Becoming a director of market research requires personal suitability, appropriate education, successful experience, and management skills. A bachelor’s degree in market research, marketing, or a quantitative field is required, along with around 10 years of experience and five years in management. Strong attention to detail, effective communication, and leadership skills are necessary traits. The director must align research with the company’s needs and lead the department in developing actionable data.
To become a director of market research requires a combination of personal suitability for a career in market research, education appropriate for career performance, successful experience in the field, history of managing market research and developing management skills at the strategic level. The prospective director of market research should begin by assessing your skills, temperament and work history to determine suitability, followed by assessing educational needs, if any. Successful fieldwork is the typical next step, during which time management skills and experience can also be developed.
A director of market research is responsible not only for market research projects, but also for a company’s overall market research function, so the ability to strategically align actual research with the company’s needs is a requirement. Several characteristics, however, are typical of market research, be they researchers, managers or directors. These traits include strong attention to detail; be able to derive useful information from the collected data; be an effective communicator, both orally and in writing; and have strong planning, budgeting, and leadership skills. To become a director of market research, a good first step is to dispassionately compare personal habits and experiences with these necessary traits to determine whether the field can provide a rewarding career and a real chance of success.
Education and experience are required to become a market research director. Typically, a bachelor’s degree is the lowest level of acceptable academic performance, and a master’s degree is useful. A bachelor’s degree must be in market research, marketing, or some quantitative field such as statistical analysis. A master’s degree can be in general business or marketing studies. To become a director of market research, expect to have around 10 years of successful experience in the field, with around five of those years in management.
At the entry level, market research requires extensive data collection and analysis. A market research manager should typically also be able to oversee the design of market research to meet the company’s objectives; lead a team through the project or sometimes through multiple projects simultaneously; and then being able to effectively community the results of the projects to the end users of the data. To become a Director of Market Research requires the aforementioned skills, as well as the ability to work at the highest levels of a company, understand the company’s strategy, and lead the Market Research department in developing actionable data to help achieve the company’s objectives.
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