The process of designing and conducting marketing research includes sophisticated methods of many disciplines: sociology, psychology, marketing and microeconomics, consumer behavior, psychometrics, statistics and qualimetry. Like other knowledge-intensive areas, market research characterized a lot of fine places that may cause critical errors study. We consider them in order of processes typical of quantitative market research. Research design flaws at the design stage of marketing research, as in while laying the foundation of the building, determine its reliability. When you apply to a marketing agency with specific information gaps, experts offer research methods focused on solution is to your tasks. It is important that the elected methods conform to the requirements of efficiency, provide for an optimal combination of the result and value for money. Recently, one of the capital marketing agencies investigated the preferences of Muscovites in the market of automobile tires, electing for this method of mass survey in the format of ‘face-to-face’.

In this task was only to anticipate market proportions of brands and tire sizes without personalization consumers. To conduct 1,600 interviews were spent six weeks and tens of thousands of dollars. It is clear that the method of observation, for example, the same results could be obtained much faster and much cheaper. The above example illustrates the wastefulness of resources but not distorted information. There are many other, far more dangerous situations where design errors directly affect the reliability of information received. Most often these errors are related to the definition of the population and sample design.