After carefully carrying out the various steps in marketing research process, the researcher has reduced the possibility of committing major mistakes. This means the research conducted would give concrete and useful results. In evaluating the quality of research project and making a value judgment on competency of the researcher, there are four key characteristics to consider; (i) scientific method, (ii) creative research, (iii) multiple methods, and (iv) the value measured against the cost of information.

The effective marketing research is based in the scientific method which is used to conduct the research. The researcher gathers the data, makes these verifiable, objective, and factual. He also develops hypotheses and tests validity scientifically through statistical tools. So in a good marketing research, there is no scope for the use of intuition or hunches.

 Creativity is an essential feature of marketing research. When the respondents do not give true answers or are unwilling to co-operate with the interviewer, in that case indirect methods like projective techniques for interviewing must be used. These techniques make the respondents to reveal the details which they are unwilling to tell in direct interviews. It needs a lot of thinking and planning to organize that type of interviews. Therefore, only an industrious and creative researcher can carry out  research with the help of projective techniques. Projective techniques has been illustrated in detail later on in the chapter on Motivation Research.

A scientific and creative researcher does not rely not his single method for collecting data as well as for analyzing the. A number of methods are available for collection and analyzing the data. The creative researcher always used more than one method for collection of data (viz., personal interviews, telephone surveys, mail surveys observations, and experimentation). Similarly, for the purpose of analysis also he may use different available statistical techniques depending upon the type of data gathered. This makes results of the research projects more reliable and scientific.

An experienced, creative and scientific researcher always evaluates the research result vis-à-vis expenditure incurred on carrying out the research. The decision regarding eh method of data collection research design to be used, and analysis techniques to be employed must be made on the basis of cost-benefit analysis of the probable research results. This cost and value comparison will make research most scientific and leave a little scope for malpractices like creation of bias, manipulation of research results, etc.

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