Market Research Data Key Terms

Understand the terms you need for conducting market research

Before you design your online survey or write the questions for your focus group session, you need to know the terms used in designing market research. Determining your target market, deciding what questions you want to ask about that market, collecting data and analyzing the results are all part of the process of market research. In order to successfully navigate that process and benefit from the findings, you need to know some key terms for talking about the purpose of market research and how it is conducted.

 

Market research

Market research, often used interchangeably with marketing research, is the process by which companies design studies of their consumer base. Often, market research focuses on a specific segment of the market and attempts to determine the consumer characteristics of that group. Market research is the basis of product design, marketing and advertising techniques.
Try: KnowThis.com offers a detailed definition of market research and the importance of research to the field of marketing.

Validity

Validity is the term used to describe the extent to which any piece of research accurately answers the question it was designed to answer. For any research study, there are a number of types of validity, including construct validity (the extent to which the study accurately defines the subject of study) and content validity (the extent to which the study measures what it says it will measure).
Try: Brigham Young University publishes a useful page on several types of validity used in market research and other types of statistical research.

Reliability

Reliability, which is similar to validity, describes the extent to which the results found in a research study are replicable, or would be found to be true if repeated in a different setting. Reliability also has several varieties, including inter-rater reliability (the level of agreement found between respondents on a survey) and test-retest reliability (the similarity of results when a survey is repeated multiple times).
Try: Changing Minds offers a definition of reliability, along with the ways it is distinguished from validity.

Consumer unit

The consumer unit is important to market research because it is the unit of analysis used when designing a study and analyzing results. The consumer unit is defined as the household body that makes decisions about what to buy.
Try: Read a concise definition of the consumer unit from Quirk's Marketing Research Review.

Focus group

A focus group is defined as a small group of research participants that fall within a specific target market brought together to answer several questions in a market research study. Focus groups usually consist of five to 10 people and last for about one or two hours. Researchers ask a number of interview questions and record the group responses and interactions.
Try: Global Market Insite offers a useful definition of the focus group for conducting market research.

Qualitative research

Qualitative research, as opposed to quantitative or statistical research, focuses on the subjectivity of individual people and attempts to reflect in-depth responses of the research participants. Qualitative research consists primarily of interviewing and observing; the focus group is one technique for qualitative market research.
Try: Market Research World provides a detailed definition of qualitative research as it is used by market researchers.

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