Market Research Analysts

A Day in the Life

When you decided to become a marketing specialist, you were pleased to discover that you were entering one of the fastest-growing industries around. Although you love the work that you do every day in its own right, it doesn't hurt that you enjoy an envy-inducing level of job security.

Market research analysts work in many different fields, and they're often retained as in-house researchers by the larger companies for which they work. While you knew a few aspiring researchers who went into business for themselves or took jobs with advertising firms, you decided that this approach wouldn't provide the security that you desired.

Accordingly, you chose to take a job with a well-known clothing company that's based close to where you attended college. You generally work on a full-time basis, with occasional overtime stints close to project deadlines.

Since you're not currently operating under a tight deadline, you arrive at work at 8:15 a.m., greet your colleagues and proceed to your cubicle. Although your firm's lead market research analyst has her own office, you're still working in the bullpen. Personal connections are quite important in this industry, however, and you're confident that you're making a great impression on your superiors.

Today, you'll continue to work on a long-running project that aims to compile a range of survey and focus-group data into a broad "snapshot" of a particular target demographic. Earlier in the month, you helped to compile a series of questionnaires that asked recipients about their clothing purchasing habits over a pre-determined period of time. Separately, other members of your team conducted focus-group research to gauge consumers' responses to specific styles and fashion choices.

It's now your responsibility to tabulate all of this information and use powerful statistical analysis software to find trends and correlations within the data. It's a painstaking process, but you're confident that it will pay off for the rest of your firm's marketing and design team. The trends that you spot will help the company make money-saving decisions about what, and to whom, it should be marketing.

After a quick lunch break, you switch gears and begin adding to a report that you've been working on. Along with your co-authors, you've been investigating the effectiveness of a particular advertising campaign. In the report, you use sales figures in the campaign's target locations as well as more focus-group data to show that the push has been successful. You just hope that your superiors feel the same way.

Just before 5 p.m., you gather up your belongings and bid your coworkers good evening. Tomorrow, you'll be ready to put the finishing touches on your report and present it to your firm's entire marketing team.