„ Ştefan cel Mare” University

marketing research in tourism 
Classification JEL: M31
 
 
Introduction
For an enterprise, the market knowledge never represents an aim. It’s about investigating 
the points where the answer will function further. The enterprise will put right its efforts of 
knowing the commercial environment on three levels: global level, sections level and individual 
level (Dubois, 1995). 
 
Marketing research
Imagination, thinking and bravery remain important qualities for a successfully decision 
making person. The research is realised by managerial competences, but they aren’t 
interchangeable (Luck, 1970). 
The marketing research can be defined as scheduling, systemic collecting, data correlation 
and analysing in order to helping the manager and its organization to make decisions (Halloway, 
2004). 
In practice, there are always the requirements that the managers take decisions having less 
than appropriate information. The cost of obtaining additional information must be measured in 
time and money and is always related to the perspective of winning or losing in making decision.
The marketing research contains techniques and specific methods of collecting, analysing 
and data processing regarding enterprising market, with the aim of offering a support of decision 
making and marketing strategies.
Taking the consideration the domain in which the marketing studies are used can be 
identified six types of studies:

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1. market and clientage studies, which are offering information regarding the size of 
markets and the market segments, market share of touristical destinations, operators and 
touristical products, tourist’s characteristics and motivations, future market prognosis, the 
consumer’s behaviour study, a.s.o.
2. product (services) studies, which are offering information about the opportunities 
regarding creating or launching new touristical products or services, characteristics of the 
products which are demanded by consumers, location of the products comparing with 
competitors’ location, product life circle stage.
3. promotional activities studies, from which it can be run into conclusions regarding the 
most effective promoting methods, messages and promotional supports with the biggest impact, 
the most appropriate channels for a certain campaign, the evaluation of promotional campaigns.
4. distribution study, whose aim is to identity the best settlements for tourism agencies, 
the evaluation of efficiency, comparisons between different types of distributions (intensive, 
selective, exclusive), a.s.o.
5. sales study is dealing with personal sales, efficiency of sales techniques evaluation, 
establishing the paying methods, indicating the active areas for each seller, detecting client’s 
demands towards seller’s behaviour.
6. marketing environment study is furnishing information about marketing macro 
environment with its six components: natural, economical, political, legislative and technological, 
demographic/socio - cultural environment.