this case, is about the current demand of some good items and services in the market place and the best price tag for these goods and services.

With this information the client is better positioned to be on top of the game as far as the business is concern.

3. Understanding business trend

Understanding business trend is a very potent power in succeeding in any business, therefore, in taking survey of the market, the marketing researcher is in the position of maintaining pathway of his client’s business with the current business drift and the general marketing drift, sometimes, it could be in a specific area for the purpose of breaking even in the business.

Conclusion and Suggestion

The truth remains that, marketing research may sometimes, not being precisely correct, with respect to some of the challenges encountered by marketing researchers as mentioned in this article, it could be faulty.

Therefore, there is need for thorough market survey by marketing researchers in the cause of sourcing for information, which may be numerical and descriptive information, so that when company’s executives implement this information, they will be able to arrive at the set target. 

📢 We are hiring writers!