Every decision in this whole marketing topic rests on evidence gathered somewhere — the question is which method actually gives you evidence you can trust.
Market research is the process of gathering and analysing information about a market — its customers, its competitors, and the demand within it — to support better business decisions. It's the practical mechanism behind everything covered so far in this topic: 3.5.1's customer understanding and 3.5.2's segmentation both depend on genuine evidence, not assumption.
How much of a product or service customers actually want, and at what price — the single most important question before committing money to a launch.
Who else operates in the market, what they charge, and where their strengths and weaknesses genuinely lie.
Confirming the size, characteristics and location of the specific segment a business intends to target (see 3.5.2), rather than assuming it exists.
Beyond simply confirming existing plans, thorough research can reveal genuine market opportunities a business hadn't previously considered — an underserved segment, an unmet need, or a gap left by weak competition. It also directly reduces risk: the business planning you met in 3.1.6 and the risk-reduction strategies from 3.2.6 both depend on a business actually knowing what it's walking into, rather than guessing.
Primary research (also called field research) collects brand new data, gathered firsthand specifically for the business's own question. Secondary research (also called desk research) uses data that already exists, originally collected by someone else for a different purpose.
Cheap to distribute to large numbers of people and easy to turn into quantitative data, but response rates are often low, and answers can be superficial if questions aren't carefully designed.
Quick to administer and useful for gathering quantitative data from a reasonably large sample, but rarely allows the kind of in-depth follow-up that reveals why a customer holds a particular view.
Allow genuinely deep, qualitative insight and the chance to probe an unexpected answer further, but are time-consuming and expensive to run at scale, meaning sample sizes are usually small and less representative of the wider market.
Can generate rich discussion and reveal reactions individuals might never think of alone, but a small group can be unrepresentative of the wider market, and a strong personality in the room can dominate the discussion and skew the group's apparent opinion.
Fast and inexpensive, giving quick access to a huge volume of existing information, but the reliability of online sources varies enormously, and data found this way may be outdated or not precisely matched to the business's exact market.
Useful for background context on wider market trends and competitor announcements, though rarely tailored precisely to the specific question a business needs answered, and can quickly go out of date in a fast-moving market.
Qualitative research gathers opinions, feelings and reasons — rich, descriptive detail that explains why customers think or behave as they do. Quantitative research gathers numerical data that can be measured, compared and statistically analysed — showing how many or how much.
Best suited to focus groups and interviews. Reveals the reasoning behind a customer's preference, which is invaluable for understanding a problem — but harder to generalise confidently to the whole market from a small sample.
Best suited to questionnaires and surveys. Produces figures like "68% of respondents said X" that are easy to compare over time or between customer segments — but doesn't explain why customers feel that way.
Many businesses deliberately combine both. Quantitative data from a large survey might reveal that a significant proportion of customers are dissatisfied with a product, while a smaller, qualitative focus group can then dig into exactly why — giving both the scale of a problem and a genuine understanding of its cause.
Market size is the total value or volume of sales achieved by every business within a particular market. Market share is the percentage of that total achieved by one specific business — the same market share concept you first met as a business objective back in 3.1.3.
Interpreting a table like the one below is exactly the kind of data interpretation skill AQA expects — being able to read off individual figures, calculate a share, and draw a sensible conclusion from what the numbers show.
| Business | Annual bread sales (£) |
|---|---|
| Fernbank Bakery | 120,000 |
| Local Rival A | 200,000 |
| Local Rival B | 150,000 |
| All other businesses | 330,000 |
| Total local artisan bread market | 800,000 |
From this table, Fernbank Bakery's market share is £120,000 ÷ £800,000 × 100 = 15%. Local Rival A, with £200,000 of sales, holds the largest individual share at 25%. Reading a table like this properly means checking not just your own business's figure, but where it sits relative to competitors and the market as a whole — Fernbank Bakery is currently the smallest of the three named businesses, despite the "all other businesses" category showing there's a large, fragmented tail of smaller competitors too.
Drag each method into the correct category.
State two methods of primary market research.
Structure guide: two correctly identified methods — 1 mark each, no explanation required.
State and explain two benefits to Fernbank Bakery of using a survey of local residents before deciding whether to expand.
Structure guide: state a benefit grounded in the case study (1 mark), explain it (1 mark) — repeated twice over.
Calculate Fernbank Bakery's market share of the local artisan bread market. Show your working.
Structure guide: £120,000 ÷ £800,000 × 100 = 15%. Marks are typically awarded for correct workings even if the final figure is wrong.
Analyse the benefits to Fernbank Bakery of using secondary research alongside its own primary survey before deciding whether to expand.
Structure guide: a single developed line of reasoning grounded in the case study (eg: the secondary market report gives Fernbank Bakery wider regional context beyond its own 200 local residents surveyed → this could reveal whether the demand its survey found is a genuinely local pattern or part of a wider regional trend → helping Fernbank Bakery judge whether a second site elsewhere in the region is also likely to succeed → giving a more complete picture than either research method alone could provide).
Recommend whether Fernbank Bakery should proceed with opening a second site, based on its current 15% market share and its research findings. Justify your answer using the case study.
Structure guide: a "recommend" question needs a justified judgement — weigh Fernbank Bakery's current, relatively modest 15% market share and the evidence gathered from its survey and market report against the cost and risk of expansion, before reaching a clear final recommendation.