The two most famous stories about market research are used as arguments against it.

In the first story, Henry Ford famously said that no bit of research or consumer testing would have led him to car production. “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

That may have been true, but Henry Ford wasn’t in the buggy business or even the transportation business. He was a machinist and worked on his family farm. His goal was not to build the first car or enhance transportation; it was to improve car production. Ford neither invented the car nor the assembly line; instead, he improved them so middle America could afford automobiles. He was all about improving efficiency because he knew, from market research, that most Americans didn’t have cars because they were too expensive. His job was to build a car cheap enough for America to buy, not build a faster buggy.

Social media can play an important role in understanding a brand’s audience. A large amount of users engage in social networking — Facebook alone has 1.2 billion monthly active users. Social media can be used to investigate your target audience and create an appropriate research plan. In this article, I will discuss a few ways market researchers can utilize social media for their research needs. 

At the end of 2014 Q4, LinkedIn had 347 million users, up from 296 million earlier in the year. It’s probably safe to say that LinkedIn is unarguably the best social site for B2B marketing, and networking for business professionals overall. With so many users, one may wonder how to stand out and get noticed on a saturated platform. In this article I will share some tips on how to best utilize LinkedIn as a Market Researcher and provide tips to get your profile strength to “all-star.”

You can’t read marketing blogs these days without hearing about “data-driven decisions.”  Marketers are expected to have transitioned from the “Don Draper” era (in which gut feel and instinct ruled) to the “Data-driven” era (in which analytics, benchmarks, and consumer feedback should be in heavy supply).

The good news is this appetite for feedback is driving more online surveys being run across every organization. The bad news is most professionals don’t know the best practices for conducting a survey.  Seemingly minor mistakes can throw an entire dataset into question. Below are some common mistakes I’ve seen survey rookies make, and how to fix them.

“Big Data” has been quite a buzzword in recent years, but it does have some real world implications for those in the market research industry. As technology evolves, it bleeds into market research and creates both new challenges as well as opportunities. Internet and mobile research have blended with new tools, such as survey applications, and many brands are taking advantage. What does this mean for market research and the professionals that perform it? Will they be pushed to the side, or is there a way for market researchers to adapt and strengthen themselves through these new technologies?

As 2015 arrives, so do new trends in the Manufacturing and Construction industries. Both are expected to see new changes to the industry business models as new factors contribute to the growth of the sectors, including new technologies and boosts in the economy.

There’s no denying the impact digital media has had on the market research realm. While the Internet has resulted in plenty of positive changes and a significantly increased freedom of information, the sheer amount of data available can be overwhelming. However, there are ways to deal with information overload - ranging from the complex to the extremely simple.

There is an old adage in business that goes something like: "If you have two managers that always agree then one of them is redundant." Thankfully, this is not employed in most companies today, and it is not a school of thought I agree with or endorse for a couple of reasons.  

In the past few years, many organizations have adopted technologies into their business models in hopes to increase efficiency, become more flexible, and to transform their current business functions. Market research, too, has adopted new techniques and methodologies in order to keep up with the evolving markets and extend its reach. In a recent blog, The Top 20 Emerging Methods in Market Research, industry expert Greenbook Blog uses data from surveys conducted in September 2014 to determine the emerging trends that are expected to be used in the upcoming years by market researchers.

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This week, MarketResearch.com is spotlighting global healthcare and energy research firm GlobalData. Read on to learn more about GlobalData and their products.