Objects affect the 3 steps.

The foregoing discussions illustrate how different marketing management situations may affect the first three steps of the marketing research process and the types of research eventually undertakes Some situations such as trying to define a problem, may only call for informal investigations at the outset. When a company is trying to identify a potential marketing opportunity, it may be most appropriate to use some type of exploratory research. When developing a marketing plan, often managers will want detailed descriptions of certain market or consumer characteristics, and these are usually obtained through descriptive research design. If managers are faced with choosing between two or more alternatives, they may use experimentation to identify which alternative is preferable. You should realize that these discussions represent an oversimplified starting point for their understanding of how different marketing management situations can affect the first three steps of the marketing research process.