AQA A-level Business | Unit 3.1.3 Market Research
What market research really tells you, and how much you can trust it.
Before a business spends money on a new product, it often asks customers what they think. But a market research survey hands you a number, and a number can look far more certain than it really is. In this activity you find out what that number is actually worth.
You have just joined Pell & Partners as a researcher. Different clients come to the agency with the same problem: a big decision to make, and they all want a simple yes or no. Your job is to run the research and tell them what it really says, then help them make a choice they can feel sure about.
One concept: a market research result is a range, not a guarantee. A bigger, better survey makes that range narrower, so you can trust it more.
AQA A-level Business | Unit 3.1.3 Market Research
AQA A-level Business | Unit 3.1.3 Market Research
Pell & Partners
Drag right to survey more people and watch the range get narrower. Every extra person costs money, so precision is not free.
Asking to be more sure makes the range wider: the more certain you want to be, the wider the range has to be.
AQA A-level Business | Unit 3.1.3 Market Research
A single number from a survey looks like a promise, but it is only a best guess. The real information is the range around it (the confidence interval). To decide, you look at where the whole range sits against the line the business needs. If the whole range clears the line, you can act with confidence. If the range straddles the line, you cannot promise it either way: survey more to tighten it, or hold. And if it stays straddling however much you survey, the answer is genuinely on the edge, and the honest call is that you cannot be sure. A bigger survey buys a narrower range but costs money, and asking to be more certain makes the range wider, not narrower.