ICT Market Research Market research involves the gathering and analysis of data to make important decisions. In addition a laptop can be used at the gathering stage as well as the analysis stage to speed up processes. Moreover, internet data gathering can be very cost effective because it reaches all customers who view the website and requires no staff and also customers are able to fill it in, in their own time. Therefore this data is more likely to be much more reliable as it is not rushed.

The use of social media The use of social media provides the interactivity that may help create some bonding between brands and consumers. This could lead to improved market research findings. Social media can provide a way to gain a greater understanding of what many customers love about brands and their product range.

Websites Websites automatically generate customer questionnaires. They may target everyone through the home page and focus on a subgroup such as browsers of John Lewis online interested in products such as baby products. Although these may be seen as an easy way to collect ‘free’ research data there are many disadvantages. For example setting up the programme and the automated data collection takes many hours.

Data Base Grocery shopping is now done with mostly loyalty cards for example TESCOS club card. This therefore provides the retailer with a multi-million user database which may be questioned to find out answers to Quantitative questions. Moreover, classic research on a small sample of the whole population can never strike to find out facts from big databases.