Marketing research is an important part of a firm's business strategy. This is reflected in American Marketing Association's statistics that states 77 percent of the nation's consumer goods manufacturers maintain formal marketing research departments. This stresses the growing need

To gain an insight into just how valuable research is to companies, marketing research firms in one year earned almost 40 percent of the $4.6 billion outside the United States in one year. Specialist research firms may be divided into three categories: syndicated services, full-service suppliers, or limited-service suppliers. This makes it easier for the contracting firm to tailor their research needs more easily.

Where scanning and risk assessment focus on the future, monitoring activities assess current events. This part of market research seeks to discover how well past decisions are working out now. This may include activities such as analysing sales and profit data, customer satisfaction levels, and results from advertising and promotion programs. The questions the marketing researcher might ask include 'What is our overall market share? Scanning takes into account the overall look at the market and it's competitors. This can be exemplified by the washing machine market. If a washing machine only has a 'C' rating in energy conservation in comparison to a competitor's 'A' rating the firm could indeed do better in improvements. One way a market researcher can find out this type of information is that of the 'mystery shopper', who will look at prices and information of a rival's products whilst acting as a customer. In a sense, monitoring activities can be defined as diagnostic tools. They aim the marketing research effort at identifying problems and suggesting ways of fixing them.

Marketing researchers will direct their risk assessment activities towards evaluating the likelihood of success by linking proposed actions to feedback from customers in real or simulated conditions. One such method of undergoing this type of research may be to use promotions at stalls and asking for feedback. Risk assessment activities will thus enable firms to measure the costs and benefits of a particular course of action, such as introducing a new product or implementing a new promotional technique.

for marketing research particularly in the face of the change towards stiffer competition by other firms in the same markets. Marketing research is a must if organisations wish to get ahead of the pack to find out more about their customer's needs,

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