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市场营销是一门以单一目的业务部门，其目的是为消费者销售产品和服务。消费者行为是研究消费者如何与周围环境交互时购买或处置产品。它构成了营销心理学的基础，即为什么一个人选择另一种选择。全球社会竞争的加剧和文化的变化使营销成为一项具有挑战性的任务。因此，营销人员必须努力了解消费者的行为和司机背后的行为，以便为他们服务。重点应该是不同的因素，如消费者的态度，购买习惯，他们喜欢的颜色，他们喜欢的口味等。消费者行为的研究是当今企业成功的关键，也是市场研究实践的基本目的。

Marketing is a business discipline undertaken for one sole purpose, to enable sale of their product and service to consumers. The consumer behaviour is the study of how consumers interact with their surrounding environment when purchasing or disposing off the product. It forms the basis of marketing psychology i.e. why a person chooses one alternative over the other. The increasing competition and cultural shifts in societies across the globe have made marketing a challenging task. Therefore, marketers must strive to understand consumer’s behaviour and the drivers behind such behaviour in order to serve them well. Focus should be on varied factors like consumer attitude, buying habits, the colours they like, the tastes they prefer and so on. This study of consumer behaviour is critical to the success of businesses today and is the basic purpose of the practice of market research.

As per advertising guru David Ogilvy negligence of research in business is like ignoring decodes of enemy signals in a war. He recognized that people who enter the market without proper research face the risk of their hard work being blown up by the winds of change. In his book he has discussed the value of market research which can get information on expected consumer response to a product way before they are launched in the market thus saving millions. Companies like proctor and gamble (P&G) and Unilever realized this way before than others which added to their competitive advantage. Nowadays whether you are a manufacturer, a retailer, an MNC or a local store, consumer market research is inevitable in order for the business to succeed. This is the primary reason behind the phenomenal rise of market research agencies in the last few decades.

Qualitative Market Research 定性市场研究

Talking about market research, the most emerging practice now days is qualitative market research. Qualitative market research is the technique of market research that involves observation, analysis and interpretation of behaviour of a small number of people in their natural setting. The researchers ask broad open ended questions and collect descriptive data from participants. Unlike quantitative market research, where the focus is on finding trends and doing prediction, qualitative market research focuses on explaining behaviour. It helps in providing more in-depth understanding of human behaviour and the reasons that govern such behaviour (why and how). The three most commonly used techniques are:

Focus Group Discussions,
In depth interviews (on one to one basis), and
Observing participants in their natural environment i.e. Ethnography.
Out of these, focus group discussions are of the most common type. So much so that they have become synonymous with the term qualitative market research.

Focus Group Discussions (FGDs)

Focus group discussion was one of the foremost qualitative research tools available to the practitioners. It involves group of people sitting in an interview like setting. A typical focus group consists of 6-10 people who are unrelated to each other. They are brought together by a moderator. In the field ofmarketing, focus gr