MKT RESEARCH EXAM REVIEW

Marketing Research:

Links an organization to its market through the

gathering of information

Marketing research facilitates identification of market ____________ & _______________ and corresponding actions

opportunities & threats

What is the general marketing research process?

Design → Collect → Analyze → Interpret → Communicate.

Decision makers:

Use the research findings to make marketing decisions.

-Big picture

-Time/cost conscious

-Want no surprises

Marketing researchers:

Collect, analyze, interpret, and communicate information.

-Love to explore new phenomena

-Okay with long time frame and don't care about costs

-Love surprises and research challanges

Ex of decision makers vs marketing researchers:

A company is considering opening a new store. Researchers might study customers, competitors, locations, and demand. Management then uses that information to decide whether to open the store.

Iceberg principle:

Managers see only 10% of a problem (the visible symptoms), while 90% of the true problem remains hidden beneath the surface

Marketing research enables what?

performance monitoring and understanding

Marketing research can be applied to a wide variety of problems involving the what?

the marketing mix (aka, "the four Ps")

Reasons to conduct/not conduct research in marketing research:

Research should be conducted when additional information is needed, when sufficient resources (time and money) are available, and when the benefits of the research outweigh the gathering costs.

Research should not be conducted if the problem can be resolved using existing internal records or judgment, if time/money is lacking, or if research would reveal proprietary strategies to competitors

Product:

- Development/intro

- Branding

- Positioning products

Place:

Choosing and evaluating:

- Locations

- Channels

- Distribution partners

Promotion:

Essential that companies know how to obtain good returns from their promotional budgets

Common research activities include:

Advertising effectiveness studies

Promotion mix decisions

Price:

Establishing and/or modifying:

- How large is the demand potential within the

target market at various price levels?

• Helps to forecast sales

Perceptual mapping:

Used to picture the relative position of products on two or more

product dimensions important to consumer purchase decisions (also performance/importance matrices)

Retailing research:

Focus on trade area analysis, store image/perception, in-store traffic patterns, and location analysis

What are the most common research tasks in integrated marketing communications?

- Advertising effectiveness studies

- Promotion mix decisions

Ethnographic research:

study consumer behavior as activities embedded in a cultural context and laden with identity

Internal marketing research:

Organizational units that reside within a company

What are some benefits of internal marketing research?

- Research method consistency

- Shared, private information across the company

- Lower research costs (per study)

- Generalist

External marketing research:

Perform all aspects of the research

What are some benefits of external marketing research?

- Objective

- Specialized talent

- Greater flexibility in scheduling studies and specific project requirements

What are some potential ethical pitfalls for research providers?

- Unethical pricing

- Unnecessary or unwarranted research services

- Client confidentiality issues

- Use of "black-box" methodologies

Abuse of Respondents:

Includes failing to provide promised incentives, misleading participants about interview length, using fake sponsors, causing physical/psychological harm, and failing to debrief respondents after using deception. Unethical practices also include sugging/frugging (selling/fundraising under the guise of research) and de-anonymizing consumer data.

Client & Respondent Misconduct:

Clients act unethically when requesting proposals with no intent to hire, falsely promising long-term work for cheap rates, or overstating study results. Respondents act unethically by providing dishonest answers or lying to qualify for incentives.

Branded "black-box" methodologies:

Offered by research firms that are branded

- Do not provide information about how the methodology works

Curbstoning:

Data collection personnel filling out surveys for fake respondents

Subject debriefing:

Fully explaining to respondents any deception that was used during research

sugging/frugging:

Claiming that a survey is for research purposes and then asking for a sale or donation

De-anonymizing data:

Combining different publicly available information, usually unethically, to determine consumers' identities, especially on the Internet

Researchers might perform poor or unethical research because of:

Fear of losing the client

Client pressure to prove a predetermined conclusion

Cost cutting

Qualitative data:

collection of data in the form of text or images using open-ended questions, observation, or 'found' data (OPEN ENDED) understanding- "the why"

gather background information clarify the research problems create hypotheses or establish research priorities results may be sufficient for decision making in certain situations - relatively short time frame

Quantitative data:

uses formal standard questions and predetermined response options in surveys of large samples (the validation) -typically a longer time frame

Advantages/Disadvantages of qualitative research:

depth but low (limited) generalizability- small samples

(allows for rapid, low-cost data collection, high validity, and rich contextual data, but lacks generalizability, magnitude estimation, and high reliability.)

Advantages/Disadvantages of quantitative research:

precision but less insight- large samples

(offers high generalizability and predictive capability, but typically requires longer execution times and structured frameworks.)

Focus groups:

Small group discussions (8-12 participants) guided by a trained moderator using a moderator's guide. Results are evaluated through debriefing analysis and content analysis.

Projective Techniques:

Indirect questioning methods (such as word association, sentence completion, and ZMET) designed to reveal hidden, subconscious feelings.

Observation:

Recording behavioral patterns of people, objects, or events using direct human observation or technology-mediated tools.

Trends/Technologies in Marketing Research:

Key trends include an increased emphasis on secondary data, managing gatekeeper technologies (such as caller ID and cookie blocking), and leveraging new data acquisition technology (including social media monitoring, clickstream tracking, GPS, and neuromarketing).

Secondary Research

information previously collected for some other problem or issue; used to examine marketing problems because of relative speed and cost-effectiveness of obtaining the data

Primary research:

research done firsthand for the first time

Internal secondary data:

Data collected by the individual company for accounting purposes or marketing activity reports

External secondary data:

Data collected by outside agencies such as the federal government, trade associations, or periodicals

Disadvantages of secondary data:

1. Relevance of the data (Purpose)

2. Accuracy - Units of Measurement/Category mismatch

(apples & oranges) -Age of data/methodology/credibility/bias

3. Comparability with other sources (consistency)

Internal sources of secondary data:

sales invoices, accounts receivable reports, quarterly sales reports, and sales activity logs.

External sources of secondary data:

popular media, scholarly publications, government records (such as NAICS data), and commercial syndicated sources.

Literature reviews:

a comprehensive examination of existing secondary information related to a research topic. It helps clarify research questions, identify useful measurement scales and methodologies, suggest hypotheses, and construct conceptual research models.

Literature reviews can help conceptualize a model that...

summarizes the relationships you hope to predict

exploratory research:

generates insights that will help define the problem situation confronting the researcher or improves the understanding of consumer motivations, attitudes, and behavior that are not easy to access using other research methods

descriptive research

collects quantitative data to answer research questions such as who, what, when, where, and how

casual research:

collects data that enables decision makers to determine cause-and-effect relationships between two or more variables

common constructs/variables:

brand awareness

brand attitudes

satisfaction

purchase intention

importance of factors

demographics

variable:

an observable item that is used as a measure on a questionnaire

constructs:

an unobservable concept that is measured by a group of related variables

relationships:

associations between two or more variables

independent variables:

the variables or construct that predicts or explains the outcome variable of interest

dependent variables:

the variable or construct researchers are seeking to explain

Gatekeeper technology:

refers to tools used by individuals to screen, limit, or block unwanted intrusive contacts or data collection attempts, such as caller ID, call blocking, and deleting or blocking browser cookies