What is the difference between a marketing plan and a market research plan?? thanks?

MARKETING PLAN Market research - Why? No matter how good your product and your service, the venture cannot succeed without effective marketing. And this begins with careful, systematic research. It is very dangerous to simply assume that you already know about your intended market. You need to do market research to make sure they are on track. Use the business planning process as your opportunity to uncover data and question your marketing efforts. Your time will be well spent. Market research - How? There are 2 kinds of market research: primary and secondary. Secondary research means using published information such as industry profiles, trade journals, newspapers, magazines, census data, and demographic profiles. This type of information is available in public libraries, industry associations, chambers of commerce, vendors who sell to your industry, government agencies (Commerce Dept. and state and local development agencies), and the SBA Business Information Centers and One Stop Capital Shops. Start with your local library. Most librarians are pleased to guide you through their business data collection. You will be amazed at what is there. There are more online sources than you could possibly use. A good way to start is at the SBA site, http://www.sba.gov/; click the Outside Resources button for a great collection of resource links. Your Chamber of Commerce has good information on the local area. Trade associations and trade publications often have excellent industry specific data. Primary market research means gathering your own data. For example, you could do your own traffic count at a proposed location, use the yellow pages to identify competitors, and do surveys or focus group interviews to learn about consumer preferences. Professional market research can be very costly, but there are many books out that show small business owners how to do effective research by themselves. In your marketing plan, be as specific as possible; give statistics & numbers and sources. The marketing plan will be the basis, later on, of the all-important sales projection.