Retailing 3 - Lecture 3: Market Research

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms and concepts from the Market Research lecture.

Marketing Research

A systematic process of gathering, recording, and analyzing information about marketing problems. It must be conducted in a comprehensive, step-by-step process and involves using information/data from many different sources.

Research Process

Involves identifying and analyzing the problem, finding and reading literature, formulating questions or hypotheses, choosing an approach, writing a research proposal, pretesting data collection methods, sampling and collecting data, analyzing and interpreting data, and writing a research report.

Uses of Marketing Research

Includes obtaining information on current economic and market conditions, developing a demographic profile of customers, determining the size of a potential market and customer locations, and gathering economic data such as unemployment rates and new housing developments.

Need for Research

Essential to remain competitive, helps retailers satisfy customer wants and needs, allows retailers to anticipate and capitalize on changes with customers, and helps remove guesswork from decision-making.

Paradigm

A set of beliefs, values, or assumptions that shapes how people understand and interpret the world, influencing how we think, behave, and solve problems. In the social sciences, often referred to as research traditions or worldviews.

Positivism

A research paradigm based on the belief that reality is objective and can be measured through observation and experimentation. It seeks to discover general laws or truths using scientific methods with a quantitative approach.

Interpretivism

A research paradigm that focuses on understanding human experiences and social realities from the perspective of the participants. It assumes that reality is subjective and constructed through social interactions and uses a qualitative approach.

Critical Realism

A research paradigm that examines power structures, social inequalities, and ideologies that shape reality. It seeks to challenge the status quo and promote social change using both qualitative and participatory methods.

Epistemological Position

Deals with the nature of knowledge and different ways of knowing. It addresses questions such as what counts as knowledge and what are the limits of knowledge.

Ontological Position

The study of being, existence, or reality and includes assumptions that are made about certain phenomena. It deals with questions such as what reality is and how we know what is real.

Metatheoretical Position

Theory about theory, exploring the theoretical lenses that provide direction to the research in a particular field of study. Theories are the lenses we use to have a clearer perspective on a particular phenomenon.

Methodological Position

A guiding system for solving problems, including research methods that are deemed most appropriate for collecting and analyzing data to generate knowledge about the phenomenon.

Axiological Position

Refers to the study of values and value judgment and deals with the question of the role of values in research, giving insights into what is valued within a particular paradigm or tradition.

Secondary Data

Data that already exist from sources such as government agencies, trade journals, newspapers, magazines, trade associations, census data, and business reports.

Primary Data

Information collected for a specific purpose, relating to the problem being researched. It is collected by interviewing consumers or survey research.

Internal Sources of Information

Include store records, management, and sales staff, each providing valuable information for making buying decisions.

External Sources of Information

Include customers, magazines and trade publications, vendors, trade associations, comparison shoppers, the Internet, and social media.

Analyzing and Interpreting Data

Involves looking for answers, summarizing relevant information, interpreting data, and drawing conclusions to make informed decisions.