problem can be identified by anyone inside the company or even by someone close to the company (supplier)

problem usually defined in terms of a research question or a research hypothesis

"marketing research to gather preliminary information that will help define problems and suggest hypotheses"

research conducted for a problem that has not been clearly defined

"marketing research to better describe marketing problems, situations or markets, such as the market potential for a product or the demographics and attitudes of consumers"

all about describing things and people who take part in the study

data collection at several periods in time which enable trends over time to be examined

eg. if price is increased by 10% what will be the effect on demand?

framework for designing marketing research programn should be in place

research plan spells out sources of existing data and outlines the specific research approaches, contact methods, sampling plans and instruments that researchers will use to gather new data

requires the greatest amount of thought, time and expertise

how this will help management in decision making

"information collected for the specific purpose at hand"

used to quantify the problem by the way of generating numerical data or data that can be transformed into useable statistics

used to gain an understanding of underlying reasons, opinions, and motivations

"gathering primary data by observing relevant people, actions and situations"

observers obtaining data by noticing the behaviour of people

sending the observers to watch and interact with consumers in their natural environment

observation of consumers in a natural context on the internet

"gathering primary data by asking people questions about their knowledge, attitudes, preferences and buying behaviour"

"gathering primary data by selecting matched groups of subjects, giving them different treatments, controlling related factors and checking for differences in group responses"

"a segment if the population selected for marketing research to represent the population as a whole"

examining who does and does not fit into your group

unfortunately it comes against a bigger cost and more time

one needs to examine statistics to choose the correct sample size

estimate of how much the results of the sample may differ due to chance when compared to what would have been found if the entire population were included in the research

if the same sample had to be repeated several times, the same result will occur at the confidence level percentage

every member of the population has a known and equal chance of selection

the population is divided into mutually exclusive groups and random samples are drawn from each group

the population is divided into mutually exclusive groups and the researcher draws a sample

the research selects the easiest population members

researcher uses their judgement to select population members

researcher finds and interviews a prescribed number of people in each of several categories

before designing a questionnaire, one must answer questions such as what info is needed, from whom is it required, and what communication is going to be used?

is each question sufficient to generate the required information?

questionnaire should move from topic to topic in a logic manner

the first few questions should be simple, objective and interesting

meters attached to television sets to monitor what people watch

supermarket scanners to study the behaviour of people at point of sale

not a widely used technique due to expense, require unrealistic advertising exposure conditions and are hard to interpret

involves actual act of collecting and analysing raw data and finally interpreting into valid information

analysis process must be kept on a good watch to make sure the accuracy of data for a reliable result

any data analysis will depend on how the research method was constructed

less complex data analysis can be handled with office programmes, while more complex data analysis requires dedicated marketing research analysis programs such as SPSS or PASW

the more complex the level of statistical data analysis, the ore time and cost it will take to execute

success of the info and knowledge that results from marketing research depends by how it is presented to decision makers