Hey there, fellow marketers, Professor Wolters here.

And today we're here in Bruges, Belgium on Market Day,

so you have all the trucks going by, you have all these things going by.

And today I'm doing a little bit of marketing research.

I'm trying to figure out, what do I need to know about Belgium

before I make a video about it, right?

And the thing is, companies have to do that as well.

They have to do marketing research.

They have to figure out what's going on.

What's a good day to film and a bad day to film?

Hey, in Bruges, Tuesday mornings are a bad day to film because

they're getting ready for Market Day, okay?

And so what we're going to talk about today is just basically,

what is marketing research, okay?

And we think of marketing research, I mean, technically speaking,

we all know the technical definition. [clears throat]

I will- I will get my notes and read it off to you.

"Marketing research is the set of techniques that are used to

systematically, one, collect data, number two, record data,

number three, analyze data, and number four, interpret data."

And we do that in order to help decision makers make better

decisions for whatever they want to do, whether it is trying to

decide what new products we should launch or if we're trying

to figure out is how are people seeing our competition?

We're going to do market research to figure out those things.

We're going to ask people questions.

We're going to do our research and stuff like that.

That's what marketing research is.

It's gathering all this information, figuring out what

it's telling us, so some of the times you might see market research

in your own life is when companies are trying to

figure out what the wants and needs of their customers are.

That's why when you go to stores, the market research

could be just, hey, what are you looking for?

What kind of products do you want to have?

Is there anything missing from your time here?

When you buy a car, you know, after a couple of weeks,

they ask you, have you enjoyed your car so far?

Are there any problems?

If there anything we can do?

They're doing marketing research to see is what are the most

common mistakes that happened with the cars in the first few weeks.

What's a few biggest issues they have?

So we can learn that, so we can change it.

If we see something consistently happens wrong, hey, market research

telling us this has happened a lot of times, let's change that.

Let's warn people about it beforehand, to try to cut it off, okay?

Another thing you'll see is sometimes we'll use market research

is to figure out is, are there any like little alterations

alterations we should make like, with our burger, what we might

want to is ketchup on top or is ketchup on the bottom?

Is the cheese on top, or is the cheese on the bottom?

Maybe in a movie, they might have different endings, and

they'll do test marketing to see, hey, which one of these

endings works better for you?

Which one makes you happier at the end?

And that's why you'll see actually, when you get your DVD

cuts and stuff like that, they'll actually have, you know,

alternate endings, because they're trying to figure out

what works, what doesn't work, and the end, they did their

marketing research and found that the guy and the girl

getting together at the end was the way to go versus them not

being together, so you do have that.

So you might also use marketing research in order to determine

what are some new products that you should make?

I mean, that's why companies ask, "What do you like?"

"What do you not like?"

So they can develop a product that's better for their clients.

For example, I could ask you right now, and I am asking you

right now, what are some business or marketing topics you

would like videos on?

Is there topics that you don't understand, or they're kind of hard to grasp?

Let me know in the comment section below so I can make a new video for that.

See, I'm doing my marketing research here to find out what you want,

what the clients want, so I can make new products

that they're more likely to watch.

New videos they're more likely to watch, and so companies may do that.

Also, we might do marketing research to better understand

our industry, or our competitors, or our consumers.

I mean, just doing marketing research to understand

who our consumer is can actually change things.

Under Armour, back in the day, realized that our sales, we were

selling mostly men's clothes, but we were selling it to women.

By doing that marketing research, they realized, wait.

We should change our marketing approach.

What we should do is make our ads, gifting situations.

So Father's Day, birthdays, holidays, we show the, the wife

or the daughter or the mom giving Under Armour gifts to

their sons, to their dads, to their husbands, and stuff like that,

and they learned that from market research.

And also when you do that marketing research, you might be doing it

a competitive marketing research.

Seeing what your competitors are doing, what- how are they

pricing things, what kind of products do they have on offer

that might be important?

Because that's just it.

You might see that oh, man, Burger King is really selling

a lot of those quadruple burgers, maybe we should have our own

quadruple burger as well.

Let's do some research and see what worked and what didn't work.

How can we make it our own quadruple burger versus Burger King's?

And the thing is, there's tons and tons of different reasons

why companies do marketing research, and the key thing

though, is you need to do marketing research.

You need to collect that information and interpret that

information to figure out what's going on so you can make the

best decision possible for your business, whether it is dealing

with your competitors, coming up with new products, figuring out

what you're doing right and wrong, because a lot of

companies we talk about this in marketing myopia, a lot of

companies thinks everything's great.

We've done a perfect job, but in reality, they haven't.

So you want to do that marketing research to ask your customers,

to figure out what's going on.

Because really, marketing research is vital to success in business,

but you don't want to go in blind not knowing what's going on.

You want to ask those questions out there, so you can collect,

record, analyze, and interpret all that data to make the best decision possible, okay?

Anyway, I wish you all the best.

Have a great time here in Bruges.

Sorry for all the noise.

It is Market Day here, as you might be able to see.

It's starting out here so it's a little bit busy, but I wish you all the best.

Have a great time wherever you are.

If you're studying for an exam, I hope this helped.

If you're just trying to figure out what the basics of marketing research are,

I hope this helps as well.

Anyway, I wish all the best and bye from Belgium.