1. Difficulties in Applying Scientific Methods to Marketing Research
1. Investigator Involved in Use of Results: Organizations are the clients of researchers.
Sometimes, they try to fit in results which are readily acceptable to the clients. This is
possible when the researchers manipulates the data or does not conduct an exhaustive
study. In either of these circumstances, the study becomes unscientific.
2. Imprecise Measuring Devices: Accuracy of measurement is one of the key components
that differentiate scientific and unscientific methods. As marketing research deals with
people most of the information is obtained by interview — a partially subjective procedures
that rarely leads to precise measurements. For example, the preference of an individual for
a brand of Soft Drink can be measured, but only in a relatively crude way — means in
qualitative form.
3. Influence of Measurement: In case of pure science same results can experience time and
again by conduct an experiment. Whilst, this is not the case with marketing research. Since
it deals with agile behavior of human whose behavior undergoes on changing. When
humans recognize that they are being measured, they frequently change. Thus a reliability
and validity of research will suffer to a great extent.
4. Time Pressure: Marketing research must be carried out within a given time-span. Since
market operates in a dynamic environment, delays in research may results in outdated
information to the clients and moreover rivals might enter and capture the market shares.
On the contrary, research conducted in a hasty manner suffers from lack of credibility
because it does not benefit from the continuing and comprehensive study that
characterizes the scientific method.
5. Testing of Hypothesis: Testing of hypothesis is the core of any research, but unfortunately,
the use of experimentation in marketing research is often impractical to carry out due to
the many factors which come in the way. For example— while measuring the impact of
advertisement on sales, it may so happen that rivals have also advertise, resulting in lesser
volume of sales. Furthermore, it is impossible to reproduce the same experiment.
6. Complexity of the Subject: since marketing research deals with the human beings, the
subject matters of marketing research become very complex. Human behavior varies from
time to time. Thus it became very difficult to identify most frequent stimuli the spark an
individual interest. Since different individuals react differently for a given stimuli. For
example — advertisement may yield different results in different circumstances due to the
changed perceptions and reactions by individual.