Authorization, Control, and Evaluation of Marketing Research Projects.

Relatively little information has been published to date about three important aspects of marketing research management: authorization, control, and evaluation of marketing research projects. The purpose of this study is twofold: (1) to undertake a survey of current practices in these areas, and (2) to suggest eclectic procedures that may be useful to research practitioners. It is somewhat surprising that this sampling of marketing research departments (particularly with its marked skew toward larger companies) indicates relatively small reliance on systematic methods of internal communication, control, and information retrieval. A minority of respondents regularly circulates lists of current project titles to management. Less than half regularly prepare summaries or abstracts of research projects (see Table 3). And the majority have no formal system for evaluating the worth of marketing research projects (see Table 4). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]