Industrial Marketing Research: an Overview of Techniques

In the last chapter it was noted that the manner in which market research is executed is a function of the needs and resources of the industrial organisation. Before embarking on a description of market research techniques it is useful to clarify the differences in emphasis between industrial and consumer market research as this influences the importance of the techniques used. These differences are adequately described by both Gordon1 and Hutchison,2 and the most important can be summarised as follows:1Consumer goods are purchased by members of the public whereas industrial goods are purchased on behalf of an organisation.2The industrial market researcher tends to require a knowledge of product technology.3The consumer population tends to be normally distributed and thus subject to sophisticated statistical analysis, whereas the industrial population is less numerous, and less easily categorised, and random samples are not likely to be representative of the total industrial population.