Define the Five-Step Marketing Research Approach and discuss the importance of research in marketing.

You are the marketing manager for a local nonprofit charity whose funding is derived from membership fees. You have noticed a severe drop in new memberships and a decline in repeat memberships, which is threatening your organization’s ability to survive and grow. You have decided to implement the Five-Step Marketing Research Approach to help clarify the problem and develop strategies for implementation.

• Define the Five-Step Marketing Research Approach and discuss the importance of research in marketing. 
• Describe each step of the Marketing Research Approach in detail and create a plan of attack to explain how each stage should be implemented.
• Define the target market that you are striving to bring into this organization and describe the methods of research that you will use to identify these groups of people.
• Define service differentiation. Provide an example that illustrates how the local nonprofit charity in the scenario can use differentiation to help increase the target market’s interest.
• Explain how differentiation will help position the charitable organization within its defined market.