ABSTRACT
Market research is at the heart of any effective marketing program especially when a manager is planning to enter a foreign market. Research is the starting point for determining who the best customers are, how they go about making buying decisions, and what the potential sales might be to each of them. Market research also helps a manager determine what competitors are doing and what they might do. Market research is 'the systematic and objective identification, collection, analysis, dissemination, and use of information for the purpose of improving decision making related to the identification and solution of problems and opportunities in marketing'. A marketing information system (MkIS) is a fully integrated approach to developing, storing, and using information from all sources to help develop the most. Generally speaking, business marketers use stratified random sampling where a specific subset of potential respondents is selected and then specific respondents are chosen by chance from this subset.
