1. Consumer Research
- the Research Process

2. Consumer Research seeks to answer the:
Who?
What?
How?
Why?
Where?
When?
questions

3. Logical Process

4. Research and Action Who? What? How? Where? When? Why?
Customer and Market Profile
Marketing Management
Marketing Strategy and Operations

6. Types of Consumer Research
Exploratory Research
Descriptive Research
Causal Research…relates to Uncertainty
Motivational Research

7. Exploratory Research
Initial research to clarify a problem or opportunity
Basis for further research
e.g. identifying consumer segments

8. Exploratory Research
Quantitative
Secondary Research
Basis for further research
e.g. identifying consumer segments / Personas

9. Exploratory Research Quantitative Qualitative
Secondary Research – Census Data
Observation
Qualitative
Interviews
Focus Groups

10. Descriptive Research
Describes the nature and characteristics of a market or situation
e.g. Customer Profile

11. Motivational Research
Designed to probe consumer’s hidden and subconscious motivations.
What are the REAL reasons people are buying/behaving towards products today? Dichter 1954

12. Causal Research
Describes the nature of variables and cause and effect relationships
e.g. effect of advertising on Consumers

13. The Research Process
A logical set of stages that research goes through o produce ROBUST and RELEVANT Marketing Intelligence

14. Consumer Research - Secondary Data Sources

15. Generating Data + / - Data is generated in 2 basic ways:
Secondary data:
Data already existing – may have been collected for other purposes
Primary data:
Original data – collected for a specific purpose
+ / -

16. Secondary Data Secondary data is information
that has been previously gathered
for some purpose other than the
current research project

17. Example

18. Uses of secondary data Helps to clarify research requirements
Answers some of the research needs
Enables more insightful interpretation
of primary data
Provides comparative data
Provides information that cannot be obtained through primary research

19. Benefits of secondary data
Faster
Less expensive to collect
Internet can be used, increasing speed further

20. Limitations of secondary data
Availability
Applicability
Accuracy
Comparability

21. Evaluation of secondary data
Is relevant data available?
Is the cost of data acquisition acceptable?
Is the data in an appropriate format?
Does the data apply to the time period of interest?
If ‘Yes’, go to original source if possible –
Is the data likely to be unbiased?
Can the accuracy of the data be verified?
Can it be obtained within the timescale of the project?
If ‘Yes’, then use the data
If ‘No’, then undertake primary research

22. Internal Secondary Research Sources
Sales figures
Operational data – stock levels, etc.
Customer satisfaction results
Advertising spend
Customer complaints records
Effectiveness data from promotional
campaigns
Marketing research reports from
past studies

23. External Secondary Research Sources
Internet – single search engines, and multiple search engines
Directories
Country information
Published marketing research reports
News sources
Newsgroups and discussion lists

24. External Secondary Research Sources
Internet – Wikipedia…
Good gateway to other sources if the citation is properly referenced.

25. The management information system (MIS)
“A system within an organisation that supplies information and communication services and resources to meet organisation needs.”
(CIM)

26. The marketing information system (MkIS)
“People, equipment and procedures to gather, sort, analyse, evaluate and distribute needed, timely and accurate information to marketing decision makers”
(Kotler et al)

27. The structure of an information system
Technology
infrastructure
Hardware
Systems software
Applications software
Communications
Personnel
Technology developers
Systems operators
Systems maintainers
Users
User support
Data
infrastructure
Databases
Database management
Archiving

28. The marketing information system (MkIS)
environment
Marketing information system
Marketing
managers
Developing information
Target markets
Marketing channels
Competitors
Publics
Macro-environment forces
Analysis
Planning
Implementation
Organisation
Control
Assessing
information
needs
Marketing
intelligence
Internal
records
Distributing
information
Marketing
research
Information
analysis
Marketing decisions and communications

29. Today’s Task
Carry out - Explanatory/Descriptive Research on the theme park market in China
Define terms and parameters……