It should not be surprising that marketing research plays a large role in a socialistic economy. While it is not all in the same direction and with same focus on marketing research in the free enterprise countries, those areas in which marketing is used are highly developed and extremely well implemented with audio visual technologies. Under planning the need for marketing research is vital. It is carried out by large national institutions of marketing research. These agencies service the planning board, the ministries, manufacturing enterprises along with audio visual companies and, to an increasing extent, foreign marketers.

The research institutes specialize in forecasting demand for specific goods and in obtaining data for and working with econometric models. Attitude research and various behavioral is much less important.

The number of studies conducted as well as the sample sizes of specific studies can be quite large. In Hungary, for example, the National Institute of Marketing Research operates six panels of 3,000 families each, with questionnaires mailed every two or three months and with 90 percent cooperation rates. The statistics descriptions of this panel operation are sufficient to cause only to western marketing researchers.