Chapter 10 (3.8) Marketing Research

 What is Marketing Research? Marketing research is the systematic design, collection, analysis, and reporting of data relevant to a specific marketing situation facing an organization.

Marketing Research ※ Companies use marketing research in a wide variety of situations. ※ For example, marketing research can help marketers understand customer satisfaction and purchase behavior. ※ It can help them assess 评定 market potential and market share, or to measure the effectiveness of pricing, product, distribution, and promotion activities.

four steps:  The marketing research process has four steps: ※ defining the problem and research objectives, ※ developing the research plan, ※ implementing 执行 the research plan, ※ and interpreting 解释 and reporting the findings.

four steps  Step 1: defining the problem and research objectives ※ Defining the problem and research objectives is often the hardest step in the research process. ※ After the problem has been defined carefully, the manager and researcher must set the research objectives.

Step 2 developing the research plan  Once the research problems and objectives have been defined, researchers must determine the exact information needed, develop a plan for gathering it efficiently, and present the plan to management.  The research plan outlines sources of existing data and spells out the specific research approaches, contact methods, sampling plans 抽样检验方法, and instruments that researchers will use to gather new data.

Step 2 Developing the research plan  To meet the manager ’ s information needs, the research plan can call for (demand) gathering secondary data, primary data, or both.  Secondary data: information that already exists somewhere, having been collected for another purpose.  Primary data: information collected for the specific purpose at hand.

Step 2 developing the research plan  Researchers usually start by gathering secondary data.  The company ’ s internal 内部的 database 数 据库 provides a good starting point.  However, the company can also tap a wide assortment 分类 of external 外部的 information sources, including commercial data services and government sources.  Companies can buy secondary data reports from outside suppliers, use online database, etc.

Step 2 developing the research plan  Secondary data can usually be obtained more quickly and at a lower cost than primary data.  Also, secondary sources can sometimes provide data an individual company cannot collect on its own.  Secondary data can also present problems. (the needed information may not exist)

Step 2 developing the research plan  Primary data Primary data: information collected for the specific purpose at hand. ※ designing a plan for primary data collection calls for a number of decisions on research approaches, contact methods, sampling plan, and research instruments.

Primary data collection  Research Approaches Observation; Survey; Experiment  Contact methods Mail; Telephone; Personal; Online  Sampling plan Sampling unit; Sampling size; Sampling procedure  Research Instruments Questionnaire; Mechanical instruments

Primary data collection  Observational research: collecting primary data by observing relevant people, actions, and situations.  Survey research: gathering primary data by asking people questions about their knowledge, attitudes, preferences, and buying behavior. (the most widely used method for primary data collection )  Experimental research: gathering primary data by selecting matched 匹配 groups of subjects, giving them different treatments, controlling related factors, and checking for differences in group responses.

Primary data collection  Sampling plan sample 抽样 : a segment of the population selected for marketing research to represent the population as a whole. Designing the sample requires three decisions: who / how many people / how to chose people

Implementing the research plan  The researcher next puts the marketing research plan into actions.  This involves collecting, processing, and analyzing the information.

Interpreting and reporting the findings  The researchers must now interpret the findings, draw conclusions, and report them to management.