BUAD 302 Textbook Notes

Geofencing: a virtual fence that is placed around a geographic location in the real world

Standardized research firms: Research firms that provide general results following a standard format so that results of a study conducted for one client can be compared to norms.

Syndicated business services: Services provided by standardized research firms that include data made or developed from a common data pool or database.

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

Key Terms & Concepts:

• Behavioral Targeting: 

  • Displaying ads at one website based on the user’s previous surfing behavior.

• Benefit and Lifestyle Studies:

  • Examine similarities and differences in consumers’ needs. Researchers use these studies to identify two or more segments within the market for a particular company’s products

• Branded “black-box” methodologies:

  • Methodologies offered by research firms that are branded and do not provide information about how the methodology works

• Curbstoning:

  • Data collection personnel filling out surveys for fake respondents.

• Customized Research Firms:

  • Research firms that provide tailored services for clients.

• Deanonymzing Data:

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

• Marketing Research: 

  • The function that links an organization to its market through the gathering of information.

• Perceptual Mapping:

  • A technique used to picture the relative position of products on two or more product dimensions important to consumer purchase decisions.

• Retailing Research:

  • Research investigations that focus on topics such as trade area analysis, store image/perception, in-store traffic patterns, and location analysis.

• Shopper Marketing: 

  • Marketing to consumers based on research of the entire process consumers go through when making a purchase

• Causal Research:

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

• Census:

  • The researcher attempts to question or observe all the members of a defined target population

• Descriptive Research:

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

• 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.

• Gatekeeper Technologies:

  • Technologies such as caller ID that are used to prevent intrusive marketing practices such as by telemarketers and illegal scam artists.

• Information Research Process:

  • A systematic approach to collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and transforming data into decision-making information.

• Knowledge:

  • Information becomes knowledge when someone, either the researcher or the decision maker, interprets the data and attaches meaning

• Primary data:

  • Information collected for a current research problem or opportunity

• Research proposal:

  • A specific document that provides an overview of the proposed research and methodology, and serves as a written contract between the decision maker and the researcher.

• Sample:

  • A small number of members of the target population from which the researcher collects data.

• Scientific method:

  • Research procedures should be logical, objective, systematic, reliable, and valid

• Secondary data:

  • Information previously collected for some other problem or issue.

• Situation Analysis: 

  • Gathers and synthesizes background information to familiarize the researcher with the overall complexity of the problem.

• Target Population: 

  • The population from which the researcher wants to collect data.

• Unit of analysis:

  • Specifies whether data should be collected about individuals, households, organizations, departments, geographical areas, or some combination.

• Bad Questions:

  • Prevent or distort communications between the researcher and the respondent

  • Ex: Unanswerable, leading, double-barreled 

• Call Records:

  • A recording document that gathers basic summary information about an interviewer’s performance efficiency (e.g., number of contact attempts, number of completed interviews, length of time of interview)

• Common methods variance (CMV):

  • A biased variance that results from the measurement method used in a questionnaire instead of the scales used to obtain the data

• Cover Letter:

  • A separate written communication to a prospective respondent designed to enhance that person’s willingness to complete and return the survey in a timely manner.

• Interviewer Instructions:

  • Used to train interviewers how to select prospective respondents, screen them for eligibility, and conduct the actual interview

• Introductory Section: 

  • Gives the respondent an overview of the research

• Questionnaire:

  • A questionnaire is a document consisting of a set of questions and scales designed to gather primary data.

• Quotas:

  • A tracking system that collects data from respondents and helps ensure that subgroups are represented in the sample as specified

• Research Questions Section:

  • The second section of the questionnaire that focuses on the research questions

• Response Order Bias: 

  • Occurs when the order of the questions, or of the closed-end responses to a particular question, influences the answer given

• Screening Questions:

  • (also referred to as screeners or filter questions) Used in most questionnaires, their purpose is to identify qualified prospective respondents and prevent unqualified respondents from being included in the study.

• Sensitive Questions:

  • Include income, sexual beliefs or behaviors, medical conditions, financial difficulties, alcohol consumption, and so forth that respondents are likely to respond to incorrectly

• Skip Questions:

  • Used if the next question (or set of questions) should be responded to only by respondents who meet a previous condition.

• Structured Questions:

  • Closed-ended questions that require the respondent to choose from a predetermined set of responses or scale points

  • Reduce the amount of thinking and effort required by respondents, and the response process is faster

• Supervisor Instruction Form:

  • A form that serves as a blueprint for training people on how to execute the interviewing process in a standardized fashion; it outlines the process by which to conduct a study that uses personal and telephone interviewers.

• Unstructured Questions: 

  • Open-ended questions that enable respondents to reply in their own words.

  • No predetermined list of responses available to aid or limit respondents’ answers. 

• Descriptive research designs use questionnaires to collect data that can be turned into knowledge about a person, object, or issue

• Predictive survey questionnaires require the researcher to collect a wider range of data that can be used in predicting changes in attitudes and behaviors as well as in testing hypotheses

• A pilot study is a small-scale version of the intended main research study, including all the subcomponents that make up the main study, including the data collection and analysis from about 50 to 100 respondents that have representation of the main study’s defined target population

• A pretest is a descriptive research activity representing a small-scale investigation of 5 to 30 subjects that are representative of the main study’s defined target population but focus on a specific subcomponent of the main study

• Unanswerable - either because the respondent does not have access to the information needed or because none of the answer choices apply to the respondent.

• Leading (or loaded)- the respondent is directed to a response that would not ordinarily be given if all possible response categories or concepts were provided, or if all the facts were provided for the situation

• Double-barreled - they ask the respondent to address more than one issue at a time

• Behavioral Intention Scale: A special type of rating scale designed to capture the likelihood that people will demonstrate some type of predictable behavior intent toward purchasing an object or service in a future time frame

• Comparative rating scale: A scale format that requires a judgment comparing one object, person, or concept against another on the scale

• Constant-sum scales: Require the respondent to allocate a given number of points, usually 100, among each separate attribute or feature relative to all the other listed ones 

• Construct: A hypothetical variable made up of a set of component responses or behaviors that are thought to be related

• Construct development: An integrative process in which researchers determine what specific data should be collected for solving the defined research problem

• Discriminatory Power: The scale’s ability to discriminate between the categorical scale responses (points).

• Graphic Rating Scales: A scale measure that uses a scale point format that presents the respondent with some type of graphic continuum as the set of possible raw responses to a given question 

• Interval Scale: A scale that demonstrates absolute differences between each scale point.

• Likert Scale: An ordinal scale format that asks respondents to indicate the extent to which they agree or disagree with a series of mental belief or behavioral belief statements about a given object.

• Measurement: An integrative process of determining the intensity (or amount) of information about constructs, concepts, or objects.

• Multiple-item scale: A scale format that simultaneously collects data on several attributes of an object or construct.

• Nominal Scale: The type of scale in which the questions require respondents to provide only some type of descriptor as the raw response

• Noncomparative rating scale: A scale format that requires a judgment without reference to another object, person, or concept.

• Ordinal scale: A scale that allows a respondent to express relative magnitude between the answers to a question.

• Rank-order scales: these allow respondents to compare their own responses by indicating their first, second, third, and fourth preferences, and so forth

• Ratio scale: A scale that allows the researcher not only to identify the absolute differences between each scale point but also to make comparisons between the responses

• Scale measurement: The process of assigning descriptors to represent the range of possible responses to a question about a particular object or construct. 

• Scale points: Designated degrees of intensity assigned to the responses in a given questioning or observation method

• Semantic differential scale: A unique bipolar ordinal scale format that captures a person's attitudes or feelings about a given object.

• Single item scale: A scale format that collects data about only one attribute of an object or construct

• Alternative Hypothesis: The hypothesis contrary to the null hypothesis, it usually suggests that two variables are related.

• Causal Hypothesis: Theoretical statements about relationships between variables.

• Conceptualization: Development of a model that shows variables and hypothesized or proposed relationships between variables.

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

• Dependent Variable: the variable or construct researchers are seeking to explain 

• Descriptive Hypothesis: possible answers to a specific applied research problem 

• Hypothesis: An empirically testable though yet unproven statement developed in order to explain phenomena

• Independent Variable: the variable or construct that predicts or explains the outcome variable of interest 

• Internal Secondary Data: data collected by the individual company for accounting purposes or marketing activity reports 

• Negative Relationship: An association between two variables in which one increases while the other decreases.

• Null Hypothesis: A statistical hypothesis that is tested for possible rejection under the assumption that it is true.

• Parameter: The true value of a variable.

• Positive Relationship: An association between two variables in which they increase or decrease together. 

• Relationships: associations between two or more variables 

• Sample Statistic: The value of a variable that is estimated from a sample.

• Secondary Data: data not gathered for the immediate study at hand but for some other purpose 

• Syndicated (or commercial) Data: data that has been complied according to some standardized procedure; provides customized data for companies such as market share, ad effectiveness, and sales tracking 

• Variable: an observable item that is used as a measure on a questionnaire