Business Market Research and Data Collection
Business
A business (also called a firm, or enterprise) is a legally recognized organization designed to provide goods and/or services to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, most being privately owned and formed to earn profit that will increase the wealth of its owners and grow the business itself. The owners and operators of a business have as one of their main objectives the receipt or generation of a financial return in exchange for work and acceptance of risk. Notable exceptions include cooperative enterprises and state-owned enterprises. Socialist systems involve either government agencies, public ownership, state-ownership or direct worker ownership of enterprises and assets that would be run as businesses in a capitalist economy. The distinction between these institutions and a business is that socialist institutions often have alternative or additional goals aside from maximizing or turning a profit.
The etymology of "business" relates to the state of being busy either as an individual or society as a whole, doing commercially viable and profitable work. The term "business" has at least three usages, depending on the scope - the singular usage (above) to mean a particular company or corporation, the generalized usage to refer to a particular market sector, such as "the music business" and compound forms such as agribusiness, or the broadest meaning to include all activity by the community of suppliers of goods and services. However, the exact definition of business, like much else in the philosophy of business, is a matter of debate.
Business Studies, the study of the management of individuals to maintain collective productivity to accomplish particular creative and productive goals (usually to generate profit), is taught as an academic subject in many schools.
Market Research
Market research is any organized effort to gather information about markets or customers. It is a very important component of business strategy. The term is commonly interchanged with marketing research; however, expert practitioners may wish to draw a distinction, in that marketing research is concerned specifically about marketing processes, while market research is concerned specifically with markets.
Market research,as defined by the ICC/ESOMAR International Code on Market and Social Research, includes social and opinion research, is the systematic gathering and interpretation of information about individuals or organizations using statistical and analytical methods and techniques of the applied social sciences to gain insight or support decision making.
Data Collection
Data collection is a term used to describe a process of preparing and collecting data - for example as part of a process improvement or similar project. The purpose of data collection is to obtain information to keep on record, to make decisions about important issues, to pass information on to others. Primarily, data is collected to provide information regarding a specific topic.
Data collection usually takes place early on in an improvement project, and is often formalised through a data collection plan which often contains the following activity.
1. Pre collection activity - Agree goals, target data, definitions, methods
2. Collection - data collection
3. Present Findings - usually involves some form of sorting analysis and/or presentation.
Prior to any data collection, pre-collection activity is one of the most crucial steps in the process. It is often discovered too late that the value of their interview information is discounted as a consequence of poor sampling of both questions and informants and poor elicitation techniques. After pre-collection activity is fully completed, data collection in the field, whether by interviewing or other methods, can be carried out in a structured, systematic and scientific way.