Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Wiktionary
n. (context marketing English) The systematic collection and evaluation of data regarding customers' preferences for actual and potential products and services
WordNet
n. research that gathers and analyzes information about the moving of good or services from producer to consumer [syn: marketing research]
Wikipedia
Market research is any organized effort to gather information about target markets or customers. It is a very important component of business strategy. The term is commonly interchanged with marketing research; however, expert practitioners may wish to draw a distinction, in that marketing research is concerned specifically about marketing processes, while market research is concerned specifically with markets.
Market research is one of the key factors used in maintaining competitiveness over competitors. Market research provides important information to identify and analyze the market need, market size and competition. Market-research techniques encompass both qualitative techniques such as focus groups, in-depth interviews, and ethnography, as well as quantitative techniques such as customer surveys, and analysis of secondary data.
Market research, which includes social and opinion research, is the systematic gathering and interpretation of information about individuals or organizations using statistical and analytical methods and techniques of the applied social sciences to gain insight or support decision making.
Usage examples of "market research".
You can also market your own novel, using the market research techniques outlined earlier in this chapter.
The Warner-Lambert Company, makers of Trident sugarless gum, commissioned a market research firm to undertake the study under discussion in July 1976.
Focus groups had become quite the thing in recent decades, particularly with market research companies.
Five mornings a week doing nothing but read, under no compulsion to produce any kind of results - merely requested to mention by mail any association or connection he spotted which he had reason to believe might prove helpful to somebody: advise an astronomer that a market research organisation had a new statistical sampling technique, for instance, or suggest that an entomologist be informed about a new air-pollution problem.
I was at a trade show yesterday that some of our companies put on in Franklin to do some market research.
SEGA should send group testers on flights and do market research that way!
Each week a new bad guy was trotted out, dealt with, and market research said the kids just weren't interested in him.
As usual in these situations, there was a period of casting about and market research, listening to what the people themselves were calling it.
For God's sake, man, why don't you leave market research to somebody who knows something about it?
He told her he was doing market research for some ad agency on what page people reached in the paper when they threw it away and how far down they smoked these different brands of cigarettes it all sounded rather bogus, she's been buying him the most lavish gifts like a twelve hundred dollar robe from Sulka's he tried to return for cash but they told him they'd be glad to credit it to her account so of course he kept it while apparently he's been going around complaining that whenever there's a ten dollar cab fare or she needs a lipstick she .