Role of marketing research in defining strategic options and the factors affeccting the process

Continuously changing circumstances and the increasing uncertainty in the business environment force firms to adapt to the varying conditions. By defining their strategic options firms can use their resources, competences, skills and the knowledge they posses in a flexible way under the dynamic and competitive business environment. This research principally aims to detect whether the largest private firms in Turkey make use of marketing research as a resource in the process of defining strategic options. Besides, it is also tried to detect whether market orientation as an organizational culture, marketing research perception, and environmental and technological turbulences as exogenous factors influence use marketing research in firms.The research was conducted with 204 firms from the Largest 500 Private Firms of Turkey ranking that had participated the survey. Structural Equation Modeling was used in testing the anticipated theoretically relations. Findings of the research showed that largest private firms of Turkey were in an effort to develop strategic options with respect to their present positions and possible conditions in the future. In addition, the research revealed that firms use the knowledge generated through marketing research in monitoring the contingencies and treats that might occur due to environmental conditions, searching for ways to protect themselves from the consequences and detecting opportunities caused by changing circumstances. Furthermore, organizational factors such as market orientation and marketing research perception, and environmental factors create some kind of a necessity for making use of marketing research.