How to Write a Marketing Research Proposal

Before performing a marketing research, the researcher must have develop a marketing research proposal upon which researcher will prepare marketing research report.

The followings are the basic steps for a marketing research proposal:

1. Define origin of the report
2. Describe Background of the Research
3. Identify Problem Definition/Objective
4. Identify Dependent Variables
5. Identify Independent Variables
6. Research Design
   • Select type of Research
   • Select Date Collection method
   • Identify Respondents
   • Design Questionnaire
   • Scaling technique
   • Define Sampling technique
   • Hypotheses Testing
7. Methodology for data analysis
8. Results and Discussion
9. Reference

These all are the basic steps. these may vary according to research requirements.

Standard format for writing a Marketing Research Report

The format is very important when writing a marketing research report because The quality of the entire project can be evaluated based on the quality of the report & presentation.

The followings are steps for writing a marketing research report:

Most research report includes the following elements:

i)     Title page

ii)    Letter of transmittal

iii)   Letter of authorization

iv)   Table of contents

v)     List of tables

vi)    List of graphs

vii)   List of appendices

viii)  List of exhibits

ix)     Executive summary

1. Major findings
2. Conclusions
3. Recommendations

x)   Problem definition

1. Background to the problem
2. Statement of the problem

xi)   Approach to the problem

xii)  Research design

1. Type of research design
2. Information needs
3. Data collection from secondary sources
4. Data collection from primary sources
5. Scaling techniques
6. Questionnaire development and pretesting
7. Sampling techniques
8. Fieldwork

xiii)  Data analysis

1. Methodology
2. Plan of data analysis

xiv)  Results

xv)   Limitations and caveats

xvi)  Conclusions and recommendations

xvii) Exhibits

1. Questionnaires and forms
2. Statistical output
3. Lists

Its not mandatory that all should be present in a paper but these are the basic elements that may present in a research report