From a social marketing perspective, market research:

• Aids with strategic planning
• Acts as a navigational aid
• Enables client understanding

Essential to consider why, who, what, how, and also how many (if also carrying out quantitative market research).

Why? – the Social Marketing problem – understanding behaviour
Who? – the stakeholders to focus on
What? – qualitative: interviews, focus groups, questionnaires *
How? – use existing secondary data or gather new primary data specifically for this research problem
How many? – use surveys, audits, randomised controlled trials

* There is a need to be aware of Social Desirability Response bias when conducting qualitative market research. This can be countered to a degree by using ‘projective techniques’ – unstructured and indirect questioning.

See also Chapter 5 of Hastings & Domegan, 2014 for more.