Marketing information systems and research

Marketing orientation places customers at the forefront of planning activities. Organizations face changes and challenges from outside as well as inside their boundaries. Marketing research collects information and a marketing information system (MkIS) analyses and acts on such information. In practice, an MkIS provides a store of historical customer data. This produces better efficiency internally owing to better-organized data, thus ultimately leading to more effective strategic improvements; better identification of opportunities that might lead to the development of new products and services; and the development of better long-term relationships with customers arising from increased customer loyalty. The MkIS is an invaluable aid to decision-making and is a specialized subset of the corporate management information system (MIS). Survey research, based on sampling and questioning respondents, represents, both in volume and value terms, perhaps the most important method of collecting data, and covers customer attitudes, customer buying habits, market trends and potential market size.