Chapter 10 Flashcards
What do good products and marketing programs begin with?
Good customer information and insights
Companies also need an abundance of information on competitors, resellers, and other actors and marketplace forces.
More than just gathering info, marketers must do what with it?
Marketers must use the information to gain powerful customer and market insights.
Why do marketers need formal studies in addition to general marketing intelligence info about general consumers, competitors, and marketplace happenings?
Often need formal studies that provide customer and market insights for specific marketing situations and decisions.
What are some examples of companies that use marketing research to guide decisions?
Starbucks uses marketing research to understand customer reactions to a new breakfast menu item. Google uses it to assess reactions to website redesigns. Samsung uses research to predict which consumers will buy their next-generation ultrathin televisions.
What is marketing research?
The systematic design, collection,
analysis, and reporting of data relevant to a specific marketing situation facing an organization
How do companies use
marketing research in a wide variety of situations?
Ex. It gives marketers insights into customer motivations, purchase behaviour, and satisfaction. It can help them to assess market potential and market share or measure the
effectiveness of pricing, product, distribution, and promotion activities.
What kind of department do large companies have for marketing?
Have their own research departments that work with marketing managers on marketing research projects.
Why do both large and small companies frequently hire outside research specialists?
To consult with management on specific marketing problems and to conduct marketing research studies. Sometimes firms simply purchase data collected by outside firms to aid in their decision making
How has traditional marketing research changed in recent years?
Lots of new digital data-gathering technologies have burst onto the scene, traditional marketing research has undergone a major transformation. Traditional mainstays such as research surveys and focus groups, although still prevalent and powerful, are now giving way to newer, more agile, more immediate, and less costly digital data-gathering methods.
What are some new digital data-gathering methods that are replacing traditional marketing research?
Ranging from real-time social media, website, and online feedback monitoring to mobile device
tracking—pose a threat to traditional marketing research.
How is the market research industry being described now?
“The market research industry, as we have known it for decades, is disappear-ing,” proclaims one industry observer. “It is being
absorbed into a rapidly transforming collection of market intelligence subdisciplines.”
What is just in time research?
Today’s fast and agile decision making often calls for fast and agile marketing information and research—call it just-in-time research
How does just in time research work?
In such situations, speed often
matters more than research rigour and precision.
What is the justification of just in time research?
If marketing managers can, at the tap of a button, see the views, clicks, likes, and shares of a new ad campaign, as well as listen to the roar—or silence, depending upon its
success—of social media comments; then why would they be willing to wait four weeks for a [market research study’s] bar chart to tell them that their spontaneous awareness has gone up?”
What is traditional research in danger of?
Traditional research is in danger of being not only slower but also less insightful than other sources of information. Marketing researchers must adjust to the new pace of
information.
Although its role is changing, how is traditional marketing research still widely used and very important.
For many marketing decisions, information quality and rigour
are more important than speed, convenience, and lower cost
What are the benefits of traditional marketing research?
The traditional research
approaches, although often more time-consuming and expensive, can allow for deeper, more focused probing, especially into the whys and wherefores of consumer attitudes and behaviour
What are the opportunities the rise of new digital research platforms also presents the marketing research industry with?
When combined, the traditional and new digital approaches can greatly enhance the marketer’s ability to gather, analyze, communicate, and gain insights from data about consumers and markets
What is the key for marketers in terms of blending approaches?
Blend the traditional and new approaches into a unified marketing information system that yields agile but deep and complete marketing
information and insights.
What can new digital approaches provide?
New digital approaches can provide immediate and affordable access to real-time data on the wants, whens, wheres, and hows of consumer buying activities and responses.
That frees traditional marketing research approaches to dig more deeply and rigorously into the whys.
In spite of all the benefits digital approaches can deliver, how should it be viewed and used as?
Should be viewed not solely as a substitute for existing methods but as a new approach that can complement and enhance what has come before.
What are the benefits of digital data gathering methods?
Newer, more agile, more immediate,
and less costly
What are the four steps of the marketing research process?
- Defining the problem and research objectives
- Developing the research plan for collecting information
- Implementing the research plan- collecting and analyzing the data
- Interpreting and reporting the findings
Although the first step of the marketing research process is the most difficult, why is it the most important?
It guides the entire research
process. It’s frustrating and costly to
reach the end of an expensive
research project only to learn that
you’ve addressed the wrong problem
What is exploratory research?
Marketing research to gather
preliminary information that will
help define problems and suggest
hypotheses
What is descriptive research?
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.
What is casual research?
Marketing research to test
hypotheses about cause-and-effect
relationships.
Why must marketing managers and researchers work together closely?
To define the problem and agree on research objectives
In a marketing manager and researcher relationship, what do each bring to the table?
The manager best understands the decisions for which information is needed, whereas the researcher best understands marketing
research and how to obtain the information.
What is the hardest step in the research process?
Defining the problem and research objectives
The manager may know that
something is wrong without knowing the specific causes.
What happens after the problem has been defined carefully?
The manager and the researcher
must set the research objectives
What are the 3 types of objectives a marketing research project might have?
- Exploratory research
- Descriptive research
- Casual research
Give an example of a research problem/hypothesis/question.
Would a 10 percent decrease in tuition at a private college result in an enrolment increase sufficient to offset the reduced tuition? Managers often start with exploratory research and later follow with descriptive or causal research.
What guides the entire research process?
The statement of the problem and research objectives guides the entire research process.
Why should the manager and researcher put the statement in writing?
To be certain that they agree on the purpose and expected results of the research
What must researchers do once they have defined the research problem and objectives?
They must determine the exact information needed, develop a plan for gathering it efficiently, and
present the plan to management.
What does the research plan outline?
Outlines sources of existing data
and spells out the specific research approaches, contact methods, sampling plans, and instruments that researchers will use to gather new data.
Research objectives must be translated into specific information needs. Give an example.
Suppose that Swiss Chalet wants to know how consumers would react to the addition of vegan “chicken” tenders to its appetizer menu.
The proposed research might
call for the following specific information:
- The demographic, economic and lifestyle characteristics of current Swiss Chalet customers
- The characteristics and usage patterns of the broader population of fast-food and fast-casual diners
- Impact on the Swiss Chalet customer experience
- Swiss Chalet employee reactions to vegan “chicken”
- Forecasts of vegan “chicken” sales and profits
Swiss Chalet’s marketers would need these and many other types of information to decide whether to introduce vegan “chicken” tenders and, if so, the best way to do it.
How should research plans be presented?
Research plan should be presented in a written proposal
When are written proposals especially important?
When the research project is large and complex or when an outside firm carries it out
What should written proposals cover?
Should cover the management problems addressed, the research objectives, the information to be obtained, and how the results will help management’s decision making. The proposal also should include estimated research costs
To meet the manager’s information needs, what can the research plan call for?
Gathering secondary data, primary data, or both.
What is secondary data?
Information that already exists
somewhere, having been collected
for another purpose.
What is primary data?
Information collected for the
specific purpose at hand.
What kind of data do researchers usually start gathering with and what’s a good starting point?
Usually start by gathering secondary data. The company’s internal data-base provides a good starting point. However, the company can also tap into a wide assortment of external information sources.
Companies can buy secondary data from outside suppliers. What’s an example?
For example, Nielsen sells shopper insight data from a consumer panel of more than 250,000 households in 25 countries worldwide, with measures of trial and repeat purchasing, brand loyalty, and buyer demographics.
Environics Analytics, one of Canada’s fastest-growing companies in 2018, pro-vides clients with access to 45 databases of over 30 000 variables to help connect with customers
What are commercial online databases used for? What are some examples?
Using commercial online databases, marketing researchers can conduct their own searches of secondary data sources. General database services such as ProQuest and LexisNexis put an incredible wealth of information at the fingertips of marketing decision makers.
Where can information be found beyond commercial services offering information for a fee?
Almost every industry association, government agency, business publication, and news medium
offers free information to those tenacious enough to find their websites or apps.
How are internet search engines used?
Can also be a big help in locating relevant secondary information sources.
What are the draw backs of using internet search engines?
Can be very frustrating and inefficient. Ex. a Swiss Chalet marketer Googling “fast-food vegan chicken” would come up with more than 42 million hits.
How can online searches be a good starting point to any marketing research project?
Well-structured, well-designed online searches can be a good starting point to any marketing research project
What are some advantages of secondary data over primary data?
- Usually be obtained more quickly and at a lower cost than primary data.
- Can sometimes provide data an individual company cannot collect on its own—information that either is not directly available or would be too expensive to collect.
What is an example of data that would be too expensive for a company to collect?
Consumer products brand such as Coca-Cola or Tide to conduct a continuing retail store audit to find out about the market shares, prices, and displays of its own and competitor’s brand. But those marketers can buy store sales and audit data from IRI, which provides data from more than 100 000 retail stores in markets around the U.S.
What are the problems with secondary data?
Researchers can rarely obtain all the
data they need from secondary sources. Ex. Swiss Chalet will not find existing information regarding consumer reactions about vegan chicken tenders in the fast-food setting. Even when data can be found, the information might not be very usable.
What criteria must researchers evaluate secondary information carefully for?
- Relevant (fits the research project’s needs)
- Accurate (reliably collected and
reported) - Current (up to date enough for current decisions)
- Impartial (objectively
collected and reported).
Overall what are the main reasons someone will use secondary data?
-Provide a good starting point for research
- Often help to define research
problems and objectives
Designing a plan for primary data collection calls for decisions on what 4 things?
- Research approaches
- Contact methods
- Sampling plan
- Research instruments
What are the 3 approaches for gathering primary data?
- Observations
- Surveys
- Experiments
What is observational research?
Gathering primary data by
observing relevant people, actions,
and situations.
What is an example of observational research?
Petro-Canada might evaluate possible new gas station locations by checking traffic patterns, neighbourhood conditions, and the locations of competing Irving Oil, Esso, and other retail chains.
Why do researchers often observe consumer behaviour? Give an example
To glean customer insights they
can’t obtain by simply asking customers questions. Ex. many new menu items at pizza giant Domino’s come from its stores, where franchisees observe special
requests from customers and fiddle accordingly to adapt existing offerings.
Marketers not only observe what consumers do but also observe______?
What consumers are saying.
Why do marketers now routinely listen in on consumer conversations on social media, blogs, and websites
Observing such naturally occurring
feedback can provide inputs that simply can’t be gained through more structured and formal research approaches.
What is ethnographic research?
A form of observational research
that involves sending trained
observers to watch and interact
with consumers in their “natural
environments.”
What are some observers of ethnographic research?
Might be trained anthropologists and psychologists or company researchers and managers.
What is an example of a contact method, sampling unit, and research instruments required for observational research?
Contact method: mail
Sampling plan: sampling unit
Research instruments: questionnaire
What is an example of a contact method, sampling unit, and research instruments required for survey research?
Contact method: telephone
Sampling method: sampling size
Research instruments: mechanical instruments
What is an example of a contact method, sampling unit, and research instruments required for experimental research?
Contact methods: personal, online
Sampling plan: sampling procedure
Research instruments
Give an example of ethnographic research.
Intuit (Tubo Tax, Quickbooks) follow-me-home” program, small, well-trained teams of employees visit customers’ homes and offices to watch customers experience the company’s products in real life—everything from removing the shrink-wrap to applying the software. The teams don’t interview the customers; they simply observe.
Similarly, global branding firm Landor launched Landor Families, an ongoing ethnographic study that has followed 11 French families intensely for the past seven years. Landor researchers visit the families twice a year in their homes, diving deeply
into both their refrigerators and their food-shopping behaviours and opinions.
What can today’s big data analytics provide important insights on?
Into the whats, whens, and wheres of consumer buying. The Landor Families program is designed to explore the whys. According to Landor, “There is no better way to understand people than to observe them in real life.”
