Marketing Research and Insights Review

Vocabulary flashcards covering fundamental marketing research concepts including research types, qualitative methodologies, measurement scales, reliability, validity, scale types, and questionnaire design.

Descriptive Research

The gathering and presentation of statements of fact, such as historical sales trends or percentages of consumers purchasing products.

Diagnostic Research

The explanation of data or actions, such as determining the impact on sales when a product package design is changed.

Predictive Research

Specification of how to use descriptive and diagnostic research to predict results of planned marketing decisions.

Variable

A symbol or concept that can assume any one of a set of values.

Pilot Studies

Surveys using a limited number of respondents, often using less rigorous sampling than large quantitative studies.

Marketing Research Problem

Specifies what information is needed to solve the problem and how it can be obtained efficiently and effectively.

Management Decision Problem

A statement specifying the type of managerial action required to solve a problem.

Focus Group

A qualitative research methodology consisting of a group of $8$ to $12$ participants and a moderator who discuss one particular topic or concept in depth.

Individual Depth Interviews

Relatively unstructured one-on-one interviews that probe and elicit detailed answers, often using nondirective techniques to uncover hidden motivations.

Word Association Test

A projective test in which the interviewer says a word and the respondent must mention the first thing that comes to mind.

Analogies

A projective technique that involves drawing a comparison between two items in terms of their similarities.

Sentence and Story Completion Test

A projective test where respondents complete incomplete sentences or stories in their own words.

Cartoon Test

A projective test in which respondents fill in the dialogue of one of two characters in a cartoon.

Third-person Technique

A projective technique in which the interviewer learns about respondents' feelings by asking them to answer for a third party, such as a neighbor or most people.

Ethnographic Research

The study of human behavior in its natural context, involving observation of behavior and physical setting.

Mystery Shoppers

People who pose as consumers and shop at a company's own stores or competitors' stores to collect data about customer-employee interactions and gather observational data.

Nominal Scales

Scales that partition data into mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive categories where assigned numbers have no true numerical value.

Ordinal Scales

Scales that maintain nominal labeling characteristics and have the ability to order or rank data, without indicating absolute quantities or equal intervals.

Interval Scales

Scales containing all features of ordinal scales with equal intervals between scale points, featuring an arbitrary zero point.

Ratio Scales

Scales with all characteristics of interval scales plus a meaningful absolute zero point, allowing magnitudes to be compared arithmetically.

Systematic Error

Measurement error resulting in a constant bias caused by faults in the measurement instrument or process.

Random Error

Measurement error that is transient in nature, such as variations caused by a respondent's temporary mood.

Reliability

The degree to which measures are free from random error and provide consistent data.

Test-retest Reliability

A method assessed by administering the same measure to the same participants twice under similar conditions to check stability over time.

Equivalent Form Reliability

A method evaluated by correlating scores from two comparable versions of the same measurement instrument administered to the same respondents.

Internal Consistency Reliability

Assesses whether multiple items within a single scale consistently measure the same underlying construct.

Face Validity

The weakest form of validity, concerned with the degree to which a measurement judgmentally seems to measure what it is supposed to measure.

Criterion-related Validity

Examines the ability of a measuring instrument to predict a variable designated as a criterion.

Predictive Validity

The degree to which a future level of a criterion variable can be forecast by a current measurement scale.

Concurrent Validity

The degree to which another variable, measured at the exact same point in time as the variable of interest, can be predicted by the measurement instrument.

Construct Validity

The degree to which a measurement instrument represents and logically connects, via underlying theory, the observed phenomenon to the construct.

Convergent Validity

Reflects the degree of correlation among different measures that purport to measure the exact same construct.

Discriminant Validity

Reveals the lack of, or low, correlation among constructs that are theoretically supposed to be different.

Unidimensional Scale

A scale designed to measure only one single attribute.

Multidimensional Scale

A scale designed to measure several attributes or dimensions of a complex concept.

Graphic Rating Scale

A measurement scale that includes a graphic continuum anchored by two extreme points.

Itemized Rating Scale

A scale in which respondents select an answer from a set of ordered response categories.

Rank-order Scale

A comparative scale where respondents evaluate multiple items and rank them relative to one another.

Paired Comparison Scale

A scale where respondents choose one of two items based on a given criterion.

Constant Sum Scale

A scale in which respondents divide a total of $100$ points among attributes based on their relative importance.

Semantic Differential Scale

Measures perceptions by having respondents rate a concept between dichotomous pairs of opposite adjectives.

Halo Effect

A bias where overall impression influences ratings on specific individual attributes.

Stapel Scale

A scale that rates how well a single adjective describes a concept on a numerical range from $+5$ to $-5$.

Likert Scale

An attitude measurement scale that measures a respondent's degree of agreement or disagreement with a series of statements.

Purchase-intent Scale

A scale designed to measure how likely consumers are to buy a product or service in order to predict potential demand.

Boxed Scores

Scores created by combining the highest response categories on a rating scale into a single percentage.

Top-Two-Box (T2B) Score

The total percentage of respondents who selected either of the top two response categories on a rating scale.

Balanced Scale

A rating scale containing an equal number of positive and negative response categories.

Nonbalanced Scale

A rating scale weighted with more categories on one side than the other.

Forced Choice Scale

A scale layout that requires respondents to pick a positive or negative response by omitting a neutral option.

Nonforced Choice Scale

A scale layout that provides a neutral or 'Don't know' category for respondents.

Questionnaire

A set of questions designed to collect data needed for a research project, standardizing wording and order.

Editing

The process of reviewing a questionnaire to ensure logical skip patterns and complete question requirements.

Skip Pattern

A sequence in a questionnaire where subsequent questions depend on the respondent's previous answers.

Dichotomous Questions

Closed-ended questions that present respondents with a choice between exactly two explicit answers.

Multiple-choice Questions

Closed-ended questions asking respondents to choose among several provided options, also known as multichotomous questions.

Screening Questionnaire

A instrument designed to identify and filter qualified versus unqualified respondents based on target criteria.

Respondent Fatigue

A state that occurs when respondents become bored, tired, or uninterested during survey completion.