ADM 2320 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Projective Test, Panel Data
CHAPTER 4
Marketing Research
• Marketing research is a set of techniques and principles for systematically
collecting, recording, analyzing, and interpreting data that can aid decision
makers involved in marketing goods, services, or ideas.
• Marketing research can provide valuable information that will help them make
segmentation, positioning, product, place, price, and promotion decisions.
• Research helps reduce some uncertainty under which they currently operate.
• Marketing research provides a crucial link between firms and their environments,
which enables firms to be customer-oriented because they build their strategies by
using customer input and continual feedback.
• By constantly monitoring their competitors, firms can anticipate and respond
quickly to competitive moves.
• Ongoing marketing research can identify emerging opportunities and new and
improved ways of satisfying consumer needs and wants from changes in the
external environment.
Marketing Research Process
• Because research is both expensive and time-consuming, it is important to
establish in advance exactly what information is required to answer specific
research questions, and how that information should be obtained.
Step 1: Define the Research Problem and Objectives
• Correctly defining the marketing problem is one of the most important elements
of the marketing research process.
• Most difficult of the marketing research process.
• Once the research problem is defined, marketers must specify the research
objectives or questions to be answered.
• Poor design arises from three major sources:
1. Basing research on irrelevant research questions.
2. Focusing on research questions that marketing research cannot answer.
3. Addressing research questions to which the answers are already known.
Step 2: Design the Research Project
• In this step, researchers identify the type of data needed and determine the type of
research necessary to collect it.
o Secondary Data
▪ Secondary data are pieces of information that have been collected
prior to the start of the focal project.
▪ Although readily accessible, these inexpensive sources may not be
specific or timely enough to solve the marketer's research needs
and objectives.
▪ Syndicated data is data available for a fee from commercial
research firms.
▪ Customer lifetime value (CLV), a popular marketing metric to
determine a customer's value to a firm.
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o Primary Data
▪ Primary data is data collected to address the specific research
needs/questions currently under investigation. Some primary data
collection methods include focus groups, in-depth interviews, and
surveys.
▪ A major advantage of primary research is that it can be tailored to
fit the research questions; however, it also has its own set of
disadvantages. For one thing, it is usually more costly to collect
primary than secondary data, and the collection typically takes
longer.
▪ Reliability is the extent to which the same result is achieved when
a study is repeated under identical situations.
▪ Validity the extent to which a study measures what it is supposed
to measure.
▪ A market research study must be both reliable and valid for it to be
useful.
▪ Sample is a segment or subset of the population that adequately
represents the entire population of interest.
▪ Three important questions that must be answered:
1. Who should be surveyed?
2. How big should the sample be?
3. What types of sampling procedure to use?
▪ Sampling is the process of picking a sample; offers potential
customers the opportunity to try a product or service before they
make a buying decision.
Step 3: Collect Data
• Exploratory research attempts to begin to understand the phenomenon of interest;
also provides initial information when the problem lacks any clear definition.
o Exploratory research is more informal and qualitative than conclusive
research methods and includes observation, following social media sites,
in-depth interviews, focus groups, and projective techniques.
• Conclusive research provides the information needed to confirm preliminary
insights, which managers can use to pursue appropriate courses of action.
o For marketing researchers, because it is often quantitative in nature,
conclusive research offers a means to confirm implicit hunches through
surveys, formal studies such as specific experiments, scanner and panel
data, or some combination.
o Conclusive research also enables researchers to test their prediction
or hypothesis.
• Hypothesis is a statement or proposition predicting a particular relationship
among multiple variables that can be tested through research.
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