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What are the types of Marketing Research processes?
3 types
- 1. Exploratory
- 2. Descriptive
- 3. Causal
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Explain Exploratory Research
Exploratory Research
- • Conducted to clarify ambiguous situations or discover ideas that may be potential business opportunities.
- • Initial research conducted to clarify and define the nature of a problem.
- >> Does not provide conclusive evidence
- >> Subsequent research expected
• Particularly useful in new product development.
• Exploratory Research and Problem Solving
>> Symptoms – observable cues that serve as a signal of a problem because they are caused by that problem.
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Explain Descriptive Research
• Describes characteristics of objects, people, groups, organizations, or environments.
- >> Addresses who, what, when, where, why, and how questions.
- >> Considerable understanding of the nature of the problem exists.
- >> Does not provide direct evidence of causality.
• Diagnostic analysis
>> Seeks to diagnose reasons for market outcomes and focuses specifically on the beliefs and feelings consumers have about and toward competing products.
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Explain Causal Research
• Research conducted to identify cause and effect relationships (inferences).
•Evidence of causality:
- >> Temporal sequence—the appropriate causal order of events.
- >> Concomitant variation—two phenomena vary together.
- >> Nonspurious association—an absence of alternative plausible explanations.
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When to conduct exploratory research?
Amount of uncertainty: Highly ambiguous
Key research statement: Research question
When conducted: Early stage of decision making
Usual research approach: Unstructured
- Examples:
- Our sales are declining for no apparent reason?
- What kind of products are fast food customers interested in?
Nature of results: Discovery oriented, productive but still fairly speculative. Often in need of further research.
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When to conduct descriptive research?
Amount of uncertainty: Partially defined
Key research statement: Research question
When conducted: Later stages of decision making
Usual research approach: Structured
- Examples:
- What kind of patrons visit our store compared to our competitors?
- What are the features most important to our customers?
Nature of results: Can be confirmatory, however more research is often needed. Results can be managerially actionable.
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When to use causal research?
Amount of uncertainty: Clearly defined
Key research statement: Research hypothesis
- When conducted: Later stages of decision making
- Usual research approach: Highly structured
- Examples:
- Will consumers purchase more if packaging changed to blue?
- Which of the two advertising campaigns will be more effective?
Nature of results: Confirmatory oriented. Fairly conclusive with managerial actionable results often obtained.
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What are the stages of the research process?
6 stages
1. Defining the research objectives
2. Planning a research design
3. Planning a sample
4. Collecting the data
5. Analyzing the data
6. Formulating the conclusions and preparing the report
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Flowchart of problem discovery and definition
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Flowchart of planning research design
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Exploratory Research Techniques
- • Previous Research (Secondary research)
- >> Literature review
A directed search of published works, including periodicals and books, that discusses theory and presents empirical results that are relevant to the topic at hand.
• Pilot Studies (Primary Research)
- A small-scale research project that collects data from respondents similar to
- those to be used in the full study.
>> Pretest
A small-scale study in which the results are only preliminary and intended only to assist in design of a subsequent study.
>> Focus Group
–A small group discussion about some research topic led by a moderator who guides discussion among the participants.
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Role of Theory
- • Theory
- >> A formal, logical explanation of some events that includes predictions of how things relate to one another.
- • Hypothesis
- >> A formal statement explaining some outcome.
- • Empirical Testing
- >> Something has been examined against reality using data.
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How to plan research design?
>> A master plan that specifies the methods and procedures for collecting and analyzing the needed information.
>> Basic design techniques for descriptive and causal research:
- a. Surveys
- b. Experiments
- c. Secondary data
- d. Observation
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What is sampling?
Involves any procedure that draws conclusions based on measurements of a portion of the population.
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Sampling decisions:
Who to sample?—target population
What size should the sample be?
How to select the sampling units?
- a. Random sample
- b. Cluster-sample
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How to process and analyse data?
- • Editing
- >> Involves checking the data collection forms for omissions, legibility, and consistency in classification.
- • Codes
- >> Rules for interpreting, categorizing, recording, and transferring the data to the data storage media.
- • Data analysis
- >> The application of reasoning to understand the data that have been gathered.
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How to drawing Conclusions and Prepare a Report
• Steps in communicating the research findings:
- a. Interpreting the research results
- b. Describing the implications
- c. Drawing the appropriate conclusions for managerial decisions
• Reporting requirements
- a. Conclusions fulfill the deliverables promised in the research proposal
- b. Consider the varying abilities of people to understand the research results
- c. A clearly-written, understandable summary of the research findings
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