Industrial Marketing

Chapter 6 : Assessing Market Opportunities

+The Marketing Intelligence System

 Differences between Consumer and Industrial Marketing Research

+Major Tasks of Industrial Marketing Research

+The Marketing Research Process

+Demand Analysis

Chapter Summary

A marketing intelligence system deals with procurement and analysis of data from various internal or external sources on a continuous basis to assess market opportunities and threats, and helps design and implement suitable marketing strategies. Industrial marketing research helps to find possible solutions to a particular problem or to arrive at possible outcomes of a situation.

It provides competitive intelligence and decision support. Various tasks of industrial marketing research include analyzing market share, assessing the market potential for new products as well as for existing products, determining the market characteristics, analyzing past sales, and developing sales forecasts.

The marketing research process involves recognizing and defining the problem, developing research objectives, establishing study hypothesis, planning the research design, developing sources of information, deciding the sampling plan, data collection, analysis to arrive at interpretations and recommendations, and presenting the findings. Industrial marketers need to conduct demand analysis on a regular basis as the demand for industrial goods is volatile.

Demand analysis is done based on the analysis of the price, income levels, existence of substitutes for the products, etc. It is done using either quantitative or qualitative techniques. An industrial marketer also needs to avoid the common problems that arise during demand forecasting.

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