Marketing Chapter 8

• process of:
• defining a marketing problem and opportunity
• systematically collecting and analyzing information
• recommending actions

used to reduce risk of and thereby improve marketing decisions

• Would consumers know whether they are likely to buy a product they have never thought about before?
• When personal or status questions are involved, will people give honest answers?
• Will consumers' actual purchase behavior match their stated interest or intentions?
• Will they buy the same brand they say they will?

• 1. Define the problem
• 2. Develop the research plan
• 3. Collect relevant information
• 4. Develop findings
• 5. Take marketing actions

conscious choice from among two or more althernatives

• Set research objectives
• Identify possible marketing actions

(ie: Fisher-Price toy, Chatter Telephone)

Research objectives: specific, measurable goals the decision maker seeks to achieve in conducting the marketing research

• 1. Exploratory research: provides ideas about relatively vague problem
• 2. Descriptive research: generally involves trying to find the frequency that something occurs or the extent of a relationship between two factors
• 3. Casual research: (most sophisticated) tries t to determine the extent to which the change in one factor changes another one

different research outcomes (based on the measure of success) lead to different marketing actions

criteria or standards used in evaluating proposed solutions to the problem

• (a) specify the constraints on the marketing research activity
• (b) identify the data needed for marketing decisions
• (c) determine how to collect the data

restrictions placed on potential solutions to a problem

(ie: limitation on the time and money available to solve the problem)

• Concepts: ideas about products or services
• New-product concept: a picture or verbal description of a product or service the firm might offer for sale
• to find out about consumer reaction to a potential new product

• Methods: the approaches that can be used to collect data to solve all or part of a problem
• (1) sampling (technique to select a group of distributors, customers, or prospects and treating the information they provide as typical of all those in whom they are interested)
• (2) statistical inference (generalize the results from the sample to much larger groups of distributors, customers, or prospects to help decide on marketing actions)

• Data
• Secondary Data
• Internal data (inside the firm)
• External data (outside the firm)
• Primary Data
• observational data (watching people)
• questionnaire data (asking people)
• other sources of data

• facts and figures related to the problem
• divided into two main parts: secondary data and primary data

facts and figures that have already been recoded before the project at hand

starting point for new marketing research study (using this info can result in huge time and cost savings)

• ie: financial statements, research reports, files, customer letters, sales call reports, and customer lists
• (detailed sales breakdowns by product line, by region, by customer, by sales representatives; customer inquiries and complains)

published data from outside the organization

ie: U.S. Census reports, trade association studies and magazines, business periodicals, Internet-based reports

• Census 2000: most recent count of U.S. population that occurs every 10 years
• American Community Survey: annual data collection from smaller number of people
• (both include: detailed info on American households; number of people her household, age, sex, race/ethnic background, income, occupation, education) -- (marketers use to identify characteristics and trends of ultimate consumers)

Economic Census: conducted every 5 years (data on number and sales of establishments that produce good or service based on its geography, industry sector, and North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code

economically answer questions that require consistent data collection over time

• market research companies pay households and businesses to record all their purchases using a paper or electronic diary
• Nielsen Media Research's TV ratings, J.D. Power's automotive quality and customer satisfaction surveys

• Advantages
• (1) tremendous time savings; data have already been collected and published or exist internally
• (2) low cost; ie: free or inexpensive Census reports
• (3) greater level of detail often available

• Disadvantages
• (1) secondary data may be out of date
• (2) definitions or categories might not be quite right for researcher's project
• (3) data may not be specific enough for project (not collected for same purpose)

facts and figures obtained by watching, either mechanically or in person, how people actually behave

• observational data
• collected by: mechanical (including electronic), personal, or neuromarketing methods

• (1) idea generation methods - coming up with ideas
• (2) idea evaluation methods - testing an idea

facts and figures obtained by asking people about their attitudes, awareness, intentions, and behaviors

• individual interview: involves a single researcher asking questions of one respondent
• able to probe for additional ideas using follow-up questions; very expensive
• depth interview: researchers ask lengthy, free-flowing kind of questions to probe for underlying ideas and feelings
• focus group: informal sessions of 6-10 past, present, or prospective customers in which a discussion leader, or moderator, asks opinions about firm's and its competitors' products, how they use these products, and special needs they have that these products don't address

• marketing researcher tries to test ideas discovered earlier to help the marketing manager recommend marketing actions
• involve conventional questionnaires using persona, mail, telephone, fax, and online surveys of a large sample of past, present, or prospective consumers

• Personal Interview Survey: interviewer has flexibility in asking probing questions or getting reactions to visual materials; very costly
• Mail surveys: usually biased; those most likely to respond have had especially positive or negative experiences with product or brand
• Phone surveys: flexibility,(people may hang up)
• online surveys: most consumers have internet connection and email; "pop up" survey in separate window of org's web site; cost relatively minimal and turnaround time from data collection to report presentation much quicker; "junk" or "spam" email, "pop-up blockers"
• Mall intercept interviews: personal interviews of consumers visiting shopping centers; reduce cost of personal visits; results may be biased

allows respondents to express opinions, ideas, or behaviors in their own words without being forced to choose among alternatives that have been predetermined by marketing researcher

captures the "voice" of respondents; understand consumer behavior, identify product benefits, develop advertising messages

respondents required to select one or more response options from a set of predetermined choices

simplest form of a fixed alternative question that allows only a "yes" or "no" response

• five-point scale in which the opposite ends of one- or two-word adjectives that have opposite meanings
• (fixed alternative question with three or more choices using a scale)

respondent indicates extent to which he or she agrees or disagrees with a statement

• (1) social networks
• (2) panels and experiments
• (3) information technology and data mining

• Allow for more intimate and frequent contact among people who share common interests - at a lower cost than other media
• Consumers often share opinions about offerings they use or want on social networking sites or in online blogs and forums
• May signal trend in marketplace that can lead to marketing actions (info collected, transcribed, tabulated, and analyzed)
• Content gleaned may not be statistically representative of the marketplace

panel: sample of consumers or stores from which researchers take a series of measurements (ie: measure switching behaviors; disadvantage: when replacing members, new recruits must match characteristics of those they replace to keep panel representative of marketplace)

• experiment: involves obtaining data by manipulating factors under tightly controlled conditions to test cause and effect (an example of casual research)
• will changing one of the independent variables (cause)/(marketing drivers; product, price promotion) change the behavior of the dependent variable that is studied (result)/(change in purchases)
• difficulties: outside factors (ie: actions of competitors) can distort results of experiment and affect dependent variable

Involves operating computer networks that can store and process data