Marketing research is generally divided into two categories: consumer market research and business-to-business (B2B) market research. Consumer marketing research studies the buying habits of individual people while business-to-business marketing research investigates the markets for products sold by one business to another.

Consumer market research is a form of applied sociology that concentrates on understanding the behaviors, whims and preferences, of consumers in a market-based economy, and aims to understand the effects and comparative success of marketing campaigns.

Thus marketing research is the systematic and objective identification, collection, analysis, and dissemination of information for the purpose of assisting management in decision making related to the identification and solution of problems and opportunities in marketing.

Marketing Research includes:

• Internal audit of company marketing activities and programs
• External audit of competitors
• Defining and segmenting target markets
• Analysis of current product and service offerings
• Research and development of new products and product innovations
• Analysis of current market climate for products and services
• Development of Unique Selling Propositions (USPs)
• Development of Features and Benefits proposals
• Interviews and customer surveys to gain qualitative and quantitative
  information
• Development of customer behavior and buying analysis as it relates to your
  product or service
• Identification of market trends and developing market opportunities