Market Research Internship: Learn to Analyse the Market and the Competition

What a market research internship covers

A market research executive (chargé d’études marketing in France) helps product, brand or sales teams make decisions on objective evidence rather than hunches. The work sits between the internal request, the gathering of information and the recommendation. An internship in this field puts you at the heart of that chain, often on a clearly bounded part of a larger project.

Two kinds of employer take interns. Research departments inside a brand, a bank, a retail chain or a manufacturer commission and use studies. Specialist research institutes and firms, for their part, carry out surveys on behalf of their clients. Day-to-day life differs: on the advertiser side, you define needs and follow suppliers; on the institute side, you design questionnaires, run the fieldwork and produce the analyses.

Concrete tasks, from question to deliverable

According to the job descriptions published by Apec for the profession, the work is organised in broad stages: gathering the teams’ needs, writing a brief, choosing a qualitative or quantitative approach, drawing up the questionnaire, processing the data and then writing recommendations. An intern usually takes on one or two of these at a time.

• Rephrasing a product manager’s request into one or two precise research questions.
• Writing or proofreading a questionnaire, or an interview guide for semi-structured conversations.
• Following the fieldwork: reminders, checking quotas, spotting inconsistent answers.
• Cleaning a dataset, producing frequency tables and cross-tabulations, and picking out the differences that matter.
• Putting together a clear summary for readers in a hurry.

Competitor monitoring often completes these tasks: comparing product ranges, displayed prices, marketing promises and public customer reviews.

Qualitative, quantitative, desk research: choosing the right method

The quantitative approach

It measures and compares: satisfaction rates, purchase intention, awareness. It needs a sufficiently large sample and an unambiguous questionnaire. The intern learns the logic of quotas, how to read a margin of error and caution when numbers are small.

The qualitative approach

Individual interviews, discussion groups, observation in shops or online: it explains motivations and obstacles. The results cannot be generalised as percentages; they shed light on the why. Preparing an interview grid and transcribing faithfully is an excellent exercise.

Desk research

It draws on existing sources: industry reports, public statistics, competitors’ websites, the trade press. It costs little and is often the starting point before launching a survey. Learn to note the date and origin of every piece of data.

Who can apply and with what background

The profession is mostly prepared for from bachelor’s and master’s level. The routes most often mentioned mix marketing, statistics, economics, management, sociology or information science. Engineering schools specialising in statistics, such as Ensai, offer specialisations linked to marketing and customer insight, which shows that the quantitative route is not reserved for business schools.

The profiles sought for an internship combine three things: comfortable with numbers, able to write clearly, curious about consumer behaviour. There is no need to be an expert: being able to use a spreadsheet, knowing the basics of descriptive statistics and having already run a small survey in a university project is enough to stand out. Some use of an analysis package or an online survey tool is a plus.

Agreement, length and pay

In France, a training internship takes place under a three-party agreement between you, your school or university and the host organisation. It sets out the assignments, the dates, the hours and how you will be assessed. Its length is capped by regulations at six months per host organisation and per year of study, and a payment (gratification) is due once the internship exceeds a certain length.

The minimum amount is set by regulations and changes over time: check it with your school or with the organisation before signing. Some institutes and large companies pay more than the minimum, others stick to it. Read the agreement carefully: the assignments written down must match those described to you at the interview.

Finding an offer and preparing your application

Offers are published on the careers sites of institutes and advertisers, on student platforms and by schools’ placement services. Recruitment for an end-of-studies internship is often prepared several months ahead; shorter internships are decided later. Professional marketing associations such as Adetem organise events and studies that help you spot the topics of the moment and meet practitioners.

1. State in your CV the methods and tools you have used: online questionnaire, spreadsheet, statistical software.
2. Attach, with your institution’s permission, an extract from a university survey report showing how you write and analyse.
3. In your letter, cite a recent public study from the sector you are aiming at and say what it taught you.
4. Prepare a research question for the interview: you will often be asked how you would approach a concrete problem.

Fictional example: understanding abandoned online baskets

By way of illustration, imagine a retailer selling small household equipment whose e-commerce manager notices that many visitors leave the site at the payment stage. They ask for a study. The intern begins by reframing: is it a problem of delivery charges, trust, the purchase journey or comparison with a competitor?

They propose three steps. First, a desk analysis of public reviews and the purchase journeys of the two main competitors. Then eight interviews with customers who recently abandoned a basket. Finally, a short questionnaire sent to part of the customer base. In the debrief, they present what the verbatim comments suggest, what the questionnaire measures, and what neither source allows them to claim. The manager then chooses a specific test rather than a complete redesign.

Common mistakes to avoid during the internship

• Concluding too quickly from a sample of a few dozen respondents without saying so.
• Asking leading questions that suggest the answer the client wants.
• Confusing correlation with cause: two things that move together do not necessarily explain each other.
• Hiding the limits of the method: better to write them down than to let them be discovered in a meeting.
• Delivering a document that is too long: a one-page summary with the three key messages and a methodological appendix beats an eighty-page slide deck.
• Neglecting confidentiality of customer data, verbatim comments and results before circulation.

Ask your tutor for a progress check regularly: it avoids unpleasant surprises and shows you are organised.

After the internship: moving on to the profession

A first research internship opens up several paths. Apec’s job profiles mention moves into data analysis, marketing project management, customer relationship management or consulting. In an institute, you can progress from research assistant to research executive and then account manager.

To make the most of the experience, write down as soon as the internship ends the methods used, the volumes handled and the decisions your work helped inform, without disclosing any confidential information. Ask your tutor for a written reference and, if the company recruits apprentices, find out about the possibilities of continuing into a master’s degree.