3u8581,乔伊费希尔,齐真晨
1.0 Introduction介绍
面对当前全球经济放缓、竞争日趋激烈的局面，企业动员消费者，促使消费者购买自己的产品，这一点非常重要（Payne，2008年）。一般来说，有效地调动消费者对企业来说是复杂的，它涉及企业管理、消费者对企业的印象和看法、维护企业与消费者之间的关系等（Palmer，2004）。因此，要调动消费者，企业必须做好自身的管理、营销等方面的工作，而完成这些工作离不开企业的市场调研，市场调研有助于企业了解市场环境的现状，也有助于企业了解市场环境的变化。展望和预测市场环境的未来发展，为制定正确的企业管理和营销战略提供依据（Armstrong，2001年）。可以说，市场调查在动员消费者的过程中起着多重和重要的作用，没有做好市场调查的企业不太可能有效地动员消费者（Kearney，2012年）。本文旨在探讨当前市场研究在动员消费者过程中所起的作用，以及未来市场研究在动员消费者过程中应发挥的作用。本文分为四个部分，首先分析了当前市场研究的定义及其特点，然后讨论了当前企业在动员消费者过程中所起的作用。其次，针对目前市场研究在动员消费者方面存在的不足，最后，提出了未来市场研究在企业动员消费者过程中应发挥的作用。
In the face of the current global economic slowdown, increasingly fierce competition, it is very important for enterprises to mobilize consumers and cause consumers to purchase their products (Payne, 2008). Generally speaking, effectively mobilizing consumers is complex for enterprises, it involves corporate management, consumers’ impression and view on enterprises, the maintenance of the relationship between enterprises and consumers, and so on (Palmer, 2004). Therefore, to mobilize consumers, enterprises must do a good job in their management, marketing and other aspects, and to complete these work is inseparable to enterprises’ market research, market research helps enterprises to understand the status of the market environment, it also helps enterprises to understand the changes in the market environment and to anticipate the future development of the market environment to provide the basis for developing correct management and marketing strategies for enterprises (Armstrong, 2001). It can be said that market research plays a multiple and important role in the process of mobilizing consumers, enterprises failing to do market research well are not likely to effectively mobilize consumers (Kearney, 2012). This essay aims to discuss what roles that the current market research plays in the process of mobilizing consumers, and what roles that future market research should play in the process of mobilizing consumers. This essay is divided into four parts, it first analyzes the current definition of market research and its characteristics, and then it discusses what roles that the current enterprises play in the process of mobilizing consumers. Followed by the shortcomings of the current market research in mobilizing consumers, and finally, the author recommend on what roles that the future market research should also play in the process of mobilizing consumers in the enterprises.
2.0 Main body主体内容
2.1 Market research市场调研
市场研究是指运用科学的方法，有目的地、有系统地收集、记录、组织有关的营销信息和数据，通过分析市场状况，了解市场状况和发展趋势，为市场预测和营销决策提供客观、正确的信息（杨某等L.，2017年）。市场研究的内容很多，如市场环境的研究，包括政策环境、经济环境、社会文化环境的研究；市场基本情况的研究，主要包括市场规范、总体需求、市场趋势、某一行业的市场占有率等；销售可能性的研究。包括现有和潜在用户和需求的数量、市场需求的变化趋势、竞争对手产品在市场中的市场份额、扩大销售的可能性和具体方式等；还可以对消费者和消费者的需求、企业的产品、产品价格、对销售、销售渠道的社会和自然因素（Evert等人，2016；Shi，2015；Pun和Heese，2015）。市场研究的真正意义在于使管理者能够分析市场研究的数据，明确企业发展的方向，从而确定企业的竞争优势，制定合理、科学的管理、开发、投资、营销等营销决策（石2015；Yang等人，2017年）。
Market research refers to the use of scientific methods to purposefully, systematically collect, record, organize the relevant marketing information and data, through analyzing market situation, to understand the market status and development trends to provide objective, correct information for market forecasting and marketing decisions (Yang et al., 2017). There are many contents in market research, such as research on market environment, including research on policy environment, economic environment, social and cultural environment; research on basic situation of market, mainly including market norms, the overall demand, market trends, market share in certain industry; research on sales possibility, including amount of existing and potential users and demand, the trend of changes in market demand, the market share of the competitor's products in the market, the possibility of expanding sales and the specific ways, etc .; research can also be carried out on consumers and consumer demand, enterprises’ products, product prices, the impact of social and natural factors on sales, sales channels (Evert et al., 2016; Shi, 2015; Pun and Heese, 2015). The real significance of market research is to enable managers to analyze the data of market research to clarify the direction of enterprise development, so as to determine the competitive advantage of enterprises and to develop a reasonable and scientific management, development, investment, marketing and other marketing decision-making (Shi, 2015; Yang et al., 2017).
Market research is defined as the process to conduct research to achieve the goal of market information, including the means of crystallizing information needed for corresponding problems, methods of information collection, management and implementation of data collection process and analysis of research results to acquire conclusions and determine its meaning, etc (Pun and Heese, 2015; Evert et al., 2016). In classification, it includes quantitative research, qualitative research, retail research, media and advertising research, business research, public opinion surveys, and desktop research, etc (Yang et al., 2017).
The purpose of market research is to identify, define market opportunities and potential problems, so as to develop, optimize marketing mix and evaluate its effectiveness (Shi, 2015). Therefore, market research is not only research on buyers’ and users’ psychology and behavior, but also research on all stages of marketing activity, namely, it collects, records, sorts and analyzes data and information of all the business activities of producers and consumers, in order to understand the real and the potential markets of products, its research scope includes all products and services (Shi, 2015; Kearney, 2012).
2.2 Role of market research
2.2.1 Understand the current situation of market environment
In the 20th century, economy of the developed countries in the world was recovered from the strike of the second world war and the economy had entered a rapid development of nearly 20 years, consumers’ demand for all kinds of goods were increased significantly, which was first because the economic development raised the people’s incomes, and the long suppressed personal needs by the war had been released. Second, the development of the global trade has also expanded the external market demand of the countries. Some researchers carried out market research to find that consumer demand was strong and single during this period of time, there was a shortage of quantity, a shortage of quality and a shortage of structure in terms of corporate production and market demand, the shortage of quantity was the most significant, thereby forming a typical seller's market competition environment. Through market research, scholars commented that in such a market environment, the direction of the mobilization of the consumers by the companies was mainly considering how to use the minimal cost, the cheapest price to introduce the products to the market. According to the special market environment characteristics and the realistic requirement of the enterprises to reduce costs and improve marketing performance, at that time, many related scholars have done a lot of market research and put forward valuable marketing theory. N. H. Borden (1953) pioneered the concept of marketing strategy mix, he thought that marketing is corporate marketing personnel’s integrated use of various kinds of controllable factors to carry out marketing activities and finally achieve their marketing activities. Jerome McCarthy (1960) was through market research on marketing strategy planning and marketing activities of enterprises, retailers, wholesalers to point out that from the perspective of corporate management and operation, to mobilize consumers mainly comes from the four aspects of factors, including product, price, place, and promotion. This is the famous 4P theory of marketing. Jerome McCarthy (1960) figured that an enterprise in the process of marketing should focus on the four aspects, first, products should have unique selling point, second, depending on the product market positioning, it should develop targeted price strategy. Third, it should cultivate and improve the sales network, in order to build the relationship between the enterprise and consumers. Finally, the enterprises can promote the growth of sales by offering incentives. 4P theory was put forward for providing a very valuable decision-making thought for enterprises about how to develop marketing strategies to mobilize consumers under the condition of a shortage market economy, it allows an enterprise’s decision makers to quickly and effectively find the decisive factors influencing the enterprise marketing performance in complicated market conditions, so as to develop a targeted marketing mix strategy. Today, although the market environment has changed dramatically, enterprises also can't completely ignore the value of the 4P theory. In addition, Philip Kotler (2008), as well as other researchers referred to Jerome McCarthy’s theory to bring forward 6P and 7P, 10P theory, which constantly improved the 4P theory system. In short, market research enables enterprises to acquire a clear understanding of macroeconomic trends, commodity supply and demand relations, competitive environment to help enterprises to improve their management. However, as the market environment was changed from the original shortage economy at that time to surplus economy, limitations of the existing 4P theory were revealed constantly, on the basis of a large number of market research, some new marketing management theory was raised. |
