Marketing in the New Millennium: Emerging Issues and Trends

Abstract

Given focus on marketing research, present paper combines both academic and practitioner perspectives to highlight several issues and emerging trends that will shape role of marketing research in new millennium. These include redefinition of marketing researcher, ongoing nature of marketing research, qualitative research, Internet marketing research, and ethical issues in marketing research. I. The growing importance of marketing research As we have stepped into new millennium, marketing research, or market research as it is also called, is becoming more and more important for companies facing intensifying competition. This trend is firmly in place and marketing research is expected to experience continued growth as long as competitively driven economies of world expand. Two principal reasons are cited for continued growth of marketing research. First speed of business has increased due to diffusion of computers, digital technologies, and telecommunication devices. Such advances have enabled firms to be more responsive to be more responsive to customers through flexible manufacturing, and reduced cycle times in channel operations. Instant communication has become a prerequisite to developing a viable market. Although always important, marketing has assumed new significance in organization, as costs for misreading signals from marketing place become increasingly steeper. As detector and interpreter of signals and clues from marketplace, marketing research has a critical role in providing the voice of customer to management. Advances in technology have enhanced scope, effectiveness, and efficiency of marketing research leading to its increased use. The second reason for continued growth of marketing research is implicit imperative for global operations as end of Cold War has brought a new international system of globalization. As citizens of world are increasingly aware of consumption opportunities elsewhere, demand for political, judicial, and delivery systems has increased in corresponding manner. Although it has lingering presence in world scene, nationalistic protectionism has lost much of its pallor. With more open markets, international competitors have moved into more markets of world. At same time, competition has become more global, flat or declining birth rates in developed countries of world have rendered many product categories as saturated. As a result, markets for products in developing and newly developed countries continue to expand as these countries have only recently experienced relative prosperity leading to an expanded middle class. Thus many of multinational companies (MNCs) based in developed countries are seeking to penetrate these developing markets. Marketing research can provide essential knowledge to management teams of firms entering new markets. Despite potential value of developing a market orientation and effectively utilizing marketing research, realizing these goals proves to be elusive for many firms struggling to become learning organizations. While perceived high cost of commissioning research appears to keep many firms from initiating marketing research, deploying marketing research is a complex process for best of firms. The purpose of this article is to illuminate emerging issues and trends in marketing research as we enter a new millennium. In this way, we hope to boost efforts of practitioners contributing to organizational learning. In this article we highlight several issues and emerging trends that will shake role of marketing research in new millennium. These include a redefinition of marketing researcher, ongoing nature of marketing research, qualitative research, quantitative research, international marketing research, internet marketing research, and ethical issues in marketing research.