research field of marketing

Research in marketing strategy

• Review Paper
• Published: 18 August 2018
• Volume 47 , pages 4–29, ( 2019 )

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• Neil A. Morgan 1 ,
• Kimberly A. Whitler 2 ,
• Hui Feng 3 &
• Simos Chari 4  

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Marketing strategy is a construct that lies at the conceptual heart of the field of strategic marketing and is central to the practice of marketing. It is also the area within which many of the most pressing current challenges identified by marketers and CMOs arise. We develop a new conceptualization of the domain and sub-domains of marketing strategy and use this lens to assess the current state of marketing strategy research by examining the papers in the six most influential marketing journals over the period 1999 through 2017. We uncover important challenges to marketing strategy research—not least the increasingly limited number and focus of studies, and the declining use of both theory and primary research designs. However, we also uncover numerous opportunities for developing important and highly relevant new marketing strategy knowledge—the number and importance of unanswered marketing strategy questions and opportunities to impact practice has arguably never been greater. To guide such research, we develop a new research agenda that provides opportunities for researchers to develop new theory, establish clear relevance, and contribute to improving practice.

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The past, present, and future of marketing strategy

Contours of the marketing literature: text, context, point-of-view, research horizons, interpretation, and influence in marketing.

Special Session: How does Marketing Fit in the World? Questions of Discipline Expertise, Scope, and Insight: An Abstract

We follow Varadarjan’s (2010) distinction, using “strategic marketing” as the term describing the general field of study and “marketing strategy” as the construct that is central in the field of strategic marketing—just as analogically “strategic management” is a field of study in which “corporate strategy” is a central construct.

Following the strategic management literature (e.g., Mintzberg 1994 ; Pascale 1984 ), marketing strategy has also been viewed from an “emergent” strategy perspective (e.g. Hutt et al. 1988 ; Menon et al. 1999 ). Conceptually this is captured as realized (but not pre-planned) tactics and actions in Figure 1 .

These may be at the product/brand, SBU, or firm level.

These strategic marketing but “non-strategy” coding areas are not mutually exclusive. For example, many papers in this non-strategy category cover both inputs/outputs and environment (e.g., Kumar et al. 2016 ; Lee et al. 2014 ; Palmatier et al. 2013 ; Zhou et al. 2005 ), or specific tactics, input/output, and environment (e.g., Bharadwaj et al. 2011 ; Palmatier et al. 2007 ; Rubera and Kirca 2012 ).

The relative drop in marketing strategy studies published in JM may be a function of the recent growth of interest in the shareholder perspective (Katsikeas et al. 2016 ) and studies linking marketing-related resources and capabilities directly with stock market performance indicators. Such studies typically treat marketing strategy as an unobserved intervening construct.

Since this concerns integrated marketing program design and execution, marketing mix studies contribute to knowledge of strategy implementation–content when all four major marketing program areas are either directly modeled or are controlled for in studies focusing on one or more specific marketing program components.

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Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, 1309 E. Tenth St., Bloomington, IN, 47405-1701, USA

Neil A. Morgan

Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, 100 Darden Boulevard, Charlottesville, VA, 22903, USA

Kimberly A. Whitler

Ivy College of Business, Iowa State University, 3337 Gerdin Business Building, Ames, IA, 50011-1350, USA

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Simos Chari

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Morgan, N.A., Whitler, K.A., Feng, H. et al. Research in marketing strategy. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 47 , 4–29 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-018-0598-1

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Received : 14 January 2018

Accepted : 20 July 2018

Published : 18 August 2018

Issue Date : 15 January 2019

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-018-0598-1

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How to do market research in 4 steps: a lean approach to marketing research

From pinpointing your target audience and assessing your competitive advantage, to ongoing product development and customer satisfaction efforts, market research is a practice your business can only benefit from.

Learn how to conduct quick and effective market research using a lean approach in this article full of strategies and practical examples. 

Last updated

Reading time.

A comprehensive (and successful) business strategy is not complete without some form of market research—you can’t make informed and profitable business decisions without truly understanding your customer base and the current market trends that drive your business.

In this article, you’ll learn how to conduct quick, effective market research  using an approach called 'lean market research'. It’s easier than you might think, and it can be done at any stage in a product’s lifecycle.

How to conduct lean market research in 4 steps

What is market research, why is market research so valuable, advantages of lean market research, 4 common market research methods, 5 common market research questions, market research faqs.

We’ll jump right into our 4-step approach to lean market research. To show you how it’s done in the real world, each step includes a practical example from Smallpdf , a Swiss company that used lean market research to reduce their tool’s error rate by 75% and boost their Net Promoter Score® (NPS) by 1%.

Research your market the lean way...

From on-page surveys to user interviews, Hotjar has the tools to help you scope out your market and get to know your customers—without breaking the bank.

The following four steps and practical examples will give you a solid market research plan for understanding who your users are and what they want from a company like yours.

1. Create simple user personas

A user persona is a semi-fictional character based on psychographic and demographic data from people who use websites and products similar to your own. Start by defining broad user categories, then elaborate on them later to further segment your customer base and determine your ideal customer profile .

How to get the data: use on-page or emailed surveys and interviews to understand your users and what drives them to your business.

How to do it right: whatever survey or interview questions you ask, they should answer the following questions about the customer:

Who are they?

What is their main goal?

What is their main barrier to achieving this goal?

Pitfalls to avoid:

Don’t ask too many questions! Keep it to five or less, otherwise you’ll inundate them and they’ll stop answering thoughtfully.

Don’t worry too much about typical demographic questions like age or background. Instead, focus on the role these people play (as it relates to your product) and their goals.

How Smallpdf did it: Smallpdf ran an on-page survey for a couple of weeks and received 1,000 replies. They learned that many of their users were administrative assistants, students, and teachers.

Next, they used the survey results to create simple user personas like this one for admins:

Who are they? Administrative Assistants.

What is their main goal? Creating Word documents from a scanned, hard-copy document or a PDF where the source file was lost.

What is their main barrier to achieving it? Converting a scanned PDF doc to a Word file.

💡Pro tip: Smallpdf used Hotjar Surveys to run their user persona survey. Our survey tool helped them avoid the pitfalls of guesswork and find out who their users really are, in their own words. 

You can design a survey and start running it in minutes with our easy-to-use drag and drop builder. Customize your survey to fit your needs, from a sleek one-question pop-up survey to a fully branded questionnaire sent via email. 

We've also created 40+ free survey templates that you can start collecting data with, including a user persona survey like the one Smallpdf used.

2. Conduct observational research

Observational research involves taking notes while watching someone use your product (or a similar product).

Overt vs. covert observation

Overt observation involves asking customers if they’ll let you watch them use your product. This method is often used for user testing and it provides a great opportunity for collecting live product or customer feedback .

Covert observation means studying users ‘in the wild’ without them knowing. This method works well if you sell a type of product that people use regularly, and it offers the purest observational data because people often behave differently when they know they’re being watched. 

Tips to do it right:

Record an entry in your field notes, along with a timestamp, each time an action or event occurs.

Make note of the users' workflow, capturing the ‘what,’ ‘why,’ and ‘for whom’ of each action.

Don’t record identifiable video or audio data without consent. If recording people using your product is helpful for achieving your research goal, make sure all participants are informed and agree to the terms.

Don’t forget to explain why you’d like to observe them (for overt observation). People are more likely to cooperate if you tell them you want to improve the product.

💡Pro tip: while conducting field research out in the wild can wield rewarding results, you can also conduct observational research remotely. Hotjar Recordings is a tool that lets you capture anonymized user sessions of real people interacting with your website. 

Observe how customers navigate your pages and products to gain an inside look into their user behavior . This method is great for conducting exploratory research with the purpose of identifying more specific issues to investigate further, like pain points along the customer journey and opportunities for optimizing conversion .

With Hotjar Recordings you can observe real people using your site without capturing their sensitive information

How Smallpdf did it: here’s how Smallpdf observed two different user personas both covertly and overtly.

Observing students (covert): Kristina Wagner, Principle Product Manager at Smallpdf, went to cafes and libraries at two local universities and waited until she saw students doing PDF-related activities. Then she watched and took notes from a distance. One thing that struck her was the difference between how students self-reported their activities vs. how they behaved (i.e, the self-reporting bias). Students, she found, spent hours talking, listening to music, or simply staring at a blank screen rather than working. When she did find students who were working, she recorded the task they were performing and the software they were using (if she recognized it).

Observing administrative assistants (overt): Kristina sent emails to admins explaining that she’d like to observe them at work, and she asked those who agreed to try to batch their PDF work for her observation day. While watching admins work, she learned that they frequently needed to scan documents into PDF-format and then convert those PDFs into Word docs. By observing the challenges admins faced, Smallpdf knew which products to target for improvement.

“Data is really good for discovery and validation, but there is a bit in the middle where you have to go and find the human.”

3. Conduct individual interviews

Interviews are one-on-one conversations with members of your target market. They allow you to dig deep and explore their concerns, which can lead to all sorts of revelations.

Listen more, talk less. Be curious.

Act like a journalist, not a salesperson. Rather than trying to talk your company up, ask people about their lives, their needs, their frustrations, and how a product like yours could help.

Ask "why?" so you can dig deeper. Get into the specifics and learn about their past behavior.

Record the conversation. Focus on the conversation and avoid relying solely on notes by recording the interview. There are plenty of services that will transcribe recorded conversations for a good price (including Hotjar!).

Avoid asking leading questions , which reveal bias on your part and pushes respondents to answer in a certain direction (e.g. “Have you taken advantage of the amazing new features we just released?).

Don't ask loaded questions , which sneak in an assumption which, if untrue, would make it impossible to answer honestly. For example, we can’t ask you, “What did you find most useful about this article?” without asking whether you found the article useful in the first place.

Be cautious when asking opinions about the future (or predictions of future behavior). Studies suggest that people aren’t very good at predicting their future behavior. This is due to several cognitive biases, from the misguided exceptionalism bias (we’re good at guessing what others will do, but we somehow think we’re different), to the optimism bias (which makes us see things with rose-colored glasses), to the ‘illusion of control’ (which makes us forget the role of randomness in future events).

How Smallpdf did it: Kristina explored her teacher user persona by speaking with university professors at a local graduate school. She learned that the school was mostly paperless and rarely used PDFs, so for the sake of time, she moved on to the admins.

A bit of a letdown? Sure. But this story highlights an important lesson: sometimes you follow a lead and come up short, so you have to make adjustments on the fly. Lean market research is about getting solid, actionable insights quickly so you can tweak things and see what works.

💡Pro tip: to save even more time, conduct remote interviews using an online user research service like Hotjar Engage , which automates the entire interview process, from recruitment and scheduling to hosting and recording.

You can interview your own customers or connect with people from our diverse pool of 200,000+ participants from 130+ countries and 25 industries. And no need to fret about taking meticulous notes—Engage will automatically transcribe the interview for you.

4. Analyze the data (without drowning in it)

The following techniques will help you wrap your head around the market data you collect without losing yourself in it. Remember, the point of lean market research is to find quick, actionable insights.

A flow model is a diagram that tracks the flow of information within a system. By creating a simple visual representation of how users interact with your product and each other, you can better assess their needs.

You’ll notice that admins are at the center of Smallpdf’s flow model, which represents the flow of PDF-related documents throughout a school. This flow model shows the challenges that admins face as they work to satisfy their own internal and external customers.

Affinity diagram

An affinity diagram is a way of sorting large amounts of data into groups to better understand the big picture. For example, if you ask your users about their profession, you’ll notice some general themes start to form, even though the individual responses differ. Depending on your needs, you could group them by profession, or more generally by industry.

We wrote a guide about how to analyze open-ended questions to help you sort through and categorize large volumes of response data. You can also do this by hand by clipping up survey responses or interview notes and grouping them (which is what Kristina does).

“For an interview, you will have somewhere between 30 and 60 notes, and those notes are usually direct phrases. And when you literally cut them up into separate pieces of paper and group them, they should make sense by themselves.”

Pro tip: if you’re conducting an online survey with Hotjar, keep your team in the loop by sharing survey responses automatically via our Slack and Microsoft Team integrations. Reading answers as they come in lets you digest the data in pieces and can help prepare you for identifying common themes when it comes time for analysis.

Hotjar lets you easily share survey responses with your team

Customer journey map

A customer journey map is a diagram that shows the way a typical prospect becomes a paying customer. It outlines their first interaction with your brand and every step in the sales cycle, from awareness to repurchase (and hopefully advocacy).

The above  customer journey map , created by our team at Hotjar, shows many ways a customer might engage with our tool. Your map will be based on your own data and business model.

📚 Read more: if you’re new to customer journey maps, we wrote this step-by-step guide to creating your first customer journey map in 2 and 1/2 days with free templates you can download and start using immediately.

Next steps: from research to results

So, how do you turn market research insights into tangible business results? Let’s look at the actions Smallpdf took after conducting their lean market research: first they implemented changes, then measured the impact.

Implement changes

Based on what Smallpdf learned about the challenges that one key user segment (admins) face when trying to convert PDFs into Word files, they improved their ‘PDF to Word’ conversion tool.

We won’t go into the details here because it involves a lot of technical jargon, but they made the entire process simpler and more straightforward for users. Plus, they made it so that their system recognized when you drop a PDF file into their ‘Word to PDF’ converter instead of the ‘PDF to Word’ converter, so users wouldn’t have to redo the task when they made that mistake. 

In other words: simple market segmentation for admins showed a business need that had to be accounted for, and customers are happier overall after Smallpdf implemented an informed change to their product.

Measure results

According to the Lean UX model, product and UX changes aren’t retained unless they achieve results.

Smallpdf’s changes produced:

A 75% reduction in error rate for the ‘PDF to Word’ converter

A 1% increase in NPS

Greater confidence in the team’s marketing efforts

"With all the changes said and done, we've cut our original error rate in four, which is huge. We increased our NPS by +1%, which isn't huge, but it means that of the users who received a file, they were still slightly happier than before, even if they didn't notice that anything special happened at all.”

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Market research (or marketing research) is any set of techniques used to gather information and better understand a company’s target market. This might include primary research on brand awareness and customer satisfaction or secondary market research on market size and competitive analysis. Businesses use this information to design better products, improve user experience, and craft a marketing strategy that attracts quality leads and improves conversion rates.

David Darmanin, one of Hotjar’s founders, launched two startups before Hotjar took off—but both companies crashed and burned. Each time, he and his team spent months trying to design an amazing new product and user experience, but they failed because they didn’t have a clear understanding of what the market demanded.

With Hotjar, they did things differently . Long story short, they conducted market research in the early stages to figure out what consumers really wanted, and the team made (and continues to make) constant improvements based on market and user research.

Without market research, it’s impossible to understand your users. Sure, you might have a general idea of who they are and what they need, but you have to dig deep if you want to win their loyalty.

Here’s why research matters:

Obsessing over your users is the only way to win. If you don’t care deeply about them, you’ll lose potential customers to someone who does.

Analytics gives you the ‘what’, while research gives you the ‘why’. Big data, user analytics , and dashboards can tell you what people do at scale, but only research can tell you what they’re thinking and why they do what they do. For example, analytics can tell you that customers leave when they reach your pricing page, but only research can explain why.

Research beats assumptions, trends, and so-called best practices. Have you ever watched your colleagues rally behind a terrible decision? Bad ideas are often the result of guesswork, emotional reasoning, death by best practices , and defaulting to the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion (HiPPO). By listening to your users and focusing on their customer experience , you’re less likely to get pulled in the wrong direction.

Research keeps you from planning in a vacuum. Your team might be amazing, but you and your colleagues simply can’t experience your product the way your customers do. Customers might use your product in a way that surprises you, and product features that seem obvious to you might confuse them. Over-planning and refusing to test your assumptions is a waste of time, money, and effort because you’ll likely need to make changes once your untested business plan gets put into practice.

Lean User Experience (UX) design is a model for continuous improvement that relies on quick, efficient research to understand customer needs and test new product features.

Lean market research can help you become more...

Efficient: it gets you closer to your customers, faster.

Cost-effective: no need to hire an expensive marketing firm to get things started.

Competitive: quick, powerful insights can place your products on the cutting edge.

As a small business or sole proprietor, conducting lean market research is an attractive option when investing in a full-blown research project might seem out of scope or budget.

There are lots of different ways you could conduct market research and collect customer data, but you don’t have to limit yourself to just one research method. Four common types of market research techniques include surveys, interviews, focus groups, and customer observation.

Which method you use may vary based on your business type: ecommerce business owners have different goals from SaaS businesses, so it’s typically prudent to mix and match these methods based on your particular goals and what you need to know.

1. Surveys: the most commonly used

Surveys are a form of qualitative research that ask respondents a short series of open- or closed-ended questions, which can be delivered as an on-screen questionnaire or via email. When we asked 2,000 Customer Experience (CX) professionals about their company’s approach to research , surveys proved to be the most commonly used market research technique.

What makes online surveys so popular?  

They’re easy and inexpensive to conduct, and you can do a lot of data collection quickly. Plus, the data is pretty straightforward to analyze, even when you have to analyze open-ended questions whose answers might initially appear difficult to categorize.

We've built a number of survey templates ready and waiting for you. Grab a template and share with your customers in just a few clicks.

💡 Pro tip: you can also get started with Hotjar AI for Surveys to create a survey in mere seconds . Just enter your market research goal and watch as the AI generates a survey and populates it with relevant questions. 

Once you’re ready for data analysis, the AI will prepare an automated research report that succinctly summarizes key findings, quotes, and suggested next steps.

An example research report generated by Hotjar AI for Surveys

2. Interviews: the most insightful

Interviews are one-on-one conversations with members of your target market. Nothing beats a face-to-face interview for diving deep (and reading non-verbal cues), but if an in-person meeting isn’t possible, video conferencing is a solid second choice.

Regardless of how you conduct it, any type of in-depth interview will produce big benefits in understanding your target customers.

What makes interviews so insightful?

By speaking directly with an ideal customer, you’ll gain greater empathy for their experience , and you can follow insightful threads that can produce plenty of 'Aha!' moments.

3. Focus groups: the most unreliable

Focus groups bring together a carefully selected group of people who fit a company’s target market. A trained moderator leads a conversation surrounding the product, user experience, or marketing message to gain deeper insights.

What makes focus groups so unreliable?

If you’re new to market research, we wouldn’t recommend starting with focus groups. Doing it right is expensive , and if you cut corners, your research could fall victim to all kinds of errors. Dominance bias (when a forceful participant influences the group) and moderator style bias (when different moderator personalities bring about different results in the same study) are two of the many ways your focus group data could get skewed.

4. Observation: the most powerful

During a customer observation session, someone from the company takes notes while they watch an ideal user engage with their product (or a similar product from a competitor).

What makes observation so clever and powerful?

‘Fly-on-the-wall’ observation is a great alternative to focus groups. It’s not only less expensive, but you’ll see people interact with your product in a natural setting without influencing each other. The only downside is that you can’t get inside their heads, so observation still isn't a recommended replacement for customer surveys and interviews.

The following questions will help you get to know your users on a deeper level when you interview them. They’re general questions, of course, so don’t be afraid to make them your own.

1. Who are you and what do you do?

How you ask this question, and what you want to know, will vary depending on your business model (e.g. business-to-business marketing is usually more focused on someone’s profession than business-to-consumer marketing).

It’s a great question to start with, and it’ll help you understand what’s relevant about your user demographics (age, race, gender, profession, education, etc.), but it’s not the be-all-end-all of market research. The more specific questions come later.

2. What does your day look like?

This question helps you understand your users’ day-to-day life and the challenges they face. It will help you gain empathy for them, and you may stumble across something relevant to their buying habits.

3. Do you ever purchase [product/service type]?

This is a ‘yes or no’ question. A ‘yes’ will lead you to the next question.

4. What problem were you trying to solve or what goal were you trying to achieve?

This question strikes to the core of what someone’s trying to accomplish and why they might be willing to pay for your solution.

5. Take me back to the day when you first decided you needed to solve this kind of problem or achieve this goal.

This is the golden question, and it comes from Adele Revella, Founder and CEO of Buyer Persona Institute . It helps you get in the heads of your users and figure out what they were thinking the day they decided to spend money to solve a problem.

If you take your time with this question, digging deeper where it makes sense, you should be able to answer all the relevant information you need to understand their perspective.

“The only scripted question I want you to ask them is this one: take me back to the day when you first decided that you needed to solve this kind of problem or achieve this kind of a goal. Not to buy my product, that’s not the day. We want to go back to the day that when you thought it was urgent and compelling to go spend money to solve a particular problem or achieve a goal. Just tell me what happened.”

— Adele Revella , Founder/CEO at Buyer Persona Institute

Bonus question: is there anything else you’d like to tell me?

This question isn’t just a nice way to wrap it up—it might just give participants the opportunity they need to tell you something you really need to know.

That’s why Sarah Doody, author of UX Notebook , adds it to the end of her written surveys.

“I always have a last question, which is just open-ended: “Is there anything else you would like to tell me?” And sometimes, that’s where you get four paragraphs of amazing content that you would never have gotten if it was just a Net Promoter Score [survey] or something like that.”

What is the difference between qualitative and quantitative research?

Qualitative research asks questions that can’t be reduced to a number, such as, “What is your job title?” or “What did you like most about your customer service experience?” 

Quantitative research asks questions that can be answered with a numeric value, such as, “What is your annual salary?” or “How was your customer service experience on a scale of 1-5?”

 → Read more about the differences between qualitative and quantitative user research .

How do I do my own market research?

You can do your own quick and effective market research by 

Surveying your customers

Building user personas

Studying your users through interviews and observation

Wrapping your head around your data with tools like flow models, affinity diagrams, and customer journey maps

What is the difference between market research and user research?

Market research takes a broad look at potential customers—what problems they’re trying to solve, their buying experience, and overall demand. User research, on the other hand, is more narrowly focused on the use (and usability ) of specific products.

What are the main criticisms of market research?

Many marketing professionals are critical of market research because it can be expensive and time-consuming. It’s often easier to convince your CEO or CMO to let you do lean market research rather than something more extensive because you can do it yourself. It also gives you quick answers so you can stay ahead of the competition.

Do I need a market research firm to get reliable data?

Absolutely not! In fact, we recommend that you start small and do it yourself in the beginning. By following a lean market research strategy, you can uncover some solid insights about your clients. Then you can make changes, test them out, and see whether the results are positive. This is an excellent strategy for making quick changes and remaining competitive.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld, and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.

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Mapping research in marketing: trends, influential papers and agenda for future research

Spanish Journal of Marketing - ESIC

ISSN : 2444-9695

Article publication date: 5 December 2023

Issue publication date: 7 March 2024

This study aims to map the conceptual structure and evolution of the recent scientific literature published in marketing journals to identify the areas of interest and potential future research directions.

Design/methodology/approach

The 100 most influential marketing academic papers published between 2018 and 2022 were identified and scrutinized through a bibliometric analysis.

The findings further upheld the critical role of emerging technologies such as Blockchain in marketing and identified artificial intelligence and live streaming as emerging trends, reinforcing the importance of data-driven marketing in the discipline.

Research limitations/implications

The data collection included only the 100 most cited documents between 2018 and 2022, and data were limited only to Scopus database and restrained to the Scopus-indexed marketing journals. Moreover, documents were selected based on the number of citations. Nevertheless, the data set may still provide significant insight into the marketing field.

Practical implications

Influential authors, papers and journals identified in this study will facilitate future literature searches and scientific dissemination in the field. This study makes an essential contribution to the marketing literature by identifying hot topics and suggesting future research themes. Also, the important role of emerging technologies and the shift of marketing toward a more data-driven approach will have significant practical implications for marketers.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first comprehensive study offering a general overview of the leading trends and researchers in marketing state-of-the-art research.

• Bibliometric analysis
• Citation analysis
• Research publications
• Science mapping
• Análisis bibliométrico
• Análisis de citas
• Publicaciones de investigación
• Mapeo científico
• 市场营销; 文献计量分析; 引文分析; 研究出版物; 科学绘图。

Ramos, R. , Rita, P. and Vong, C. (2024), "Mapping research in marketing: trends, influential papers and agenda for future research", Spanish Journal of Marketing - ESIC , Vol. 28 No. 2, pp. 187-206. https://doi.org/10.1108/SJME-10-2022-0221

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2023, Ricardo Ramos, Paulo Rita and Celeste Vong.

Published in Spanish Journal of Marketing - ESIC. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

1. Introduction

Marketing is vital to all businesses’ survival, long-term growth, development and success ( Czinkota et al. , 2021 ). Generally, the domain of marketing encompasses (1) the identification of marketing opportunities, (2) the creation of competitive advantages, (3) the effective utilization of resources, (4) the communication and delivery of products or services to customers, (5) the creation of value to customers and (6) the satisfaction of customers’ needs profitably ( Simkin, 2000 ).

The evaluation of academic marketing literature has progressively become relevant in recent years ( Das et al. , 2022 ; Hair and Sarstedt, 2021 ). The increasing number of academic publications in marketing varies in different contributions, which made it difficult for scholars to track new trends and find influential manuscripts to advance the body of knowledge. The primary objective of a research publication is to be known and influence others’ work. Nevertheless, the created knowledge is fragmented, and the emergence of new marketing topics is continuously changing the research map of marketing. Moreover, marketing is an applied discipline in that marketing research not only aims to generate scientific knowledge but also to provide insights and knowledge that can be practically used to inform marketing decisions ( Jedidi et al. , 2021 ). In addition, technological advancement has rapidly affected marketing practices and management ( Amado et al. , 2018 ). To address this challenge, this paper aims to map the conceptual structure and the evolution of knowledge to uncover the existing topics, trending areas of interest and future directions.

Despite considerable research efforts in the marketing field, little has been done to review prior research works systematically. Moreover, recent review articles have mainly focused on specific marketing domains or are limited to particular contexts, such as customer experience ( Chauhan et al. , 2022 ), marketing communication ( Domenico et al. , 2021 ), customer engagement ( Chen et al. , 2021 ), consumer behavior ( Oliveira et al. , 2022 ), advertising ( Jebarajakirthy et al. , 2021 ) and product or brand positioning ( Saqib, 2021 ), while context-specific reviews include marketing in emerging markets ( Paul et al. , 2016 ), sustainable marketing ( Lunde, 2018 ), business-to-business marketing ( Pandey et al. , 2020 ), luxury brand marketing ( Arrigo, 2018 ) and tourism marketing ( Han and Bai, 2022 ). The lack of a holistic review of marketing research created a gap in the existing research. Therefore, it is necessary to provide a big picture of the most recent marketing literature. The most recent review work in the same vein was conducted by Morgan et al. (2019) , who evaluated 257 marketing strategy articles published in the six most influential marketing journals during 1999–2017. Nevertheless, given its focus on marketing strategy and limited research sources, it does not provide a comprehensive framework that covers all aspects of the marketing field. To complement the work by Morgan et al. (2019) , this paper conducts a review with a more recent timeframe that focuses on recent trends, patterns and development in the field. The inclusiveness of journals will also enable identifying areas of interest beyond marketing strategy.

What is the knowledge structure of the state-of-the-art most influential academic research in marketing?

What are the current research trends?

What are possible pathways for future research in marketing?

The present work will facilitate the understanding and advancement of theories and knowledge in the field. Also, this paper provides valuable insights into the field’s most relevant and pressing issues and informs where future research efforts should be focused. This will, in turn, improve the practical relevance and usefulness of future research and ensure that research efforts are targeted toward topics that will yield impactful results. Moreover, it offers up-to-date information for marketing researchers.

2. Methodology

This study focuses on characterizing the most influential academic marketing articles published between 2018 and 2022 and discussing the marketing state of the art.

2.1 Search strategy

A search string was applied in the Scopus database to find the most relevant articles for this research ( Ramos et al. , 2019 ). The Scopus database was chosen for the literature review as it is generally considered one of the largest repositories with the most relevant indexed publications and one of the most universally acknowledged bibliographic databases ( Kumar et al. , 2020 ). It is recognized as the most well-organized and of the highest credibility and quality standards, with the most significant global impact and more comprehensive cover ( Muñoz-Leiva et al. , 2015 ; Rojas-Lamorena et al. , 2022 ) and is consistent with previous bibliometric reviews applied in the marketing research setting ( Kumar et al. , 2021 ; Paul and Bhukya, 2021 ). In addition, it follows Donthu et al. (2021) ’s recommendation to select only one database to minimize human errors during analysis. All marketing journals (212) indexed in Scopus were included in the current study. The journal selection takes a rather inclusive approach instead of the sole inclusion of marketing-specific journals, as marketing is a diverse and evolving field not strictly tied to a single-subject field ( Baumgartner and Pieters, 2003 ) but often intersects with other disciplines. For instance, given the rapid advancement of technology and its influence on marketing practices, topics such as information systems or big data are growing in importance and relevance to the marketing literature ( Amado et al. , 2018 ). Accordingly, journals such as the International Journal of Information Management have also contributed significantly to marketing recently ( Veloutsou and Ruiz Mafe, 2020 ). The search was conducted on June 9, 2023.

2.2 Selection process and final data set

The search was conducted in the Scopus database and limited to 2018 to 2022 to obtain state-of-the-art articles. Five years is a reasonable timeframe to capture a discipline’s essence and to conduct a bibliometric analysis ( Borgohain et al. , 2022 ). The collection of articles over five years reflects varied, robust, broad, inclusive and unrelated marketing research interests in the marketing field ( Bettenhausen, 1991 ). The focus on the most recent works permits uncovering the most recent trends without the influence of older topics. Only articles were selected as they represent the most advanced and up-to-date knowledge and are recognized for their academic value ( Rojas-Lamorena et al. , 2022 ). In total, 44,767 articles were collected. To select the most recent influential marketing articles, the top 100 most cited articles were selected. The citation metric acknowledges the impact of the articles ( Donthu et al. , 2021 ) and reflects the impact of scholarly work in subsequent research ( Purkayastha et al. , 2019 ).

In addition, it is recognized as one of the most relevant metrics of academic research ( Dowling, 2014 ). Although assessing the influence of an article based on citation analysis represents a significant limitation because articles may be cited for multiple reasons, citation analysis is considered an objective approach that exhibits less systematic biases for research impact evaluation ( Baumgartner and Pieters, 2003 ). Previous works have used citation metrics for bibliometric analysis. For instance, Law et al. (2009) analyzed the most influential articles published in Tourism journals using citation counts, whereas Brito et al. (2018) identified the areas of interest in football research and listed the articles based on citation frequency. From each article, the following variables were retrieved: authors’ names and keywords, document title, year, source title and citation count. The information was extracted in CSV file format.

2.3 Final data set

The final data set includes 100 articles from 28 journals. The authors’ names were reviewed for normalization purposes as they have different nomenclatures in different articles (e.g. Dwivedi YK vs Dwivedi Y) so that the software understands them as the same.

2.4 Data analysis

The CSV file with the final data set was input for the bibliometric analysis. Data were analyzed using the mapping analysis R-tool bibliometrix ( Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017 ). This package allows different types of analysis, offering an overview of the research field. A bibliometric analysis permits to analyzing the bibliographic material quantitatively, providing an objective and reliable analysis ( Broadus, 1987 ; Sepulcri et al. , 2020 ) and summarizing the existing literature and identifying emerging topics of research ( Hota et al. , 2020 ). The authors’ names and keywords, year of publication, source title and the number of citations were collected from each article. A performance analysis was performed to acknowledge the field’s citation structure, most relevant sources, authors and articles. Then, science mapping analysis through a co-occurrence analysis was performed. The co-occurrence analysis aims to overcome the descriptive nature of the bibliometric analysis, uncovering gaps and research trends ( Palmatier et al. , 2018 ; Quezado et al. , 2022 ). The gaps and research trends led to a future research agenda.

3. Results and discussion

3.1 total citations by year.

As indicated in Table 1 , the 100 articles were cited 41,888 times, an average of 418.88 citations per article. The most contributing years were 2019 and 2020, with 33 published articles yearly. The year with the highest number of citations was 2019, with 14,621 citations, corresponding to 34.90% of the total citations. This record is strongly linked to the work of Snyder (2019) , with 1,872 citations that characterized different types of literature reviews and suggested guidelines on conducting and evaluating business research literature reviews. Due to the increasing number of publications, it is challenging to keep current with state-of-the-art research ( Briner and Denyer, 2012 ). Reviewing the existing research is fundamental for understanding marketing research inconsistencies, gathering and synthesizing previous research and serving as guidance for researchers and practitioners. In addition, literature reviews contribute to identifying potential gaps, suggesting novel research lines and allowing a balanced growth of a research field ( Hulland and Houston, 2020 ).

The year with the highest mean total citations per article and year was 2021 (527.5 and 175.83, respectively). This result is highly associated with Donthu et al. (2021) ’s work, with 1,221 citations, that explained how to develop a bibliometric analysis.

The main difference between a literature review and bibliometric analysis is the focus and the methodological approach. A literature review aims to critically analyze and synthesize existing knowledge under a research topic ( Snyder, 2019 ). In turn, a bibliometric analysis is a specific approach within the field of scientometrics that uses quantitative and statistical methods to analyze the scientific production and articles’ characteristics published in a specific research domain ( Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017 ).

3.2 Most influential articles

Seminal articles in marketing assume an essential role in its development ( Berry and Parasuraman, 1993 ). The number of citations was used to define and measure the impact of the most influential articles. The most cited document (total citation = 1,872) was Snyder’s (2019) work on conducting an overview and suggesting guidelines for conducting a literature review ( Table 2 ). The normalized citation compares an article’s performance to the data set’s average performance ( Bornmann and Marx, 2015 ; Rita and Ramos, 2022 ). Snyder (2019) ’s work has the highest normalized citation index (4.13), revealing its outstanding performance compared with the remaining articles from the data set.

Among the top 10 most cited articles, three are related to PLS-SEM. The partial least squares – structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) is relevant for marketing as it allows to examine of complex relationships between latent variables and manifest variables, permitting a flexible and less restrictive analysis in terms of statistical assumptions than other modeling techniques, such as confirmatory factor analysis and principal component analysis ( Hair et al. , 2020 ). By using PLS-SEM, marketing researchers can explore complex relationships among variables, test research hypotheses, identify the relative importance of different influencers and assess the validity and reliability of the measured variables ( Sarstedt et al. , 2019 ). It is frequently used in research involving the modeling of theoretical constructs, such as customer satisfaction ( Ramos et al. , 2022 ), brand image ( Kunkel et al. , 2020 ) or perceived quality ( Ariffin et al. , 2021 ) research.

Surprisingly, there are no articles from 2018 in the top 10 most cited articles. However, there are two articles published in 2021. One of the papers published in 2021 is the work of Verhoef et al. (2021) , which explores digital transformation and innovation in business models and suggests a research agenda for future studies. Digital transformation and innovation are highly relevant for marketing as it provokes consumer behavior change ( Lemos et al. , 2022 ). In addition, it allows companies to adapt to consumer behavior changes, seize the opportunities for segmentation and personalization, improve communication and engagement and increase operational efficiency ( Muneeb et al. , 2023 ; Zhang et al. , 2022 ).

3.3 Source impact

Table 3 depicts the top 10 most impactful sources of the 100 most influential marketing articles. The intellectual convergence is exhibited based on common sources and referencing patterns ( Donthu et al. , 2021 ), and identifying journals may facilitate future literature search and scientific dissemination.

Among the 28 journals, the International Journal of Information Management (IJIM) contributed the most papers (26 papers), followed by the Journal of Business Research (JBR) (22 papers) and the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services (JRCS) (6 papers). These journals are all First Quartile journals based on SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) indicator, with an impact factor of 4.906, 2.895 and 2.543, respectively. The IJIM focuses on contemporary issues in information management ( Elsevier, 2023a ). Information management field of research plays a fundamental role in marketing, providing data and insights that guide marketing strategies, improve segmentation and customization, leverage automation marketing, data-driven decision-making and the performance evaluation of marketing initiatives ( Dwivedi et al. , 2020 ). The JBR aims to publish recent business research dealing with the spectrum of actual business practical settings among different business activities ( Elsevier, 2023b ), while the JRCS focuses on consumer behavior and policy and managerial decisions ( Elsevier, 2023c ). The findings indicate the contribution and importance of IJIM to the marketing field, recognizing the relevance of information management. Surprisingly, leading marketing journals listed in the Financial Times 50 ( Ormans, 2016 ), such as the Journal of Consumer Research , Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science and Journal of Marketing , only produced a small number of relevant articles in our data set. This result suggests that their papers may not be as impactful or influential as those published in other outlets. Nevertheless, the quality of the articles published in these outlets reflects the most original and well-executed research, as they have high submission rates. However, their rate of acceptance is very low.

Among the top 10 most productive journals, JBR is the one with the highest number of citations. This result confirms Table 2 ’s results as it lists six articles that were published in this journal ( Donthu et al. , 2021 ; Hair et al. , 2020 ; Sheth, 2020 ; Sigala, 2020 ; Snyder, 2019 ; Verhoef et al. , 2021 ).

3.4 Contributing authors

Key authors are essential to the field’s structure and growth ( Berry and Parasuraman, 1993 ) and positively influence the most impactful articles ( Rojas-Lamorena et al. , 2022 ). Thus, it is imperative to identify them and acknowledge their impact. Between 2018 and 2022, 100 documents were written by 312 different authors.

Table 4 characterizes the top 10 most productive authors among the most influential marketing research articles over the past five years. The authors’ indices were calculated, including h -index, g -index and m -index. The Hirsh index ( h -index) is the proposal to quantify productivity and the journal’s impact considering the number of papers and citations per publication ( Hirsch, 2005 ). The g -index aims to measure the performance of the journals ( Egghe, 2006 ), considering the citation evolution of the most cited papers over time. Furthermore, the m -index, also called the m -quotient, considers the h -index and the time since the first publication ( n ); hence, m -index = h -index/ n ( Halbach, 2011 ).

Professor Dwivedi YK is the most prolific, with seven published articles indicating more than one paper yearly. Although he is placed second as the most cited author (3,361), he has the highest h - (7), g - (7) and m -index (1.17). Professor Dwivedi’s research focuses on digital innovation and technology consumer adoption and the use of information systems and information technology for operation management and supply chain, focusing on emergent markets. Digital innovation and understanding technology consumer adoption allow companies to engage with consumers efficiently and personally ( Alalwan et al. , 2023 ). In addition, information systems and information technology applied in operation management and supply chain permit a higher efficiency and visibility in commercial activities, aiding companies to optimize processes, reduce costs and improve customer care ( Tasnim et al. , 2023 ). Professor Dwivedi is a Professor at the School of Management, Swansea University, UK ( Swansea, 2023 ). The second most productive author is Hair JF, and Hughes DL, with five articles each. Professor Hair JF is the most cited author in the list of the most productive authors. This record is highly associated with the work “Assessing measurement model quality in PLS-SEM using confirmatory composite analysis” ( Hair et al. , 2020 ), with 1,103 citations. Multiple papers gather authors from the list. For instance, the article “Artificial Intelligence (AI): Multidisciplinary perspectives on emerging challenges, opportunities, and agenda for research, practice and policy” ( Dwivedi et al. , 2021 ) was co-authored by Professors Dwivedi YK and Hughes DL. This paper has 637 citations and addresses the transformative power that artificial intelligence (AI) may have for the automation and replacement of human tasks, highlighting opportunities, challenges and impacts. AI plays a fundamental role in marketing, permitting advanced personalization, task automation, advanced data analysis, campaign optimization and improved customer experience, leading to personalized experiences and better marketing results ( Duan et al. , 2019 ; Dwivedi et al. , 2021 ).

Fractionalized frequency displays the multiauthored articles. This analysis is relevant to understand how researchers interact with each other ( Rojas-Lamorena et al. , 2022 ). A credit is attributed to each author, depending on the number of co-authors. If a paper has two authors, each receives a half-point. If a paper has three authors, each receives a third of a point, and so on ( Cuccurullo et al. , 2016 ). Professor Hughes DL has the lowest score (0.57) on the five most productive authors list, suggesting a strong relationship with colleagues through co-authorship based on shared interests.

3.5 Co-occurrence analysis

Figure 1 presents the authors’ keywords co-occurrence analysis and reflects the relationship between the keywords and the data set ( Wang et al. , 2012 ). Co-occurrence analysis aims to establish relationships and map the conceptual structure of the most influential marketing academic articles and reveal current research trends ( Eduardsen and Marinova, 2020 ). The thicker the lies among each cluster, the stronger the connection between the keywords. The size of each edge indicates the occurrence frequency. Thematic map displays the top 50 keywords and a minimum of 5 clusters. The thematic map shows six clusters, of which two are with the largest nodes, including AI (brown) and Covid-19 (blue). However, clusters with smaller nodes are bibliometric analysis (red), social media (purple), blockchain (green) and customer engagement (orange).

The brown cluster suggests a topic under AI technology. The cluster’s keywords highlight an interconnection and application of AI, machine learning and cognitive computing in the marketing research field. Deep learning, natural language processing and machine learning make part of a broader spectrum of AI ( Verma et al. , 2021 ). Cognitive computing refers to the capacity of computer systems to mimic human capacity to process information, learn and make decisions ( Duan et al. , 2019 ). These technologies handle big data efficiently, predict consumer behavior and support decision-making in actionable insights, transforming marketing strategies ( Blanco-Moreno et al. , 2023 ; Dwivedi et al. , 2021 ).

The blue cluster reflects the pandemic that affected the globe between 2020 and 2023 ( United Nations, 2023 ). This cluster reveals a close relationship between the Covid-19 pandemic and consumer behavior ( Sheth, 2020 ). The interest in understanding the attitudes and consumers’ decision-making is highly relevant for future pandemics ( Pereira et al. , 2023 ). In addition, the pandemic brought social and industry challenges that deserve academic attention ( Dwivedi et al. , 2020 ; Muneeb et al. , 2023 ). This cluster also addresses overconsumption driven by impulsive behavior promoted by the pandemic ( Islam et al. , 2021 ; Marikyan et al. , 2023 ). This cluster suggests insights on how companies can adequately develop marketing strategies to face the pandemic challenges and effectively respond to health crises.

The red cluster reveals a direct connection between bibliometric analysis and scientific assessment. The bibliometric analysis is applied to reveal research patterns and knowledge structure and access the scientific production impact ( Ramos and Rita, 2023 ). The use of bibliographic coupling, co-occurrence analysis and the Scopus database supplies the data set for the identification of relationships and patterns within the literature ( Donthu et al. , 2021 ), summarizing the existing literature and identifying emerging topics of research ( Hota et al. , 2020 ).

The purple cluster highlights the terms social media and marketing. The keyword social media highlights the role of platforms, such as Instagram or TikTok, for advertising ( Alalwan, 2018 ), understanding the role of influencers ( Lou and Yuan, 2019 ), and for co-creation in brand communities ( Kamboj et al. , 2018 ), influencer marketing. Social media platforms are fundamental for any communication strategy as they connect with the audience, create engagement and awareness and promote products and services ( Lou and Yuan, 2019 ). The strategic use of social media in marketing is fundamental for companies to establish an effective presence and build long-lasting relationships.

The orange cluster suggests a relationship between live streaming and customer engagement ( Wongkitrungrueng and Assarut, 2020 ). This interconnection suggests that live streaming can be an effective channel for developing social commerce, influencing purchase intentions ( Sun et al. , 2019 ). Real-time and direct interaction with customers promote greater involvement and improve customer experience.

The green cluster suggests a focus on applying blockchain technology in information systems. Blockchain is a decentralized and immutable technology for transaction registers studied in the supply chain context ( Min, 2019 ). It has a significant potential to transform data management ( Lemos et al. , 2022 ).

4. Conclusions and future research agenda

This study represents a map of the conceptual structure and evolution of the state-of-the-art scientific literature published in marketing journals to identify the areas of interest and potential future research directions. This review aimed to (1) acknowledge the structure of the state-of-the-art most influential academic marketing research, (2) identify current research trends and (3) suggest future research prospects.

4.1 RQ1: knowledge structure

Regarding RQ1, the most cited article among the top 100 between 2018 and 2022 was the work of Snyder (2019) , with 1,872 citations, followed by the work of Donthu et al. (2021) , with 1,221. The years 2019 and 2020 were those that most contributed to the top 100 most cited, with 33 articles each. Accordingly, these years had the most citations, 14,621 and 13,692, respectively. The IJIM was the source with the highest number of articles published from our data set ( n = 26). However, the JBR, with 22 published articles, was the journal with the highest citations ( n = 12,265). Every journal from the top 10 prolific sources is ranked in Scopus (SJR) as Q1. Professor Dwivedi YK was the most prolific author, with seven articles published, followed by Professors Hair JF and Hughes DL, with five articles each. Although placed second on the most productive authors list, the most cited author was Professor Hair JF, with 3,615 articles.

4.2 RQ2: current research trends

As for RQ2, this bibliometric analysis allowed us to identify current research trends through the co-occurrence analysis. Since a comprehensive future research agenda stimulates researchers to continue their research efforts ( Hulland and Houston, 2020 ), we suggest marketing future research questions to gain a deeper knowledge of current research trends ( Table 5 ).

Although AI has existed for over six decades ( Duan et al. , 2019 ), the development of supercomputers that analyze big data led to the exponential use of this technology. Its application in marketing varies and includes trend and prediction analysis, chatbots and marketing automation. However, particularly for data analysis, multiple research questions are yet to be answered ( Dwivedi et al. , 2021 ). Grounded on the AI (brown) cluster, it would be interesting to uncover different uses of AI to improve big data analysis.

The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted global habits ( Sheth, 2020 ). New habits emerged, changing the industry landscape in multiple dimensions, such as consumer, leisure and work behavior. Although multiple studies were published regarding the topic, much is yet to be uncovered. The effects of this pandemic are yet to be fully acknowledged, demanding future studies to comprehend the permanent changes in society ( Islam et al. , 2021 ). In addition, uncovering the best-implemented industry marketing strategies can be helpful, as it is inevitable that new pandemics occur in the future ( Pereira et al. , 2023 ).

Bibliometric analyses map and summarize existent research, extending the global understanding of a research topic and increasing the quality and success of scholarly work ( Donthu et al. , 2021 ). However, the analysis is mainly descriptive ( Ramos and Rita, 2023 ). Combining bibliometric analysis with other methods may enhance the results, leading to an advancement in using such an approach.

Social media is broadly used for marketing-related activities. Through social media platforms, it is possible to build brand image, generate leads for the company’s website, analyze and monitor data, or be an influencer marketer ( Alalwan, 2018 ; Lou and Yuan, 2019 ). Nevertheless, the implementation of gamification techniques ( Bhutani and Behl, 2023 ; Wanick and Stallwood, 2023 ), privacy concerns ( Saura et al. , 2023 ) and collective decision-making ( Dambanemuya et al. , 2023 ) are issues that deserve the attention of researchers.

Livestreaming captured the attention of digital retailing marketers in recent years and significantly changed social interaction. However, different types of live streaming exist, such as webinars, game streaming, corporate streaming, vlogs or personalized content, and can be used in different industries ( Zhang et al. , 2023 ). Investigating the influence of live streaming on consumer engagement may enhance understanding of its relevance for the industry and improve marketing effectiveness ( Wongkitrungrueng and Assarut, 2020 ).

Blockchain technology allows tracing and enhances transaction transparency, creating authenticity certificates to prevent fraud or loyalty programs to build customers’ loyalty and trust ( Lemos et al. , 2022 ). Despite several studies being conducted to understand the impact of this technology on marketing ( Marthews and Tucker, 2023 ; Tan and Salo, 2023 ), there is much to be learned and questions unanswered.

4.3 RQ3: future research agenda

Based on the comprehensive bibliometric analysis findings, potential directions for future research are presented ( Table 6 ). Topics surrounding data-driven marketing are particularly relevant ( Zhang et al. , 2022 ) due to the data abundance and technological advances, and they have the potential to be further developed. For instance, issues arising from adopting AI to uncover hidden patterns in big data or integrating data from different sectors or industries to understand consumer behavior are yet to be understood. In addition, environmental sustainability is highly relevant due to the increasing customers’ awareness of the topic and its influence on developing marketing strategies ( Jung et al. , 2020 ). However, multiple questions are yet to be answered. In particular, the influence of gamification techniques to promote positive, environmentally sustainable consumer behavior and how emerging technologies influence the customers’ perception of sustainable products. Mass personalization allows consumers to customize product features ( Qin and Lu, 2021 ). This topic is highly relevant to the industry and underexplored in marketing. For instance, how can mass personalization be efficiently implemented in highly productive industries? Or how can emerging technologies improve mass personalization programs? Finally, the wearable technologies market is exponentially growing and is increasingly essential to consumer behavior ( Ferreira et al. , 2021 ).

5. Conclusions and limitations

Through the bibliometric analysis of the 100 most influential marketing papers published between 2018 and 2022, this review presents potential directions for knowledge advancement and comprehensive information to facilitate future literature search ( Boell and Cecez-Kecmanovic, 2014 ) by identifying the current research focus, conceptual structure and trends in the marketing field. In addition, this review contributes to practice by identifying the most influential articles for the marketing scientific community interested in gaining scientific insights. Meanwhile, the important role of emerging technologies and the shift of marketing toward a more data-driven approach will have significant practical implications for marketers.

This work has limitations that need to be stated. First, data were limited to Scopus database and restrained to indexed marketing journals. However, it is essential to note that all scientific databases have limitations. Second, to select the most influential marketing documents, the only criterion was on a commonly used metric – the number of citations. Although citation metrics are commonly used, they may incorrectly demonstrate the quality of the work. There are multiple reasons for a work to be cited ( Vogel and Güttel, 2012 ), such as a journal’s prestige or factors related to the methods ( Hota et al. , 2020 ). The Mathew effect phenomenon also exists in science ( García-Lillo et al. , 2017 ). Third, articles take time to be cited. This means that the most recent articles from our data set may have fewer citations, but it does not mean that their quality is poorer. Fourth, to select the most influential marketing articles, every journal under the subject area “Business, Management and Accounting” and category “Marketing” were selected. However, there are journals listed in other subject areas and categories. Nevertheless, the data set may still provide significant insight into the marketing field.

Thematic map based on the authors’ keywords co-occurrence

Top 100 most cited articles structure

Source impact

Co-occurrence topics and future research avenues

IoT = Internet of things

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Acknowledgements

Paulo Rita’s work was supported by national funds through FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia), under the project – UIDB/04152/2020 – Centro de Investigação em Gestão de Informação (MagIC)/NOVA IMS.

Since submission of this article, the following authors have updated their affiliations: Ricardo Ramos is at Technology and Management School of Oliveira do Hospital, Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra, Oliveira do Hospital, Portugal; ISTAR, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Lisboa, Portugal; Centre Bio R&D Unit, Association BLC3 – Tecnology and Innovation Campus, Oliveira do Hospital, Portugal; Paulo Rita is at NOVA Information Management School (NOVA IMS), Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal; and Celeste Vong is at NOVA Information Management School (NOVA IMS), Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal.

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The marketing faculty embrace research traditions grounded in psychology and behavioral decision-making, economics and industrial organization, and statistics and management science.

These traditions support research inquiries into consumer behavior, firm behavior, the development of methods for improving the allocation of marketing resources, and understanding of how marketing works in a market setting.

A small number of students are accepted into the PhD Program in marketing each year, with a total of about 18 marketing students in residence. Student-faculty relationships are close, both professionally and socially. This permits the tailoring of the program of study to fit the background and career goals of the individual.

A marketing student’s program of study usually includes several doctoral seminars taught by marketing faculty, some doctoral seminars taught by other Stanford GSB faculty, and a considerable number of graduate-level courses in related departments outside the business school, depending on a student’s particular area of investigation.

The field is often broken down into two broad subareas: behavioral marketing and quantitative marketing.

Behavioral Marketing

Behavioral marketing is the study of how individuals behave in consumer-relevant domains. This area of marketing draws from social psychology and behavioral decision theory and includes a wide variety of topics such as:

• Decision making
• Attitudes and persuasion
• Social influence
• Motivation and goals
• New technologies
• Consumer neuroscience
• Misinformation

Students in this track take classes in behaviorally oriented subjects within Stanford GSB and also in the Psychology Department . All students have the opportunity to interact with Stanford GSB faculty in every group and, indeed, across the Stanford campus.

Behavioral Interest Group

There is also a formal institutional link between the behavioral side of marketing and the micro side of organizational behavior , which is called the Behavioral Interest Group. The Stanford GSB Behavioral Lab links members of this group. This lab fosters collaborative work across field boundaries among those with behavioral interests.

The Behavioral Lab is an interdisciplinary social research laboratory open to all Stanford GSB faculty and PhD students. The lab’s research primarily spans the fields of organizational behavior and behavioral marketing, and covers a rich and diverse array of topics, including attitudes and preferences, consumer decision-making, group dynamics, leadership, morality, power, and prosocial behavior.

Preparation and Qualifications

A background in psychology and experience with experimental methods and data analysis provide optimal preparation for students pursuing the behavioral track, though students from a variety of backgrounds have performed well in the program.

Quantitative Marketing

The quantitative marketing faculty at Stanford emphasize theoretically grounded empirical analysis of applied marketing problems. This line of inquiry draws primarily on fundamentals in applied microeconomic theory, industrial organization, and econometrics and statistics.

Questions of interest include:

Investigating consumer choices and purchase behavior

Examining product, pricing, advertising, and promotion strategies of firms

Analyzing competition in a wide range of domains

Development and application of large-scale experimentation, high-dimensional statistics, applied econometrics and big-data methods to solve marketing problems

A common theme of research is the use of rigorous quantitative methods to study important, managerially relevant marketing questions.

Cross-Campus Collaboration

Students in this track take common classes in quantitatively oriented subjects with others at Stanford GSB, as well as the Economics and Statistics Departments. All Stanford GSB students have the opportunity to interact with Stanford GSB faculty in every group and, indeed, across the Stanford campus.

Solid training in economics and statistical methods, as well as programming skills, offers a distinct advantage for quantitative marketing students, but students from various backgrounds such as engineering, computer science, and physics have thrived in the program.

Faculty in Behavioral Marketing

Jennifer aaker, szu-chi huang, jonathan levav, zakary tormala, s. christian wheeler, faculty in quantitative marketing, kwabena baah donkor, wesley r. hartmann, sridhar narayanan, navdeep s. sahni, emeriti faculty, james m. lattin, david bruce montgomery, michael l. ray, itamar simonson, v. “seenu” srinivasan, recent publications in marketing, when the one true faith trumps all: low religious diversity, religious intolerance, and science denial, express: using price promotions to drive children’s healthy choices in a developing economy, regulating privacy online: an economic evaluation of the gdpr, recent insights by stanford business, a little fun — and a discount — can steer kids to healthier foods, what people really think about search engine ads. (you might be surprised.), zoom in... or out why face-to-face meetings matter.

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What Is Market Research?

• How It Works
• Primary vs. Secondary
• How to Conduct Research

The Bottom Line

• Marketing Essentials

How to Do Market Research, Types, and Example

Joules Garcia / Investopedia

Market research examines consumer behavior and trends in the economy to help a business develop and fine-tune its business idea and strategy. It helps a business understand its target market by gathering and analyzing data.

Market research is the process of evaluating the viability of a new service or product through research conducted directly with potential customers. It allows a company to define its target market and get opinions and other feedback from consumers about their interest in a product or service.

Research may be conducted in-house or by a third party that specializes in market research. It can be done through surveys and focus groups, among other ways. Test subjects are usually compensated with product samples or a small stipend for their time.

Key Takeaways

• Companies conduct market research before introducing new products to determine their appeal to potential customers.
• Tools include focus groups, telephone interviews, and questionnaires.
• The results of market research inform the final design of the product and determine how it will be positioned in the marketplace.
• Market research usually combines primary information, gathered directly from consumers, and secondary information, which is data available from external sources.

Market Research

How market research works.

Market research is used to determine the viability of a new product or service. The results may be used to revise the product design and fine-tune the strategy for introducing it to the public. This can include information gathered for the purpose of determining market segmentation . It also informs product differentiation , which is used to tailor advertising.

A business engages in various tasks to complete the market research process. It gathers information based on the market sector being targeted by the product. This information is then analyzed and relevant data points are interpreted to draw conclusions about how the product may be optimally designed and marketed to the market segment for which it is intended.

It is a critical component in the research and development (R&D) phase of a new product or service introduction. Market research can be conducted in many different ways, including surveys, product testing, interviews, and focus groups.

Market research is a critical tool that companies use to understand what consumers want, develop products that those consumers will use, and maintain a competitive advantage over other companies in their industry.

Primary Market Research vs. Secondary Market Research

Market research usually consists of a combination of:

• Primary research, gathered by the company or by an outside company that it hires
• Secondary research, which draws on external sources of data

Primary Market Research

Primary research generally falls into two categories: exploratory and specific research.

• Exploratory research is less structured and functions via open-ended questions. The questions may be posed in a focus group setting, telephone interviews, or questionnaires. It results in questions or issues that the company needs to address about a product that it has under development.
• Specific research delves more deeply into the problems or issues identified in exploratory research.

Secondary Market Research

All market research is informed by the findings of other researchers about the needs and wants of consumers. Today, much of this research can be found online.

Secondary research can include population information from government census data , trade association research reports , polling results, and research from other businesses operating in the same market sector.

History of Market Research

Formal market research began in Germany during the 1920s. In the United States, it soon took off with the advent of the Golden Age of Radio.

Companies that created advertisements for this new entertainment medium began to look at the demographics of the audiences who listened to each of the radio plays, music programs, and comedy skits that were presented.

They had once tried to reach the widest possible audience by placing their messages on billboards or in the most popular magazines. With radio programming, they had the chance to target rural or urban consumers, teenagers or families, and judge the results by the sales numbers that followed.

Types of Market Research

Face-to-face interviews.

From their earliest days, market research companies would interview people on the street about the newspapers and magazines that they read regularly and ask whether they recalled any of the ads or brands that were published in them. Data collected from these interviews were compared to the circulation of the publication to determine the effectiveness of those ads.

Market research and surveys were adapted from these early techniques.

To get a strong understanding of your market, it’s essential to understand demand, market size, economic indicators, location, market saturation, and pricing.

Focus Groups

A focus group is a small number of representative consumers chosen to try a product or watch an advertisement.

Afterward, the group is asked for feedback on their perceptions of the product, the company’s brand, or competing products. The company then takes that information and makes decisions about what to do with the product or service, whether that's releasing it, making changes, or abandoning it altogether.

Phone Research

The man-on-the-street interview technique soon gave way to the telephone interview. A telephone interviewer could collect information in a more efficient and cost-effective fashion.

Telephone research was a preferred tactic of market researchers for many years. It has become much more difficult in recent years as landline phone service dwindles and is replaced by less accessible mobile phones.

Survey Research

As an alternative to focus groups, surveys represent a cost-effective way to determine consumer attitudes without having to interview anyone in person. Consumers are sent surveys in the mail, usually with a coupon or voucher to incentivize participation. These surveys help determine how consumers feel about the product, brand, and price point.

Online Market Research

With people spending more time online, market research activities have shifted online as well. Data collection still uses a survey-style form. But instead of companies actively seeking participants by finding them on the street or cold calling them on the phone, people can choose to sign up, take surveys, and offer opinions when they have time.

This makes the process far less intrusive and less rushed, since people can participate on their own time and of their own volition.

How to Conduct Market Research

The first step to effective market research is to determine the goals of the study. Each study should seek to answer a clear, well-defined problem. For example, a company might seek to identify consumer preferences, brand recognition, or the comparative effectiveness of different types of ad campaigns.

After that, the next step is to determine who will be included in the research. Market research is an expensive process, and a company cannot waste resources collecting unnecessary data. The firm should decide in advance which types of consumers will be included in the research, and how the data will be collected. They should also account for the probability of statistical errors or sampling bias .

The next step is to collect the data and analyze the results. If the two previous steps have been completed accurately, this should be straightforward. The researchers will collect the results of their study, keeping track of the ages, gender, and other relevant data of each respondent. This is then analyzed in a marketing report that explains the results of their research.

The last step is for company executives to use their market research to make business decisions. Depending on the results of their research, they may choose to target a different group of consumers, or they may change their price point or some product features.

The results of these changes may eventually be measured in further market research, and the process will begin all over again.

Benefits of Market Research

Market research is essential for developing brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. Since it is unlikely for a product to appeal equally to every consumer, a strong market research program can help identify the key demographics and market segments that are most likely to use a given product.

Market research is also important for developing a company’s advertising efforts. For example, if a company’s market research determines that its consumers are more likely to use Facebook than X (formerly Twitter), it can then target its advertisements to one platform instead of another. Or, if they determine that their target market is value-sensitive rather than price-sensitive, they can work on improving the product rather than reducing their prices.

Market research only works when subjects are honest and open to participating.

Example of Market Research

Many companies use market research to test new products or get information from consumers about what kinds of products or services they need and don’t currently have.

For example, a company that’s considering starting a business might conduct market research to test the viability of its product or service. If the market research confirms consumer interest, the business can proceed confidently with its business plan . If not, the company can use the results of the market research to make adjustments to the product to bring it in line with customer desires.

What Are the Main Types of Market Research?

The main types of market research are primary research and secondary research. Primary research includes focus groups, polls, and surveys. Secondary research includes academic articles, infographics, and white papers.

Qualitative research gives insights into how customers feel and think. Quantitative research uses data and statistics such as website views, social media engagement, and subscriber numbers.

What Is Online Market Research?

Online market research uses the same strategies and techniques as traditional primary and secondary market research, but it is conducted on the Internet. Potential customers may be asked to participate in a survey or give feedback on a product. The responses may help the researchers create a profile of the likely customer for a new product.

What Are Paid Market Research Surveys?

Paid market research involves rewarding individuals who agree to participate in a study. They may be offered a small payment for their time or a discount coupon in return for filling out a questionnaire or participating in a focus group.

What Is a Market Study?

A market study is an analysis of consumer demand for a product or service. It looks at all of the factors that influence demand for a product or service. These include the product’s price, location, competition, and substitutes as well as general economic factors that could influence the new product’s adoption, for better or worse.

Market research is a key component of a company’s research and development (R&D) stage. It helps companies understand in advance the viability of a new product that they have in development and to see how it might perform in the real world.

Britannica Money. “ Market Research .”

U.S. Small Business Administration. “ Market Research and Competitive Analysis .”

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What is Marketing Research? Examples and Best Practices

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Marketing research is essentially a method utilized by companies to collect valuable information regarding their target market. Through the common practice of conducting market research, companies gather essential information that enables them to make informed decisions and develop products that resonate with consumers. It encompasses the gathering, analysis, and interpretation of data, which aids in identifying consumer demands, anticipating market trends, and staying ahead of the competition.

Exploratory research is one of the initial steps in the marketing research process. It helps businesses gain broad insights when specific information is unknown. If you are seeking insight into how marketing research can influence the trajectory of your SaaS, then you have come to the right place!

• Market research is a systematic and objective process crucial for understanding target markets, refining business strategies, and informing decisions, which includes collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data on customers, competitors, and the industry.
• Primary market research gathers specific data directly from the target audience using tools like surveys and focus groups, while secondary market research utilizes existing data from various sources to provide broader market insights.
• Effective market research combines both qualitative methods, which explore consumer motivations, and quantitative methods, which provide measurable statistics, to create comprehensive insights that guide business strategy and decision-making.

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Defining marketing research

Launching a product without knowing what your target audience wants is like walking in the dark. Market research lights the way, helping you collect, analyze, and understand information about your target market. This allows you to refine your business strategies and make decisions based on solid evidence.

Gone are the days when just intuition or subjective judgment was enough. Objective insights from market research help avoid costly mistakes and meet consumer needs by identifying trends and changes in the market. This is crucial for assessing a product’s potential success, optimizing marketing strategies, and preparing for market shifts.

Market research is a systematic approach that provides essential information, helping businesses navigate the complexities of the commercial world. Partnering with market research companies can offer additional benefits, leveraging their expertise in understanding market demands, trends, market size, economic indicators, location, market saturation, and pricing. Whether starting a new business, developing products, or updating marketing plans, understanding how to conduct effective market research is key to success.

To conduct market research effectively, businesses must determine study goals, identify target consumers, collect and analyze data, and use the findings to make informed decisions. This process is vital for evaluating past performance, measuring changes over time, and addressing specific business needs. It guides businesses in product development, marketing strategies, and overall decision-making, ensuring a better ROI and providing an eye-opening view of the market through various research methods, whether conducted in-house or outsourced.

The purpose of marketing research

Conducting marketing research is more than just gathering data; it’s about turning that data into actionable insights to refine your business strategies. This process helps you understand what motivates your customers, enabling you to tailor your products and services to minimize risks from the start. Importantly, market research plays a pivotal role in measuring and enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty, which are critical for understanding key demographics, improving user experience, designing better products, and driving customer retention. Customer satisfaction is measured as a key outcome, directly linked to the success of marketing strategies and business activities.

For SaaS product managers, market research, including competitive analysis, is crucial. It evaluates past strategies and gauges the potential success of new offerings. This research provides essential insights into brand strength, consumer behavior, and market position, which are vital for teams focused on sales, marketing, and product development.

A key aspect of market research is analyzing customer attitudes and usage. This analysis offers detailed insights into what customers want, the choices they make, and the challenges they face. It helps identify opportunities in the market and aids in formulating effective strategies for market entry.

Overall, market research equips SaaS entrepreneurs with the knowledge to meet their target audience’s needs effectively, guiding product adjustments and innovations based on informed decisions.

Key components of market research

Conducting market research is analogous to preparing a cake, requiring precise ingredients in specific quantities to achieve the intended outcome. Within this realm, necessary components consist of primary and secondary data gathering, thorough analysis, and insightful interpretation.

Primary research techniques such as exploratory studies, product evolution inquiries, estimations of market dimensions and shares, and consumer behavior examinations play a crucial role in collecting targeted information that can be directly applied. These methods afford a deeper understanding of your target demographic, allowing for customized strategy development.

In contrast, secondary research enriches the specificity of primary findings by adding wider context. It taps into external resources encompassing works from other investigators, sector-specific reports, and demographics data, which provide an expansive yet less particularized landscape view of the marketplace.

The subsequent phase involves meticulous analysis of collated data offering unbiased perspectives critical for identifying deficiencies while recognizing emerging patterns. Technological progress now facilitates examination efforts on both structured and unstructured datasets effectively addressing large-scale analytical complexities.

Ultimately, it’s through expert-led interpretation that value transcends raw figures, yielding strategies grounded in deep comprehension. Akin to decoding recipes using selected ingredients—this interpretative step enables crafting optimal business maneuvers just as one would bake their ideal confectionery creation utilizing proper culinary guidance.

Types of market research: primary and secondary

Now that you know the importance of clear research objectives, let’s explore the different types of market research and the techniques available to achieve these goals. Market research methods can be divided into two main categories: primary research and secondary research . The choice between these depends on factors like your budget, time constraints, and whether you need exploratory data or definitive answers.

Primary research involves collecting new data directly from sources. This process is like mining for precious metals, as it requires using various methods to gather fresh insights.

• Surveys (here – in-app survey templates from Userpilot ).

• Interviews.

• Focus groups.
• Product trials.

This approach gives you first-hand insight into your target audience.

Conversely, secondary research uses already established datasets of primary data – which can add depth and reinforcement to your firsthand findings.

Conducting your own market research using primary research tools can be a cost-effective strategy, allowing businesses to gather valuable insights directly and tailor their research to specific needs.

Let’s look a bit deeper into them now.

What is primary market research?

Market research uses primary market research as an essential tool. This involves collecting new data directly from your target audience using various methods, such as surveys , focus groups, and interviews.

Each method has its benefits. For example, observational studies allow you to see how consumers interact with your product.

There are many ways to conduct primary research.

Focus Groups : Hold discussions with small groups of 5 to 10 people from your target audience. These discussions can provide valuable feedback on products, perceptions of your company’s brand name, or opinions on competitors. Additionally, these discussions can help understand the characteristics, challenges, and buying habits of target customers, optimizing brand strategy.

Interviews : Have one-on-one conversations to gather detailed information from individuals in your target audience.

Surveys : These are a common tool in primary market research and can be used instead of focus groups to understand consumer attitudes. Surveys use structured questions and can reach a broad audience efficiently.

Navigating secondary market research

While marketing research using primary methods is like discovering precious metals, secondary market research technique is like using a treasure map. This approach uses data collected by others from various sources, providing a broad industry view. These sources include market analyses from agencies like Statista, historical data such as census records, and academic studies.

Secondary research provides the basic knowledge necessary for conducting primary market research goals but may lack detail on specific business questions and could also be accessible to competitors.

To make the most of secondary market research, it’s important to analyze summarized data to identify trends, rely on reputable sources for accurate data, and remain unbiased in data collection methods.

The effectiveness of secondary research depends significantly on how well the data is interpreted, ensuring that this information complements the insights from primary research.

Qualitative vs quantitative research

Market research employs both qualitative and quantitative methods, offering distinct insights that complement each other. Qualitative research aims to understand consumer behaviors and motivations through detailed analysis, while quantitative research collects measurable data for statistical analysis.

The selection of qualitative or quantitative methods should align with your research goals. If you need to uncover initial insights or explore deep consumer motivations, qualitative techniques like surveys or interviews are ideal.

On the other hand, if you need data that can be measured and analyzed for reliability, quantitative methods are more suitable.

However, these approaches don’t have to be used separately. Combining qualitative and quantitative methods in mixed-method studies allows you to capture both detailed exploratory responses and concrete numerical data. This integration offers a comprehensive view of the market, leveraging the strengths of both approaches to provide a fuller understanding of market conditions.

Implementing market research tools: Userpilot’s role

Similar to how a compass is essential for navigation at sea, businesses need appropriate instruments to carry out effective market research. Userpilot’s suite of product analytics and in-app engagement tools are critical components for this purpose.

Acting as a Buyer Persona Research instrument, Userpilot’s product analytics provide key quantitative research capabilities. This helps clearly define and comprehend the attributes and behaviors of potential customers, providing you with insights into your ICP (Ideal Customer Persona), user preferences, and product-market fit.

Beyond product analytics, Userpilot offers robust in-app engagement features such as modals and surveys that support real time collection of market research information. These interactive features work synergistically with the analytical tools to enable companies to gather detailed data and feedback crucial for informed business decision-making.

Marketing research process: Step-by-step guide

Marketing research conists of several critical stages:

• Defining precise goals.
• Delving into the knowledge of your target demographic.
• Collecting and scrutinizing data.
• Revealing insights that can be translated into tangible actions.

Following these steps allows you to gather critical information that guides business decisions.

An effective research strategy is crucial and involves:

• Properly allocating funds.
• Formulating testable hypotheses.
• Choosing appropriate methods for the study.
• Determining the number of study participants.
• Considering external variables.

A well-planned strategy ensures that your market research is focused, efficient, and produces useful outcomes.

After collecting data, the next step is to analyze it. This involves comparing the data to your initial questions to draw conclusions relevant to your business strategies.

Userpilot makes your data analysis easier by providing handy analytics dashboards for key user metrics such as activation, engagement, core feature adoption, and retention out of the box:

Finally, you report the findings and the process, providing recommendations based on the evidence. This is like solving a puzzle: each piece helps to complete the overall picture.

Challenges and best practices in market research

Delving into market research comes with its own set of hurdles. Those conducting the research must deliver more profound insights within increasingly shorter timespans, and they need to cultivate strategic, continuous research methods to stay abreast of an ever-changing business landscape.

Ensuring high-quality data can be demanding due to issues such as disjointed tools or insufficient analytical expertise. New solutions like Userpilot are surfacing that make these obstacles less daunting by offering accessible and user-friendly options. Maintaining clear lines of communication with your market research team is crucial for achieving both punctuality and quality in outcomes.

The advantages of engaging in marketing research cannot be overstated.

Real-life examples of successful market research

Real-life examples of market research in the SaaS industry often showcase innovative approaches to understanding customer needs and product-market fit.

For instance, Slack, the communication platform, utilized extensive market research to identify gaps in communication tools and understand the workflows of teams. This led to the development of features that seamlessly integrated with other tools and catered to the needs of various team sizes and structures.

Another example is HubSpot, which conducted market research to understand the pain points of small to medium-sized businesses in managing customer relationships. The insights gained helped shape their all-in-one inbound marketing, sales, and service platform, which has become integral to their users’ daily operations. These examples demonstrate how SaaS companies can employ market research to inform product development, improve user experience, and strategically position themselves in a competitive market.

Choosing the right market research tools

For B2B SaaS product managers aiming to do market research, having the right set of tools can make a significant difference. Here’s a list of valuable SaaS tools that can be leveraged for effective market research:

• Userpilot : A comprehensive Product Growth Platform offering in-depth product analytics, a code-free in-app experience builder, bespoke in-app survey capabilities, and robust integration options with platforms like Salesforce and Hubspot. This tool is particularly useful for understanding user behavior, enhancing user engagement, and gathering targeted feedback.
• Qualtrics : Known for its powerful survey tools, Qualtrics helps businesses gather and analyze customer feedback effectively. Its advanced analytics features are ideal for testing market hypotheses and understanding customer sentiments.
• SurveyMonkey : A versatile tool that enables product managers to create, send, and analyze surveys quickly and easily. SurveyMonkey is suitable for gauging customer satisfaction and collecting feedback on potential new features.
• Mixpanel : Specializes in user behavior analytics, offering detailed insights into how users interact with your product. This is essential for identifying patterns and optimizing product features.
• Hotjar : Combines analytics and feedback tools to give teams insights into user behavior and preferences. Hotjar’s heatmaps and session recordings are invaluable for understanding the user experience on a deeper level.
• Tableau : A leading platform for business intelligence and data visualization, Tableau allows product managers to create comprehensive visual reports that can inform strategic decisions based on user data analysis.

Each of these tools provides unique functionalities that can assist SaaS product managers in conducting thorough market research, thereby ensuring that their products are perfectly aligned with user needs and market demands.

Measuring the impact of market research

The pivotal challenge for market research lies in demonstrating its return on investment (ROI) and overall influence on corporate success sufficiently enough to justify regular financial commitment from company leaders. The worth attributed to a market research firm hinges not only on their ability to deliver relevant and high-caliber information, but also on their pricing structures and their contribution towards propelling organizational growth.

To gauge how effectively business choices made based on market research findings succeed, various metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) are utilized. These numerical tools act as navigational aids directing enterprises toward achieving objectives while simultaneously verifying that efforts invested in conducting market analysis are yielding fruitful guidance.

Throughout our look at market research, we’ve seen its importance and impact. Our discussion covered the basics of market research, its key components, and different types, including both qualitative and quantitative methods, and the role of Userpilot’s tools. We’ve examined the details of the market research process, tackled challenges, identified best practices, and shared success stories. We also provided advice on choosing the right market research partner and how to measure the effectiveness of your market research.

In today’s data-driven world, comprehensive market research is crucial for companies that want to succeed. It acts like a guide, helping businesses navigate the complex market landscape. Start your own detailed research today, supported by insightful analytics to help you succeed.

Frequently asked questions

What is market research and why is it important.

Understanding your target market, honing business strategies, and making informed decisions are all essential components that depend heavily on effective market research. It offers objective insights to help avoid expensive errors and foresees the needs of customers .

What is the difference between primary and secondary market research?

Primary market research is characterized by the direct gathering of data, in contrast to secondary market research which leverages existing information from alternative sources for addressing research inquiries.

Such a distinction can guide you in selecting an approach that aligns with your precise needs for conducting specific research.

What are some examples of successful market research?

Examples of successful market research are evident in the operations of well-known companies such as Starbucks, Apple, and McDonald’s. They have harnessed this tool to fine-tune their business strategies and make decisions based on solid information.

By employing market research, these businesses have managed to gain insight into their customers’ desires and needs, which has contributed significantly to their success.

How can I choose the right market research partner?

Selecting an ideal market research ally involves identifying a firm that resonates with your project requirements, financial plan, and corporate goals while also verifying their track record of dependability and consistency via reviews from previous clients.

Best wishes on your endeavor!

How is the impact of market research measured?

The effectiveness of market research hinges on the precision, representativeness, and pertinence of its data, along with how successful business decisions are when they’re based on the findings from this research. These elements define the impact of the research conducted.

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It is important to point out that it is not always necessary to conduct research before attempting to solve a problem in marketing management. The manager may feel that he already knows enough to make a good decision. In a few instances, there may be no choice among alternatives and hence no decision to make. It is rather pointless to study a problem if there is only one possible solution. But in most business situations, the manager must make a choice among two or more courses of action. This is where fact-finding enters in to help make the choice.

Even if a manager would like more information in order to make a decision, it is not always wise for him or her to conduct the research that would be required. One reason is that the time involved may be too great. Another more compelling reason is that the cost of the research may exceed its contribution. In principle, it is easy to understand how such a cost test might be applied. If the cost of conducting the research is less than its contribution to the improvement of the decision, the research should be carried out. If its cost is greater, it should not be conducted. The application of this principle in actual practice is somewhat more complex. Finally, good research should help integrate marketing with the other areas of the business.

➢ How can marketing research help managers create successful product lines and customer relationships?

➢ Most people conduct research when buying certain "big ticket" items like cars or computers. How do you conduct marketing research for these types of items?

➢ How has the Internet impacted consumers and their purchase decisions? What about the impact on companies?

Capsule 7: Review

1. [1] Sources : John W. Verity, "Coaxing Meaning out of Raw Data," Business Week , February 3, 1997, pp. 134-138; "Researchers Integrate Internet Tools in Their Work," R&D Magazine , June 2000, vol. 24, No.6, p. E13; "Smarter Kids. Com Chooses Quadstons–The Smartest Customer Data Mining Solution," Business Week , July 31, 2000.

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10 Essential Methods for Effective Consumer and Market Research

When it comes to understanding the world around you, market research is an essential step.

We live in a world that’s overflowing with information. Sifting through all the noise to extract the most relevant insights on a certain market or audience can be tough.

That’s where market research comes in – it’s a way for brands and researchers to collect information from target markets and audiences.

Once reliant on traditional methods like focus groups or surveys, market research is now at a crossroads. Newer tools for extracting insights, like social listening tools, have joined the array of market research techniques available.

Here, we break down what market research is and the different methods you can choose from to make the most of it.

What is market research, and why is it critical for you as a marketer?

Market research involves collecting and analyzing data about a specific industry, market, or audience to inform strategic decision-making. It offers marketers valuable insights into the industry, market trends, consumer preferences, competition, and opportunities, enabling businesses to refine their strategies effectively.

By conducting market research, organizations can identify unmet needs, assess product demands, enhance value propositions, and create marketing campaigns that resonate with their target audience. 

This practice serves as a compass, guiding businesses in making data-driven decisions for successful product launches, improved customer relationships, and a stronger positioning in the business landscape. 

For marketers and insights professionals, market research is an indispensable tool. It helps them make smarter decisions and achieve growth and success in the market.

These 10 market research methods form the backbone of effective market research strategies. 

Continue reading or jump directly to each method by tapping the link below.

• Focus groups
• Consumer research with social media listening
• Experiments and field trials
• Observation
• Competitive analysis
• Public domain data
• Buy research
• Analyze sales data

Use of primary vs secondary market research

Market research can be split into two distinct sections: primary and secondary. These are the two main types of market research.

They can also be known as field and desk, respectively (although this terminology feels out of date, as plenty of primary research can be carried out from your desk).

Primary (field) research

Primary market research is research you carry out yourself. Examples of primary market research methods include running your own focus groups or conducting surveys. These are some of the key methods of consumer research. The ‘field’ part refers to going out into the field to get data.

Secondary (desk) research

Secondary market research is research carried out by other people that you want to use. Examples of secondary market research methods include studies carried out by researchers or financial data released by companies.

10 effective methods to do market research

The methods in this list cover both areas. Which ones you want to use will depend on your goals. Have a browse through and see what fits.

1. Focus groups

It’s a simple concept but one that can be hard to put into practice.

You bring together a group of individuals into a room, record their discussions, and ask them questions about various topics you are researching. For some, it’ll be new product ideas. For others, it might be views on a political candidate.

From these discussions, the organizer will try to pull out some insights or use them to judge the wider society’s view on something. The participants will generally be chosen based on certain criteria, such as demographics, interests, or occupations.

A focus group’s strength is in the natural conversation and discussion that can take place between participants (if they’re done right).

Compared to a questionnaire or survey with a rigid set of questions, a focus group can go off on tangents the organizer could not have predicted (and therefore not planned questions for). This can be good in that unexpected topics can arise; or bad if the aims of the research are to answer a very particular set of questions.

The nature of the discussion is important to recognize as a potential factor that skews the resulting data. Focus groups can encourage participants to talk about things they might not have otherwise, and others might impact the group. This can also affect unstructured one-on-one interviews.

In survey research, survey questions are given to respondents (in person, over the phone, by email, or via an online form). Questions can be close-ended or open-ended. As far as close-ended questions go, there are many different types:

• Dichotomous (two choices, such as ‘yes’ or ‘no’)
• Multiple choice
• Rating scale
• Likert scale (common version is five options between ‘strongly agree’ and ‘strongly disagree’)
• Matrix (options presented on a grid)
• Demographic (asking for information such as gender, age, or occupation)

Surveys are massively versatile because of the range of question formats. Knowing how to mix and match them to get what you need takes consideration and thought. Different questions need the right setup.

It’s also about how you ask. Good questions lead to good analysis. Writing clear, concise questions that abstain from vague expressions and don’t lead respondents down a certain path can help your results reflect the true colors of respondents.

There are a ton of different ways to conduct surveys as well, from creating your own from scratch or using tools that do lots of the heavy lifting for you.

3. Consumer research with social media listening

Social media has reached a point where it is seamlessly integrated into our lives. And because it is a digital extension of ourselves, people freely express their opinions, thoughts, and hot takes on social media.

Because people share so much content on social media and the sharing is so instant, social media is a treasure trove for market research. There is plenty of data to monitor , tap into, and dissect.

By using a social listening tool, like Consumer Research , researchers can identify topics of interest and then analyze relevant social posts. For example, they can track brand mentions and what consumers are saying about the products owned by that brand. These are real-world consumer research examples.

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Social media listening democratizes insights, and is especially useful for market research because of the vast amount of unfiltered information available. Because it’s unprompted, you can be fairly sure that what’s shared is an accurate account of what the person really cares about and thinks (as opposed to them being given a subject to dwell on in the presence of a researcher).

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4. Interviews

In interviews, the interviewer speaks directly with the respondent. This type of market research method is more personal, allowing for communication and clarification, making it good for open-ended questions. Furthermore, interviews enable the interviewer to go beyond surface-level responses and investigate deeper.

However, the drawback is that interviews can be time-intensive and costly. Those who opt for this method will need to figure out how to allocate their resources effectively. You also need to be careful with leading or poor questions that lead to useless results. Here’s a good introduction to leading questions .

5. Experiments and field trials

Field experiments are conducted in the participants’ environment. They rely on the independent variable and the dependent variable – the researcher controls the independent variable in order to test its impact on the dependent variable. The key here is to establish whether there’s causality.

For example, take Hofling’s experiment that tested obedience, conducted in a hospital setting. The point was to test if nurses followed authority figures (doctors) and if the authority figures’ rules violated standards (The dependent variable being the nurses, the independent variable being a fake doctor calling up and ordering the nurses to administer treatment.)

According to Simply Psychology , there are key strengths and limitations to this method.

The assessment reads:

• Strength: Behavior in a field experiment is more likely to reflect real life because of its natural setting, i.e., higher ecological validity than a lab experiment.
• Strength: There is less likelihood of demand characteristics affecting the results, as participants may not know they are being studied. This occurs when the study is covert.
• Limitation: There is less control over extraneous variables that might bias the results. This makes it difficult for another researcher to replicate the study in exactly the same way.

There are also massive ethical implications for these kinds of experiments and experiments in general (especially if people are unaware of their involvement). Don’t take this lightly, and be sure to read up on all the guidelines that apply to the region where you’re based.

6. Observation

Observational market research is a qualitative research method where the researcher observes their subjects in a natural or controlled environment. This method is much like being a fly on the wall, but the fly takes notes and analyzes them later. In observational market research, subjects are likely to behave naturally, which reveals their true selves. 

They are not under much pressure. However, if they’re aware of the observation, they can act differently.

This type of research applies well to retail, where the researcher can observe shoppers’ behavior by day of the week, by season, when discounts are offered, and more. However, observational research can be time-consuming, and researchers have no control over the environments they research.

7. Competitive analysis

Competitive analysis is a highly strategic and specific form of market research in which the researchers analyze their company’s competitors. It is critical to see how your brand stacks up to rivals. 

Competitive analysis starts by defining the product, service, brand, and market segment. There are different topics to compare your firm with your competitors. It could be from a marketing perspective: content produced, SEO structure, PR coverage, and social media presence and engagement. It can also be from a product perspective: types of offerings, pricing structure. SWOT analysis is key in assessing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

We’ve written a whole blog post on this tactic, which you can read here .

8. Public domain data

The internet is a wondrous place. Public data exists for those strapped for resources or simply seeking to support their research with more data.  With more and more data produced every year, the question about access and curation becomes increasingly prominent – that’s why researchers and librarians are keen on open data.

Plenty of different types of open data are useful for market research: government databases, polling data, “fact tanks” like Pew Research Center, and more. 

Furthermore, APIs grant developers programmatic access to applications. A lot of this data is free, which is a real bonus.

9. Buy research

Money can’t buy everything, but it can buy research. Subscriptions exist for those who want to buy relevant industry and research reports. Sites like Euromonitor, Statista, Mintel, and BCC Research host a litany of reports for purchase, oftentimes with the option of a single-user license or a subscription.

This can be a massive time saver, and you’ll have a better idea of what you’re getting from the very beginning. You’ll also get all your data in a format that makes sense, saving you effort in cleaning and organizing.

10. Analyze sales data

Sales data is like a puzzle piece that can help reveal the full picture of market research insights. Essentially, it indicates the results. Paired with other market research data, sales data helps researchers better understand actions and consequences. Understanding your customers, their buying habits, and how they change over time is important.

This research will be limited to customers, and it’s important to keep that in mind. Nevertheless, the value of this data should not be underestimated. If you’re not already tracking customer data, there’s no time like the present.

Choosing the right market research method for your strategy

Not all methods will be right for your situation or your business. Once you’ve looked through the list and seen some that take your fancy, spend more time researching each option.You’ll want to consider what you want to achieve, what data you’ll need, the pros and cons of each method, the costs of conducting the research, and the cost of analyzing the results.

Get it right, and it’ll be worth all the effort.

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What’s field marketing: A strategic guide for marketers

Learn how you can get real-time results with field marketing. Discover its strategies, benefits, and best practices for implementation.

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Field marketing goes beyond digital tactics and brings your brand directly into communities through personalized, real-world interactions.

Digital channels dominate marketing, but field marketing stands out by offering a personal, human connection often missing from online strategies. This hands-on marketing tactic allows brands to meet their audience where they live, work, and socialize to cultivate deeper engagement and stronger relationships.

Field marketing provides unique opportunities — like product demonstrations and local events — to increase visibility and gather valuable insights from a target demographic. Those insights can enhance marketing strategies and help you foster brand loyalty.

Here’s how to leverage field marketing in your business.

What’s field marketing?

Field marketing is a marketing strategy that meets customers where they are — in their local communities and environment. This approach moves away from broad, traditional marketing methods and instead focuses on building personal relationships through face-to-face touchpoints like trade shows, product demonstrations, and community events.

These interactions, focused on local audiences’ unique needs and preferences, allow for more tailored and impactful marketing experiences, making field marketing a powerful tool for brands to connect meaningfully with their audiences.

What does a field marketer do in an organization?

A field marketer is instrumental in planning and running field marketing campaigns. They focus on activities that connect the brand directly with its local audience and facilitate an essential link between the two. Key responsibilities of a field marketer include:

• Organizing events. Field marketers manage events such as community gatherings, product launches, and pop-up shops tailored to engage local communities.
• Conducting product demonstrations. They offer hands-on experiences that showcase the product’s benefits directly to customers.
• Engaging customers. Field marketers represent the brand in person. They respond to customer queries and ensure the brand’s presence is strong and consistent in local markets.
• Collecting feedback. They collect valuable feedback from local customers to help the brand adapt its strategies to better align with local preferences.
• Cultivating local partnerships. By building relationships with local businesses and organizations, field marketers enhance their brand’s credibility and outreach within that area.

Field marketing campaigns often employ a field marketing manager to act as the liaison between the centralized marketing team and local markets. They ensure that marketing efforts are consistent with the overall brand message and relevant to the unique characteristics of that local audience.

What are the benefits and solutions of field marketing?

Field marketing offers benefits and solutions tailored to local market engagement. Here are some key advantages:

• Delivers personalized experiences. Field marketing solutions excel in delivering personalized interactions . By understanding and addressing the specific preferences and needs of local audiences, field marketing creates relevant and resonant experiences. For example, a field marketing organization in New York City might highlight how a client’s transportation app simplifies subway navigation using the NYC metro line. This way, they address the daily challenges of local commuters while promoting their client’s offerings.
• Builds community. Participating in and organizing local events helps foster a sense of community around your brand. Regular interactions with locals over time enhance brand recognition and acceptance, making field marketing particularly beneficial in tightly knit communities that value familiarity and personal connections.
• Cultivates trust and credibility. Direct, face-to-face interactions at product demonstrations or Q&A sessions help build trust and credibility. This lets customers experience your offerings and engage with representatives directly, which makes them more likely to remember and trust your brand.
• Provides real-time feedback. During demonstrations, field marketers can gather real-time feedback that provides valuable insights that can inform marketing strategies and product development. For example, at an insurance trade show, a field marketer might walk potential customers through the onboarding process while noting any pain points they experience. This real-time feedback of the user’s journey can be more accurate than a survey where the user is not actively using the product.
• Enhances brand visibility. Organizing events with local influencers and small businesses can significantly enhance brand visibility within that community. Working with reputable local organizations lets you leverage their reputation and reach to help you generate more attention and lend credibility to your brand.

5 examples of field marketing strategies

A field marketing strategy is essential for building direct customer relationships and generating leads through personal interactions. Here are some effective approaches.

1. Product demonstrations and pop-up shops

When customers engage with your products firsthand and interact with your brand’s representatives, it puts a face and personality to your brand, strengthening the relationship.

For example, if you sell cookware, conducting a product demonstration in a grocery or appliance store might capture the attention of shoppers already thinking about cooking and kitchenware. That means they’ll be more receptive to your products. By offering strategic product placement opportunities, field marketing not only enhances the customer experience but also drives lead generation from local audiences.

2. In-store activations with retail partners

In-store activations are marketing initiatives conducted within retail spaces. They often involve interactive displays or branded areas designed to engage customers directly in a retail setting by showcasing products or services in an immersive and experiential way. These activations can range from product sampling to special promotional events, and they aim to improve customer engagement, draw attention to the brand, and drive sales.

By collaborating with retail partners for in-store activations, you tap into their established customer base and engage with potential customers in an environment they’re already familiar with.

For example, setting up a branded display for your tech products in a popular electronics store can attract tech-savvy shoppers who are likely interested in new gadgets and innovations. This strategic placement in a familiar environment draws in shoppers interested in the latest technology and enhances overall brand exposure in the market.

3. Customer success workshops

Customer success workshops are interactive sessions focused on educating and engaging existing customers about your products and services. These empowering workshops help customers get the most out of their purchases and are designed to enhance their overall experience and satisfaction with your brand. The workshops can cover various topics, ranging from basic product usage to advanced features and best practices.

Conducting customer success workshops provides value beyond the initial sale and reinforces your commitment to customer satisfaction and retention. These events demonstrate that your company truly cares about the entire buyer experience — from first purchase to lifelong use — which can drive increased customer advocacy and positive word-of-mouth.

If you run a software company specializing in enterprise project management (EPM) software, you could offer workshops to your clients demonstrating how to use your tools effectively. These sessions could include tips on optimizing workflows , using advanced features, and integrating the tool with other software. By helping buyers maximize their software use, you enhance the user experience and your reputation as a customer-focused brand.

4. Hosted networking events

Hosted networking events are gatherings that a company organizes to bring together industry professionals, potential clients, and partners. These events can range from informal mixers to formal conferences, and each provides a unique environment for attendees to interact, exchange ideas, and establish professional connections. Organizing such events allows your company to actively engage with key players in your industry and demonstrate expertise. By choosing relevant and cutting-edge topics, presenting insightful keynote speeches, and encouraging discussions on current business trends, you position your company as knowledgeable and influential.

Your team can also lead sessions and panels, which offer a direct platform to share your company’s innovation, insights, and solutions with a targeted audience. This networking can lead to collaborative projects, new business deals, and stronger professional ties.

Say your software development company specializes in artificial intelligence (AI) personalization . Hosting an event focused on emerging AI trends could attract various professionals interested in the latest industry innovations — be it future partners or customers. By establishing a space to encourage networking between these attendees, your event becomes a hub for knowledge sharing and future collaborations. Such events also bolster your brand’s reputation as an industry thought leader and go-to resource for expertise in this field.

5. Community engagement initiatives

Community engagement initiatives are outreach programs designed to interact with and contribute meaningfully to local communities. These initiatives can take various forms, including volunteer work, community events, and partnerships with local organizations. But no matter the form they take, engagement initiatives always focus on building a positive brand presence by actively participating in community development and addressing local needs.

Implementing this field marketing strategy lets your company establish meaningful relationships with the local community. It enhances brand reputation by demonstrating corporate social responsibility and a commitment to societal well-being. And community engagement also provides valuable insights into local market trends and customer preferences, which can help you develop more targeted advertising campaigns and product development strategies .

If your company specializes in sustainable products, for instance, organizing a community cleanup event and partnering with local environmental groups can strengthen your brand’s association with environmental stewardship.

How to plan a successful field marketing campaign

Organizing a successful field marketing campaign requires a strategic approach that combines market research with a deep understanding of your target audience. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you navigate this process effectively.

1. Set clear objectives

Begin by setting specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound ( SMART ) goals for your campaign to ensure clarity and effectiveness.

For example, if a beverage company aims to enhance brand awareness, a specific goal might be to increase brand recognition by 20% in a local area within three months through pop-up shops and local events. This clear, measurable, and time-bound marketing goal allows the company to track progress and evaluate the campaign’s impact on brand awareness so they can gauge the success and return on investment (ROI) of their field marketing efforts.

2. Understand your audience

Effective field marketing requires an intimate understanding of your target audience. To grasp their preferences, behaviors, and needs, conduct research such as analyzing demographic data, surveying prospective customers, and studying market trends.

If your enterprise offers advanced cloud computing solutions, it’s essential to understand the technological challenges that businesses in your target market face. This might involve gathering insights through surveys conducted with IT managers, analyzing industry-specific adoption trends, and conducting focus groups with industry professionals. Such insights let you tailor your field marketing strategies to speak directly to your audience’s needs, like hosting more customer success workshops to teach users how to effectively use your software instead of holding community engagement initiatives.

3. Choose effective channels

Selecting the right marketing channels is key to reaching your target audience effectively. To start, consider options like workshops, local partnerships, or street teams that align with your audience’s preferences. For example, a children’s book publisher might achieve better results by participating in school fairs and community reading events because these settings are more favorable to their younger audience than traditional retail promotions like pop-up stores.

4. Implement and monitor the campaign

After deciding on a channel and running your field marketing campaign, don’t forget to actively monitor its performance. Track key metrics like engagement rates and participant feedback, and pay close attention to overall reach. At this stage, being flexible and responsive to real-time feedback is crucial.

If your company hosts a booth at a major industry expo to showcase your latest web design tools, actively observe how attendees engage with your content. Instead of sticking to one planned approach, you might adjust your presentation tactics or provide more hands-on experience based on real-time reactions for better engagement. By being proactive in your implementation, you ensure your campaign remains on-budget , effective, and relevant throughout its duration.

5. Measure and analyze results

After the campaign, analyze its effectiveness against your initial objectives. Compare outcomes to your set objectives using quantitative data, such as sales figures and lead generation, and qualitative feedback, including customer opinions and staff observations.

For example, a field marketing campaign for a new sports drink might measure success based on increased sales in the targeted area and positive customer feedback received during the event. By conducting this post-campaign analysis, you gain crucial insights for understanding what worked and what didn’t, and those insights will help you improve future campaigns.

Complement your field marketing strategy

A robust online presence is crucial to complement your field marketing efforts, and Webflow simplifies this process by enabling in-house teams to efficiently create and manage websites and landing pages. Our platform’s customization features are especially beneficial for field marketing because they allow teams to quickly adapt webpages to reflect local events, promotions, or campaigns, ensuring your online experience mirrors your field marketing efforts.

Empower your team to design and manage websites that resonate with your audience. Explore Webflow Enterprise today and elevate your brand’s online and offline presence to new heights.

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The Research Behind Influencer Marketing

by Jacob Goldenberg, Andreas Lanz, Daniel Shapira, and Florian Stahl

The influencer endorsement market more than doubled from 2019 to 2021, growing from $6.5 billion to $13.8 billion ( Statista 2021 ). User-generated content networks like Instagram, LinkedIn, SoundCloud, Twitter, and YouTube fueled the growth as they transformed the customer targeting, acquisition, and retention process.

Influencers and their followings provide firms unique access to potential customers difficult to reach through channels like online banner advertisements. As a result, companies have found selecting powerful influencers to seed customer targets can drive marketing success ( Haenlein and Libai 2017 ).

But which influencers should firms target to find potential customers? Significant literature suggests high-status influencers with large followings are effective (e.g., Hinz et al. 2011 ). Such macro-influencers, or “hubs” ( Goldenberg et al. 2009 ), boost information dissemination in user-generated content networks and drive product adoption. More recently, researchers and practitioners have recognized the value of micro-influencers with only a few followers (e.g., Haenlein et al. 2020 ). Sometimes the generation gap between an influencer and potential customers leads to misalignment (Clegg et al. 2022).

Several recent publications offer important and actionable insights for individuals and firms attempting to seed customers in the evolving social media landscape.

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Selecting Influencers

Individual and corporate social network users can use their own profiles to shape their follower base through outbound activities. By targeting influencers with follows, private messages, likes, and reposts, they can trigger notifications in the influencers’ timelines and possibly elicit follow-backs. The strategy, especially relevant for small- and medium-sized enterprises, requires no monetary budget and, when successful, represents an unpaid endorsement from the influencer.

Outbound activities can trigger direct returns via follow-backs from influencers and indirect returns via follow-backs from influencers’ followers. Indirect returns rely on influencers reposting content.

Lanz et al. (2019) find that network users do not generally benefit from soliciting unpaid endorsements from macro-influencers with large followings because they are orders of magnitude less responsive than micro-influencers. Direct returns are therefore unlikely and risky. When macro-influencers do respond, the researchers find the indirect returns from their followers do not compensate for the high risk. Lanz and colleagues offer the first empirical evidence for micro-influencers’ effectiveness, finding them to be six times more effective than macro-influencers for growing a follower base of potential customers within two years.

The idea also applies to paid endorsements, as macro-influencers may be unreceptive to requests, regardless of compensation. According to Lanz and colleagues’ 2019 work, endorsements depend on the status difference between the solicitor and influencer. Beyond status difference, the solicitor for a paid endorsement must realize that an endorsement may positively bias the influencer’s content while decreasing its persuasiveness due to the affiliation ( Pei and Mayzlin 2021 ). For paid endorsements, it is important to specify the affiliation.

When selecting influencers, Valsesia, Proserpio, and Nunes (2020) find following fewer other users signals autonomy and enhances perceived influence. The researchers suggest that macro-influencers typically follow few others, while micro-influencers have more balanced follower-to-followee ratios.

Todri, Adamopoulos, and Andrews (2021) demonstrate that users may form a sense of social identity based on their physical location. Even in online environments geographical proximity matters for social influence.

Firms should also consider network overlap when selecting influencers. Overlap may occur among common followees, common followers, or common mutual followers. Peng et al. (2018) find return likelihood increases with network overlap. Although the researchers find that all forms of network overlap positively affect reposting (i.e., indirect returns), common followers are more important than common mutual followers. In a simulation study, the authors show that a 20% increase in network overlap is associated with a 13% decrease in influencer activation time.

Strengthening Follower Bases

Ansari et al. (2018) find that outbound activities can generate significant long-term impacts via follower base growth and content consumption, with follower base connectedness being critical—and offering considerable predictive power. Individuals and firms should therefore supplement their outbound efforts with activities to increase connectedness, such as additional opportunities for followers to interact on- or offline. The researchers focus on musicians and suggest concerts and fan gatherings as examples.

Chen, van der Lans, and Phan (2017) demonstrate that assuming a binary network structure, where users simply follow each other or not (e.g., Ansari et al. 2018 ; Lanz et al. 2019 ), can be misleading. The researchers therefore develop a multinetwork approach for activating influencers by inferring network connection weights based on features like recency and interaction intensity, as well as dissemination process. In an empirical application, they demonstrate relationship duration and private message exchanges generate a multinetwork extending beyond connections alone.

What value does growing a follower base of potential customers to support wide content dissemination deliver? Based on a Facebook field experiment in which they consider an incentive-based health and wellness program allowing customers to accumulate points for offline behaviors like exercising, Mochon et al. (2017) find that business page likes (i.e., followers) can translate into changes in offline behaviors, including purchases. Specifically, using social media platform functionality to acquire likes translates into a 8% greater influence on offline customer behaviors. (For more on the value of Facebook likes, see Colicev (2021) .)

For unpaid social network endorsements, the most basic form of influencer marketing, firms can capitalize on outbound activities like follows, private messages, likes, and reposts. However, activating micro-influencers can be more effective than approaching macro-influencers.

Firms must also consider geographical proximity as well as the number of followees and network overlap when selecting influencers for customer seeding. Moreover, marketers must increase connectedness among their own follower base to achieve long-term impacts, meaning they must carefully integrate each new follower into their existing egocentric network, as there is more to a connection than simply a follow.

Author Bios

Jacob Goldenberg is Professor of Marketing at Reichman University, Herzliya, Israel, and a Visiting Professor at Columbia Business School, New York, New York.

Andreas Lanz is Assistant Professor of Marketing at HEC Paris, Jouy-en-Josas, France.

Daniel Shapira is Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Ben-Gurion University, Beer Sheva, Israel, and a Permanent Adjunct Research Faculty at the University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany.

Florian Stahl is Professor of Marketing at the University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany.

Goldenberg, Jacob, Andreas Lanz, Daniel Shapira, and Florian Stahl (2021), “Influencer Marketing,” Impact at JMR , (February), Available at: https://www.ama.org/2022/02/16/the-research-behind-influencer-marketing/

Ansari, Asim, Florian Stahl, Mark Heitmann, and Lucas Bremer (2018), “Building a Social Network for Success,” Journal of Marketing Research , 55(3): 321–38. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.12.0417

Chen, Xi, Ralf Van der Lans, and Tuan Q. Phan (2017), “Uncovering the Importance of Relationship Characteristics in Social Networks: Implications for Seeding Strategies,” Journal of Marketing , 54(2): 187–201. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.12.0511

Clegg, Melanie, Reto Hofstetter, Lea Schindler, Olivia Deubelbeiss, Andreas Lanz, Martin Faltl, and Torsten Tomczak (2022), “Bridging the Generational Divide,” Harvard Business Review , Magazine Jan/Feb.

Colicev, Anatoli (2021), “The Real Value of Facebook Likes,” Impact at JMR , January. https://www.ama.org/2021/01/26/the-real-value-of-facebook-likes/

Goldenberg, Jacob, Sangman Han, Donald R. Lehmann, and Jae Weon Hong (2019), “The Role of Hubs in the Adoption Process,” Journal of Marketing , 73(2): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.73.2.1

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