HC2022 Marketing Research - Impact of Technology

Market Research

Introduction

In the era of business where competition has gone to another level, market research has become a very essential part of their activity. With the advancements in digital technologies it has become easier for companies to do market research. In the fast changing global business environment, doing thorough research has become highly essential. There are several platforms through which data can be collected (Trainor, Andzulis, Rapp & Agnihotri, 2014). With the use of artificial intelligence and data mining software doing market research has become easier. JWS is a market research firm in Australia that helps other firms in their market research. This report highlights the use of technology in market research in the present business environment.

Impact of technology on market research

Technology has empowered organisations to communicate directly with the clients. This has helped them in understanding the actual demands of the market. With the development of platforms such as social media sites, it has become convenient for the organisations to know about their clients especially in terms of their choices (Norman & Verganti, 2014). In today’s business predicting demands of future have become very important which can be easily done with the tools like data mining and data analytics. Since data related to market is generated in bulk hence doing marketing research manually is a very difficult task. Understanding the market dynamics is important as the marketing environment is changing at much faster rate. It is essential that companies understand the factors that are changing in it. For understanding each and every factor there are different types of technologies available. Today the companies that are using best of technologies are capable enough to gather sufficient data which would give them competitive advantage over their rivals. Better the market research better is the chance that they could present their products and services in front of clients understanding each and every factor that could influence them. In the future most of the population in the world is going to get connected through digital mediums (Latta, 2011). Along with this companies are also going to transform itself into online firms for example Retail, IT, Communication has already started the process. This will increase the necessity of marketing research with the help of technologies.

New Technologies in market research

There are large numbers of technologies getting developed in the world. Every organisational unit takes use of technologies as per their requirements and resources they have. This can also be understood by the fact that there are emerging new technologies which can be adopted by companies so as to do market research in a better manner (Hair Jr, Wolfinbarger, Money, Samouel & Page, 2015). The first and the basic technology on which companies need to focus on is Artificial Intelligence. This is capable enough to take decisions on their own based on the data that is gathered through previous activities in business. When artificial intelligence is used in the organisation, it enables machines to think without human interventions. Artificial intelligence is capable enough to fasten and improve the decision making process. Along with this the tools of data management or data mining acts an excellent source that enables companies not only to accumulate data but to synchronise them in a manner that effective decisions can be made out of it. There are many thrash data also generated while doing a market research, adoption of new technologies helps the organisation to filter the most appropriate data and find out the desired outcome for them.

Predictive analytics takes use of tracking data in the real time to forecast customer’s choice. Online tracking of customers also help in gaining information about the marketing and other social and business activities of the individual (Zikmund, Babin, Carr & Griffin, 2013). Company can take use of this data for the purpose of gaining knowledge about the interest of the people and hence they can market their products accordingly. But this must be limited only to the buying behaviour as exceeding the reach over private could create ethical issues for the company.  It is crucial that in such situations JWS can apply certain kind of guidelines.

Data analytics that is applied on the data that is generated at the social media sites can be extremely helpful for gaining the knowledge about success and failure of any product and services. The feedbacks that customers shares at these platforms can be helpful for making changes in their organisations and their business process (Tamim, Bernard, Borokhovski, Abrami & Schmid, 2011). This is crucial for customer satisfaction which ultimately helps in retention of their clients.

JWS’s client’s requirements

Government will need data regarding the demographics and the requirements of the people. Government can also gather data regarding demand of the people which they need to fulfil or otherwise they may face agitation of the people. They can gather such data with the help of platforms like social media and others. Their other clients like the hospitals can gather data regarding the need of the society in terms of health and wellbeing. Applications of technology those are associated with telepresence, implicit association analysis, neuroscience and eye tracking also helps in making a better market research related to health. If they themselves and their clients adopt these technologies they will be able to understand the market and will be able to provides services accordingly (Rinaldo, Tapp & Laverie, 2011). Along with this it is also crucial that their clients start taking use of cloud services so as to store all the data and with the help of data analytics software like Hadoop they can easily gain knowledge about the market as per their requirement.

Conclusion

In the concluding remark it can be said that modern day business are taking digital mediums to do business. In such an environment most of the data gets generated through IT technologies hence it is essential that company does its market research through these technologies (Klaus, 2013). Platforms such as social media which is expanding at much faster rate needs to be used by the companies for gathering data. This can be done with the help of data analytics tools. In the modern day competitive environment it is crucial that company use predictive analytics for gaining estimating their demands in the future. JWS needs to ensure that their clients take use of cloud services for managing of data.

Reference 

Hair Jr, J. F., Wolfinbarger, M., Money, A. H., Samouel, P., & Page, M. J. (2015) Essentials of business research methods. Routledge.

Klaus, P. P. (2013) New insights from practice: Exploring online channel management strategies and the use of social media as a market research tool. International Journal of Market Research, 55(6), 829-850.

Latta, M. (2011) Emerging Technology: Impacts on Marketing Research. Retrieved from: https://www.insightsassociation.org/article/emerging-technology-impacts-marketing-research

Norman, D. A., & Verganti, R. (2014) Incremental and radical innovation: Design research vs. technology and meaning change. Design issues, 30(1), 78-96.

Rinaldo, S. B., Tapp, S., & Laverie, D. A. (2011) Learning by tweeting: Using Twitter as a pedagogical tool. Journal of Marketing Education, 33(2), 193-203.

Tamim, R. M., Bernard, R. M., Borokhovski, E., Abrami, P. C., & Schmid, R. F. (2011) What forty years of research says about the impact of technology on learning: A second-order meta-analysis and validation study. Review of Educational research, 81(1), 4-28.

Trainor, K. J., Andzulis, J. M., Rapp, A., & Agnihotri, R. (2014) Social media technology usage and customer relationship performance: A capabilities-based examination of social CRM. Journal of Business Research, 67(6), 1201-1208.

Zikmund, W. G., Babin, B. J., Carr, J. C., & Griffin, M. (2013) Business research methods. Cengage Learning.