To provide marketers and managers with the information they need to make good decisions, marketing-oriented organisations are increasingly investing in developing and maintaining effective marketing information systems (MIS). These systems consist of people, equipment and procedures committed to identifying, gathering and analysing relevant market information.

According to Malhotra (2007) the purposes of gathering market research information are to:
- identify and define marketing opportunities and problems
- generate, refine and evaluate marketing actions
- monitor marketing performance
- improve the understanding of marketing as a process.

The various sources and methods for gathering primary and secondary data will be
discussed in more depth in following sections, but before considering these it is important to understand that most organisations these days operate in very dynamic markets. Therefore the purpose of a Marketing Intelligence System (MIS) is to provide managers with marketing information and intelligence that is:
- relevant—the right information directed at the sorts of decisions that managers need to make
- reliable—the information is accurate and the quality is consistent
- timely—the information is available in time to allow effective decision making.

Consumer information and intelligence refers to information that enables you to more fully understand a target audience's behaviour and motivations. Much of the information that marketers need to develop marketing strategies, especially segmentation strategies, is based on secondary data.

Product and media consumption patterns: Identifying patterns in the way consumers use products and/or media(what they read or watch or listen to, how much time they spend surfing the net, what sites they visit, etc) can help you better understand and cater to customers' specific needs.

Market trends: It is particularly important to be familiar with trends in what is happening in the marketplaces in which your organisation competes because you never know when a window of opportunity for product or market development or threats to existing strategies and positions may emerge.

Competer Intelligence: Competitor intelligence involves gathering timely, relevant information about your organisation's existing and potential competitors, what they are doing in the market and what they are likely to do in the future.

Primary data can be collected by a variety of methods, the most common of which are: surveys, focus groups, in-depth interviews, observational research. While these have been increasingly popular over many decades, electronic marketing resources are making the implementation of these methods of data collection far more efficient and cost-effective than in the past.

In the previous sections we discussed how we can acquire primary and secondary data for important marketing purposes. However, as we have noted before, the information and data acquired by organisations is only as valuable as the knowledge it can provide when analysed and interpreted. To be useable it must be organised, structured and appropriately analysed. Therefore, the most important electronic marketing technologies are the database systems that can be used to store and manage this information.

From a marketing perspective, the more deeply we understand customers, the
easier it is to identify ways to create and maintain customer value, and develop the marketing strategies that deliver it. It is not really sufficient, particularly in a competitive environment, for a marketer simply to identify, assess and evaluate groups of customers according to common characteristics (segmentation). Once the customer has been recognised, successful marketing is based on a deeper understanding of the customer's behaviour: the way the customer searches for, evaluates, selects, purchases and uses products. The area of marketing study that reveals this information is called 'consumer
behaviour'.

Before getting into detail about the mechanics of how people make decisions to buy, it is important to understand that when we talk about people being 'buyers' we are only talking about one of the many roles that people play in a buying decision. In any purchase or 'buying or choosing' decision there may be up to five different roles involved.
- The Initiator
- The Influencer
- The Decider
- The Buyer
- The User