Marketing research:
Meaning & definition for the research: research in the common parlance refers to the research for knowledge. One can also define research as a scientific and systematic research for penetrate information on a specific topic. In fact, research is an art of scientific investigation. The advanced Learner's Dictionary of the Current English lays down the meaning of the research as " a creaful investigation or inquiry especially through search for new facts in any branch of the knowledge".
D. Slesinger and Mory Stephenson in the Encyclopedia of social science define research as "the manipulation of the things, concepts or symbols for the purpose of generating to extent, correct or verify knowledge, whether that knowledge aids in the construction of theory or in the practise of an art". Research can be defined as "logical and systemized application of the fundamentals of the science to the general and overall Q of a study, and scientific techniques which provide precise tools, specific procedures and technical, rather tham means for getting ordering that data prior to their logical and manipulation". Research represents a "a systematic method of exploring actual persons and gropus, focused primarily on their experience within their social worlds, inclusive of social attitudes and values, the mode of the analysis of these experiences which permit starting in the form". In short the research for the knowledge through objective and systematic method of finding solution to a problem is research.
The American Marketing Association (AMA) has defined marketing research as follows. Marketing research is the function which links the consumer, customer and public to the marketer through information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems. Generate refine and evaluate marketing actions monitor marketing performance and improve understanding of market as process. Marketing research specifies the information required address these issues designs the method for collecting information manages and implements the data collection process analyses the results and communicates the findings and their implications. Green and Tull have defined search for and analysis of information relevant to the identification and solution of any problem in the field of marketing.
According to Blankenship and Doyle," marketing research is the collection and interpretation of facts that help marketing management to get products more efficiently into the hands of the consumer. Market research encompasses all information pertinent to this task all the appropriate techniques".