Marketing research specifies the information required to address these issues, designs the method for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, analyzes the results, and communicates the findings and their implications. American Marketing Association c. 1995. The UK Market Research Society also has a brief What is market research section.
Market research is supposed to be a systematic activity - orderly and impartial.
Information scientists and librarians have been undertaking market research for many years, but tended in the past to call this 'user studies'. This term has become less fashionable as it has been realised that it is as important to study non-users. Information gathering Collation and interpretation Decision making Problem and hypothesis One danger to be avoided is making too many assumptions about what is causing the problem. In the above example, it might be wrong to assume that the potential users were unaware of what you had to offer. It could be that they knew about it, and didn't think it very useful, or that they were obtaining better information elsewhere.