Surveys for Marketers

Any marketing organization must know the wants and needs of customer. It is important for the marketing firm to come up with different ways to obtain this important information. Surveys can be an ideal way to get customer feedback. In the marketing industry there are different types of surveys to forecast the customers wants and needs. There are four different types of survey techniques listed in our textbook, Marketing Express. The first type of survey useful to marketers is the customer forecasting survey. The customer forecasting survey is a survey used to find out the types and quantities of products the customer is intending to buy in a specific period of time. This survey is useful for marketers regarding ordering products within a time period. It can tell a firm whether or not to increase production of the product, not buy as much of the product, or even tell a firm to continue with the current ordering quantities. Also, it gives the marketing firm a period of time when it should be important to manufacture more of the product, or not. The second type of survey used in the marketing industry is the sales force forecasting survey. This is a survey of the firm's sales force regarding anticipated sales in their territories for a specific period. This survey differs from the first because this survey is using forecasting techniques in the firm, and doesn't need to go outside the firm for this survey to be completed. This is done by the forecaster combining the territorial estimates to arrive at a tentative forecast. Instead of surveying customers, the firm would survey the sales staff. The advantage to this method is that it can be prepared for a single region, several regions and can even divide consisting territories. The third type of survey is the expert forecasting survey. Within this survey Sales forecasts are prepared by experts like economists, management consultants, advertising executives, college professors, or other persons outside the firm. This survey gives the firm information about the company and the market. The experts prepare and present forecasts. The last and final survey is the Delphi technique. This type of survey is a procedure in where experts create initial forecasts, submit them to the company for averaging, and then refine the forecast. The benefit to this technique is that the experts will use averaged results when making refined forecasts, therefor creating a narrower range. All of these types of surveys can prevent the company from doing projects that are costly, that in fact actually do not need to be done. If marketing firms did not conduct surveys, do you believe the firm may spend more money at unnecessary times?