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It can be the analysis of sales and profit of the company, and also analysis of competing products. Most often used sources of the internal information are the sales data, the financial reports and the analysis of marketing expenses. The analysis of sales is the least expensive and the most important source of the marketing information. It supposes comparison of actual and expected sales by territories, products, consumers and sales personnel or the analysis of transaction by sales method (personal contact, phone, the Internet), by sales volumes, types of consumers can be conducted. The analysis of the data about sales allows to receive the whole picture of the company efficiency and to find out ways to the solutions of the existing problems. The analysis of sales prepares on the basis of account documentation or computer system databases. By using of financial reports researchers can compare results of current and previous years versus average result within the branch. Next important instrument is the analysis of marketing expenses. These are expenses for sales, advertising, delivery and warehousing. They are necessary for analyzing of profitableness of certain customers, territories and product lines.
As a result of preliminary research hypotheses (a preliminary explanation of events or a situation) can be formulated. Not all marketing researches check specific hypotheses. However carefully developed research can win from working out of hypotheses before the beginning of information gathering and processing. |