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What is the main difference between a full service and limited service supplier?
The marketing research industry consist companies and individuals who provides marketing research services. Marketing Research Suppliers are important stakeholders in the field of marketing. There are two categories of marketing research supplier – namely Full services suppliers and Limited services suppliers. Full-service suppliers differs from limited service suppliers in that the Full-service supplier offers an entire range of marketing research service from defining the company's research problem, developing an approach to the research, designing the instrument, sampling, data collection and analysis, and finally interpreting the research and preparing and presentation of the report. The services that the Full-service Supplier provides is further broken down into syndicated, standardized or customized and internet services.
Syndicated services collect information of known commercial value that is made available to multiple clients on a subscription basis. These providers utilize surveys, panels, scanners and audits as their main means by which they collect the relevant data. iData Research is an incorporated international market research and consulting group focused on providing market intelligence, monitoring and competitive insight for the medical device and pharmaceutical companies around the world. This company uses syndicated research services to provide lowered cost research for their target audience.
Standardized services are research studies that are conducted for different client companies but the research is conducted in a standard approach. An example of this Full-service option is the standard procedures used by research companies for measuring advertising effectiveness. This standard allows for greater ease in comparing results across studies and evaluative norms can be done. Research and Analysis of Media (RAM) measures and records how ads and articles are read and understood - and what impact they have. They use panels and surveys to provide standardized research services for their clients.
Customized services offers a wide variety of marketing research services that is customized to meet the needs of individual clients. Each client is treated uniquely to ensure effectiveness of the marketing research to provide reliable results. Internet services are provided by several marketing firms that conducts research on the Internet. Greenfield Online Research Centre provides both customized research and Internet services.
On the other hand Limited services suppliers specialize in only one or a few phases of the marketing research process. The services these suppliers offers are classified as field services, coding and data entry, analytical services, data analysis and branded products.Field service includes collecting data through mail, personal or telephone interviews. These Field services firm may specialize in quantitative or qualitative data collection such as mall surveys or focus group discussions. Coding and data entry services include editing completed questionnaires, developing a coding scheme and data entry on input devices into the computer. Analytic services includes designing and pre testing of the research instrument, determining the best means of data collection and designing sampling plans. Data analysis services are offered by firms that specialize in computer analysis of quantitative data that have been obtained through surveys. They provide frequency counts and other variable comparison to clients. Finally, Branded marketing research products and services are specialist companies that use data collection and analysis procedures developed to address specific types of research problems for their client. The procedure are patented and branded and marketed just as any other branded product.
References
Ethical issues in marketing research. Retrieved February 9, 2012 from
Naresh, Malhotra. K (2007). Marketing research an applied orientation. 5th ed. Pearson Education
Inc. New Jersey.
