Mkt Asia 8 Marketing Research: From customer insights to actions

The role of marketing research

Marketing research: (Definition)

Challenges in doing good marketing resarch

Step 1: Define the problem

Step 2: Develop the research plan

Step 3: Collect relevant information

Step 4: Develop findings

Step 5: Take marketing actions

Set research objectives

Identify possible marketing actions

Identify data needed for marketing (relevant to decision making)

Determine how to collect data

Specify constraints

Obtain secondary data

Obtain primary data

Analyse the data

Present the findings

Implement action recommendations

Evaluate results

Make action recommendations

Feedback to learn lessons for future research

external (other organisations)

internal (within organisation)

Observational

Questionnaire

Descriptive research (find frequency that something occurs or extent of r/s between 2 factors)

Causal research (extent of how change in one factor changes another)

Exploratory research (ideas about a relatively vague problem)

specific, measurable goals

not too broad or narrow (researchable, value of research results)

measures of success: criteria or standards in evaluating proposed solutions to problem eg. brand attitude

restrictions on potential solutions eg. time, money

Concepts (ideas about products or services)

Methods

New-product concept (picture or verbal product or service description firm might offer for sale)

sampling

statistical inference

approaches to collect data to solve all or part of problem

selecting representative elements from population

probability sampling (precise rules, specific known chance)

nonprobability sampling (arbitrary judgments, unknown or 0 chance, biased)

conclude about population from sample

sample has to be typical, representative

Data: facts, figures related to problem

Other sources

marketing inputs (effort to make sales)

marketing outcomes (results of marketing efforts)

government statistics departments eg. census

marketing research organisations

trade associations, universities, business periodicals

Disadvantages

Advantages :

Disadvantages

Advantages

time saving

low cost

greater detail esp. government statistical data

outdated

unsuitable definitions or categories

lack specificity for project

more flexible

more specific

costly

time consuming

Mechanical

Personal

Neuromarketing (brain scan to analyse buying behaviour)

Panels and experiments

information technology

Social media

Data mining

developing cross tabulations

interpreting cross tabulations

Evaluate decision itself

Evaluate decision process used

Sales forecasting techniques

Surveys of knowledgeable groups

Statistical methods

Judgments of the decision maker

Idea evaluation methods

Idea generation methods

Sales forecast: total expected product sales (specified period, environmental conditions, marketing efforts)

lost-horse

direct (without intervening steps)

Survey of buyer's intentions forecast

Salesforce survey forecast

trend extrapolation

List factors that could affect forecast

Assess impact (positive, negative)

Final forecast

Starting with last known value of item being forecast

contact with customers, know likes and dislikes

can be unreliable forecasters (too enthusiastic, sales quota, future compensation)

assumes past underlying relationships continue into future

simplicity

mystery shoppers

ethnographic research

useful, flexible but costly, unreliable

Problems

Unanswerable question

Two questions in one

Nonexhaustive question

Nonmutually exclusive answers

Ambiguous question

Leading question