I had no idea about how Sprint conducts market research before today. I reached out to a Market Researcher and was able to learn a lot. Sprint conducts both primary and secondary research, although we try to lean on the latter as much as possible for costs. A primary research study can cost from $20-60K. When we do commission primary research, we will internally design survey questions and then reach out to outside resource partners to execute the survey. Once we have the results, we will synthesize all the data in-house. Our core consumer marketing groups do more primary research than our business segment marketers, with the former doing a lot of CSAT surveys.
Peg, the employee I spoke with, explained how her job is in our MVNO segment, which include companies looking to use Sprint's network but do not own the infrastructure. Sales will ask Peg's group help with very specific business partner requests for analyzing a market for them. She'll utilize resources like MRI or Personicx for demographic research and IDC, ADI, E-Marketer, or Nielson for market information. The requests can involve producing qualitative or quantitative research. Only if the request is so specific that answers can't be found with our existing relationships will she seek out a primary study. An example she gave of something that would require primary research would be 'What ethnic group in the U.S. buys mobile phones for their kids under 10 years old in major metropolitan areas?'
My group has started with the IU library resources to find secondary research applicable to the hybrid and electric vehicle industry. We've already looked at Frost&Sullivan, Gartner, Marketresearch.com, and Passport. I was able to find a report from 2010 about the worldwide electric vehicle and plug-in hybrid markets. The price tag was over $3K for the report! Glad IU is footing the bill for that one.
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