Today is a big day for me since I finally decided to start a conversation with my dear friends: Mr. Market Research and Ms. Marketing Research. Yeah, you are right, they seem alike, because they are twin brother and sister! I know many of you are not yet familiar with them and can easily get confused by their similar “faces”, so in my very first post, I’d like to introduce them to you so you and I can enjoy the upcoming great journey with them together!
I bet you have already checked out their pictures below! As you see, Mr. Market Research is a “decent gentleman” who is curious about almost every industry and who cares about consumers’ thoughts. He’s seasoned but nimble. He’s good at reading consumers’ minds and predicting market trends for each industry. Therefore, he always helps the heads (e.g. CEOs), who are also the “breadwinners” of the “family”, to better understand the situations they are in and develop business insights and strategies accordingly. While Ms. Marketing Research shares some characteristics with Mr. Market Research, as a “female”, she’s more sensitive, considerate and interpersonal. She cares even more about the consumer insights. Understanding there exists various types of consumers (market segments), she tries to figure out what kinds of messages and communication channels are the best for each customer group. Her job is to instruct marketing professionals of how to disseminate the most responsive messages by the customers’ mostly used channels.
Mr. Market Research
Now we got brief impressions of Mr. Market Research and Ms. Marketing Research. You might want to know more about their background and history. In the article, The History of Marketing Research, Javier Vasquez stated that market/marketing research were born in the late 1920, almost the same time when advertising was introduced into U.S. During the early 1930’s a man called Daniel Starch remarked that “effective advertising must be seen, read, believed, remembered, and then acted upon”. Based on this thought, he developed a research company that would interview people in the streets, asking them if they read certain publications and if they can recognize or recall any of the ads on those publications. Then Daniel compared the number of people he interviewed with the circulation of the publication, by which he could figure out how effective those ads were in reaching their readers. [1] This can be considered as the earliest market research, which intentionally gathered data and opinion from customers and then analyzed and interpreted the information in a systematic way. Today, though more and more advanced methods and techniques are developed for market research and marketing research, they still serve the same goal that Daniel tried to achieve, better understanding and fulfilling the gap between the functions of a product or service and customers’ demands.
Ms. Marketing Research
I’d also like to tell you the story between me and the two dear friends. I haven’t met them until the fall of 2011 when I started my graduate study at Boston University, College of Communication. To tell you the truth, Communication Research is the least favorable class when I first checked out my curriculum schedule. It just seemed serious and boring. How can a bunch of cold data give you the customer insight? However, in the class I gradually realized that it is anything but boring and useless. Now I call it the “beacon of marketing and communication” since it helps dispel the fog between marketers/advertisers/PR professionals and the consumers. Actually, market research and marketing research emerged out of the customer-centricity philosophy, which is supported by one of human’s most valuable qualities, empathy. Therefore, I made up my mind to be a market researcher and I appreciated that I’ve found a field that I think is meaningful, that I am interested in and also good at.
Well, now you have known my dear friends and my first story with them. I plan to tell more in-depth “stories” about them in the future! How do you feel about my dear friends? I’m curious about how you first met them. Do you have any stories about market/marketing research that you’d like to share with me?
A Future Market Researcher 