Journal Entry 4 If you were developing a new candy bar, what type of things would you want to know before marketing it?

Marketing Research Section I

What is Marketing Research? 4 Involves the process and methods used to gather information, analyze it, and report findings related to marketing goods and services 4 Used to: –Determine consumers’ attitudes and preferences –Test product features –Determine market size and growth potential –Learn about competitive products –Determine buying cycles –Understand how the company is perceived by the public

Why is marketing research important? 4 Helps businesses plan for new products 4 Solve marketing problems 4 Keep track of trends in the marketplace 4 Determine prices 4 How to promote products 4 Who is the target market

Who uses marketing research? 4 Small firms-marketing research done by owners, managers or employees or hire outside services 4 Large companies-in-house marketing research department or contract with a specialty marketing research firm 4 Federal & state governments and trade associations

Marketing Information Systems 4 Set of procedures and methods that regularly generates, stores, analyzes and distributes marketing information. 4 Includes –company records (sales data) –competitor’s records(prices, location) –customer profile data (buying behavior) –government data (price trends, economic projections)

How do you use research in planning and implementing marketing strategies? 4 Database marketing or customer relationship marketing (CRM) is a process of designing, creating and managing customer lists –Obtain data thru: Face to face sales Direct mail responses Telephone/ purchases Service requests Web site visits Rewards cards

Types of Marketing Research 4 Two types of research: –Qualitative research: small number of respondents answer questions like “why” and “how” –Quantitative research: large numbers of respondents answer questions such as “how much” and “how many”

How do you design and conduct and marketing research? 4 (1)Attitude research –Designed to obtain information on how people feel about certain products, services, companies or ideas –Random samples can then be applied to the entire population 4 (2)Market Intelligence –Concerned with size and location of a market, the competition, and the segmentation within the market for a product –Helps develop a customer profile

Market Intelligence 4 Sales forecasting –Total estimate of market –Analyze company and competitor sales –Individual share is estimated 4 Economic forecasting –Predict future economic conditions for a city, region, country, etc –Use of key economic indicators New building construction Inflation rates Money supply Unemployment Price indexes

(3) Media Research 4 Designed to measure: effectiveness, selection, frequency, and ratings 4 Looks at: brand awareness, advertising recall, brand image, effectiveness of ad copy, and audience size

Media Research terms 4 Audience-number of homes or people exposed to a particular medium 4 Frequency-number of times viewer sees or hears an ad 4 Reach-percentage of the target audience that will see or hear an ad at least once 4 Ratings-total number of impressions delivered of a set period of time

Researching in media 4 Broadcast- Nielsen ratings- provide audience measurement for TV Arbitron Ratings-data on radio advertising 4 Print- –Audit Bureau of Circulation-provides circulation data for newspapers and periodicals 4 Internet –Tracking Web-centric User-centric

(4)Product Research 4 Evaluating product design and acceptance, package design, product usage, and consumer acceptance. –Concept testing, product positioning and pricing studies usually done with focus groups or in-depth interviews

Trends in Marketing Research 4 Due to global marketplace, research that measures product quality and customer satisfactions are key 4 Internal and external information management such as TQM or Total Quality Management

Limitations of Marketing Research 4 Money 4 Time 4 No guarantee on customer responses 4 Fast-changing markets 4 Lag time