a solid understanding of consumers is at the heart of good marketing before creating a product companies should know two things who is the product for and what problems is it going to solve for that customer group many examples of unsuccessful business initiatives have failed due to lack of marketing research the chances of launching a successful venture without carefully studying the marketer slim depending on the industry 60% to 95% of new products fail it's been proven that 50% of advertising has no effect and 85% of promotions lose money well carried out marketing research helps companies prevent such costly mistakes it tells a great deal about the needs and wants of customers if they like driving cars with four wheels car producers should understand that and continue to produce cars with four wheels if customers want to hear the engines noise car producers should focus on that feature and ensure a great client experience marketing research can take many forms it can be carried out through the observation of customer behavior focus groups surveys collection of behavioral data and other experiments the goal is to collect enough data to be able to process it and decide there is a pattern in the behavior of a certain group of consumers when coca-cola surveyed a group of Millennials they found that younger consumers have a higher propensity towards a healthy lifestyle they were concerned about their diet and the calories and sugar in their daily intake so the company used this information and launched a new product line coke life it was intended for people who enjoy soft drinks but are also interested in bio ingredients and fewer calories this is a great example of how market research helps a company cope with changing consumer tastes let's look at their competitors at Pepsi shall we years ago when Pepsi and you Dean was enormous and some preliminary research would have helped to prevent this mistake a focus group of several native speakers who expressed their opinion on the firm slogan would have avoided the awkward situation think of marketing research as insurance it costs it isn't cheap but it might prevent damages that outweigh its costs tens or hundreds of times