A major discipline of marketing whose main function is intelligence gathering and analysis on a particular market, industry, geography, customer group, competitors, or specific product or service area. Marketing campaigns are like war strategies: they are highly dependent upon good intelligence, before, during and after the event. In successful marketing campaigns, market research is vital to bringing a deeper understanding of the target market: its size, growth, segments, trends and dynamics, customer groupings, customer wants, needs and desires, competitors and their campaigns, demographics. (Oxford Dictionary of Marketing)
A particular audience or segment that have been identified as likely customers of a product or service. See also segmentation. (Oxford Dictionary of Marketing)
