Marketing research process

Marketing Research
The process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data about customers, competitors, and the business environment, in order to improve marketing effectiveness.

Information Needed to Make Good Marketing Decisions
Specific
Information
Ongoing
Information
Monitored
Information
Daily or Weekly Information that Measures Progress Toward Marketing Goals.
Weekly Sales Data
Marketing Intelligence - Information About a Firms’ External Environment that Affects or Creates Demand.
Specific Information Needs Such as:
Brand’s Sales Performance
Opportunities for New Products

The Steps in Marketing Research

Marketing Research Process
Step 1. Defining the Problem
Defining the Problem Has Three Components:

Marketing Research Process
Step 2. Determining the Research Technique
The Research Design Specifies What Information Will be Collected and What Type of Study Will be Done.
Exploratory
Research
Descriptive
Research
Causal
Research

Research Technique
Exploratory Research
Qualitative Technique Used to Generate Insights for Future, More Rigorous Studies

Research Technique
Descriptive Research
Quantitative Technique that Probes More
Systematically and With More Respondents.
Surveys
Mail, Telephone, Face-to-Face, Online
Cross-
Sectional
Design -
“One Shot
Studies”
Longitudinal
Design -
Same
Sample
Over Time

Research Technique
Descriptive Research
Personal
Observation
Unobtrusive
Measures
Mechanical
Observation
Passive Instruments-
Behavior is Recorded

Research Technique
Causal Research
Techniques That Attempt to Understand
Cause-and-Effect Relationships.
Field Studies
Test in the
“Real World”
Experiments
Test in a Controlled
Environment

Marketing Research Process
Step 3. Gathering Data
Secondary Information
Primary Information
Determining the Specific Information Needs
Information collected
for the specific purposes
of the study.
Information that has
been collected
by other organizations.

Gathering Data in Foreign Countries
Conducting market research globally can be difficult because:
Market conditions may vary widely,
Lack of phones
Low literacy rates
Local customs,
Cultural differences,
Language differences which may be overcome through back-translation.

Single-Source Data
Information that is integrated from multiple sources to monitor the impact of marketing communications on a particular customer group over time.
Multiple sources such as:
in-store coupon redemption,
sales data from checkout scanners,
household data,
Up to 90% of apparel, electronics, and grocery purchases in the U.S. are scanned.

Data Mining
Data Mining is Sophisticated Analysis Techniques Used by Firms to Take Advantage of the Massive Amount of Transaction Information Now Available.
Applications for Marketers:

Market Research Process
Ensuring the Quality of the Research
Representativeness
Validity
Did Research Measure What
it Was Intended to Measure?
Reliability
Are the Research
Techniques Free of Errors?
Is the Group Measured
Similar to the Population?

Market Research Plan
Step 4. Implementing the Research Results
Marketers must analyze and report the research to help solve problems and to plan.
The report should answer the following questions:
What was the problem being studied?
What were the limitations?
What are the important findings?
What are the recommendations for action based on the results?

Integrating Feedback into Long-Term Planning
A Marketing Information System continuously gathers, sorts, analyzes, and distributes relevant and timely marketing information to its managers.
This marketing information includes:
internal data such as sales records, customer lists, inventories, costs, and
external data on competition and demographic, cultural and social trends.

Predicting the Future
Futurists specialize in predicting the future and anticipating marketplace conditions.
They try to imagine different scenarios, or possible situations, and assign a level of probability to each.
Marketers try to predict consumers’ preferences for a variety of products.