POSTED BY: | February 15, 2021

One thing I didn’t expect when I decided I wanted to chase the dream of being a market researcher is -there is a huge difference between doing market research specifically for the company you work for and conducting market research for other companies. I realized I wanted to pursue a career in this field during my market research class that my marketing major required at Ball State University. I was told this was rare; not many students pursue this field, with most professionals “falling” into this field by happenstance. Important advice I would give recent grads that want to explore this field is to think about internal and external market research and which they might prefer. Some things to think about for each research type:

Being a market researcher internally, you will have a breadth of knowledge on your customers and products which will help you find important consumer and marketing insights within your research that an external analyst might miss. However, the research story may be guided by what your company wants to hear, and the focus could be narrow.

As an outsider, you won’t have large biases toward the research or process since you don’t have any stake in the result (at least, you better not have biases!). The research tells its own story, and, in my experience, you deal with many more types of research tools and methods.

If you have questions on the market research industry – just ask someone, anyone, in the field to answer some questions, like I did. I even had a recent grad ask me to answer market research questions. The worst someone can say is no!