ABSTRACT
This chapter helps people to: learn who should summarize research results and provide action items as a result of research; understand how to select a research partner; learn when to use internal versus external research. Every day there are thousands of research issues and projects being conducted by advertising and public relations agencies and their clients. In fact, there is an entire research industry that has been spawned to conduct research and answer questions. Research companies that conduct telephone surveys can have hundreds of trained interviewers prepared to call on people client's behalf. Some clients use a hybrid model where the client or agency develops the research questionnaire and then gives it to a research field service to gather the data. Most agency professionals want to provide the action plan or interpretation of what the results mean to the client. One of the key determinations of doing external research is to eliminate bias and add credibility.
