Market Research Cheat Sheet 2026

The 30 highest-yield Market Research facts, distilled from real exam questions. Print it, save it as a PDF, or study it here — free, no sign-up.

1. What is 'price-value mapping' in competitive analysis? → Plotting brands on a matrix showing their perceived value relative to their price point
2. What is 'respondent fatigue' in the context of qualitative research? → Participants losing engagement or giving superficial answers due to lengthy sessions
3. What is the primary goal of ethnographic research in market research? → To observe and understand consumer behavior in natural contexts through immersive study
4. Which research approach involves studying a phenomenon in its natural setting without manipulation? → Naturalistic observation
5. Which qualitative method involves a researcher joining a community and participating in daily life to gain insight? → Participant observation
6. Which sampling method ensures every member of the population has an equal chance of being selected? → Simple random sampling
7. In a between-subjects experimental design, what happens? → Different participants are assigned to different conditions
8. Which term refers to the process of assigning codes or labels to segments of qualitative data during analysis? → Coding
9. What does a 'confidence interval' represent in market research? → A range of values within which the true population parameter likely falls
10. What is a key advantage of in-depth interviews (IDIs) over focus groups? → They reveal individual perspectives without group conformity bias
11. What is 'benchmarking' in competitive market research? → Comparing a company's performance metrics against industry leaders or key competitors
12. What is 'discriminant analysis' used for in market research? → Predicting group membership based on a set of predictor variables
13. What does 'brand equity' measurement in consumer research assess? → The added value a brand name gives to a product beyond its functional attributes
14. What is 'price sensitivity research' designed to measure? → How consumer purchase likelihood changes in response to price variations
15. What is 'share of wallet' research measuring? → The percentage of a customer's total category spending captured by a specific brand
16. What is 'cluster analysis' used for in market research? → Grouping respondents with similar characteristics into distinct segments
17. What does 'correlation' measure in market research data analysis? → The strength and direction of the linear relationship between two variables
18. What is a control group in experimental market research? → The group not exposed to the experimental variable, used as a baseline
19. What is 'perceptual mapping' used for in market research? → Visualizing consumers' perceptions of brands relative to competitors on key dimensions
20. What is 'affect heuristic' in consumer decision-making research? → When consumers use their emotional response to a stimulus as a shortcut in decision-making
21. What is 'shopper marketing research' focused on? → Understanding consumer behavior at or near the point of purchase
22. What is a 'leading question' in survey design? → A question that subtly suggests the desired answer, biasing the respondent's reply
23. In conjoint analysis, what are respondents asked to do? → Rank or rate product profiles to reveal attribute importance weights
24. What is 'structural equation modeling' (SEM) used for in market research? → Testing complex relationships among multiple latent and observed variables simultaneously
25. What is 'factor analysis' used for in market research? → Reducing a large number of variables into a smaller set of underlying factors
26. What is the primary purpose of a research hypothesis in market research? → To provide a testable prediction about the relationship between variables
27. What drawbacks are there to performing field research? → It's an expensive and time consuming process
28. What is the crucial factor that will determine the breadth of any particular export marketing research? → All of the above
29. What is 'Bayesian analysis' in market research? → A statistical approach that updates probability estimates as new evidence is incorporated
30. In consumer behavior research, what is the 'consideration set'? → The subset of brands a consumer actively evaluates when making a purchase decision