chapter 5 Flashcards
often commission formal marketing studies of specific problems and opportunities, like a market survey, a product-preference test, a sales forecast by region, or an advertising
evaluation
Marketing managers
produce insight to assist in the marketing manager’s decision making.
marketing researcher
Marketing research is all about generating insights. Marketing insights provide diagnostic information about how and why we observe certain effects in the marketplace and what that means to marketers.
provide diagnostic information about how and why we observe certain effects in the marketplace and what that means to marketers.
Marketing insights
Marketers need timely, accurate, and actionable information about consumers, the competition and brands to make the best possible tactical decisions in the short run and the most effective strategic decisions in the long-run
Gaining a marketing insight and understanding its implications can often lead to a successful product launch or spur the growth of a brand.
The Marketing Research Process
- Defining the Problem
- Developing the Research Plan
- Collecting the Information
- Analyzing the Information
- Making the Decision
Marketing managers must be careful not to define the problem too broadly or too narrowly for the marketing researcher.
Questions focuses on the key issues that the manager must address and at the same time are specific enough to be actionable
DEFINING THE PROBLEM
The second stage of marketing research consists of developing the most efficient plan for gathering the needed information and then discovering what that will cost.To design a research plan, we need to make decisions about the data sources, research approaches, research instruments, sampling plan, and contact methods.
DEVELOPING THE RESEARCH PLAN
The researcher can gather secondary data, primary data, or both.
Data Sources
are data that were collected for another purpose and already exist somewhere
Secondary data
are data freshly gathered for a specific purpose or project.
Primary data
Marketers collect primary data in five main ways: through observation,
focus groups, surveys, behavioral data, and experiments.
Research Approaches
Marketing researchers have a choice of three main research instruments in collecting primary data: questionnaires, qualitative measures, and technological devices.
Research Instruments
The data collection phase of marketing research is generally the most expensive and error prone.
COLLECTING THE INFORMATION
After choosing the research approach and instruments, the marketing researcher
must put together a sampling plan designed to obtain high-quality responses while keeping costs in
line.
Sampling Plan
Sampling Plan three decisions:
Sampling Unit
Sample Size
Sampling Procedure
The marketing researcher must decide how to contact the subjects: online, in
person, by mail or e-mail, or by telephone.
Contact Methods
marketing statisticians can extract, from the mass of data,
useful information about individuals, trends, and segments
Data Mining
next-to-last step in the process is to extract findings by tabulating the data and developing summary measures. The researchers compute averages and measures of dispersion for the major variables and apply some advanced statistical techniques and decision models in the hope of discovering additional findings. They may test different hypotheses and theories, applying sensitivity analysis to test assumptions and the strength of the conclusions.
ANALYZING THE INFORMATION
When analyzing the available information and making a decision, it is important to draw a line between market data and market insights. Information is not knowledge, noted Albert Einstein. Likewise, market data alone are typically is not very useful unless they offer insights that improve managers’
understanding of the problem and enhance the cost-effectiveness of their actions. Thus, interpreting the data and relating them to the problem at hand play a crucial role in managerial decision making.
MAKING THEDECISION
Understanding the marketing environment and conducting marketing research can help to identify marketing opportunities. The company must then measure and forecast the size, growth, and profit potential of each new opportunity. Sales forecasts prepared by marketing are used by finance to raise
cash for investment and operations; by manufacturing to establish capacity and output; by purchasing to acquire the right amount of supplies; and by human resources to hire the needed workers
Measuring Market Demand
The major concepts in demand measurement are market/company demand, market forecast, company sales forecast, market potential, and company sales potential.
for an offering is the total volume that could be bought by a defined customer
group in a defined geographic area in a defined time period in a defined marketing environment under
a defined marketing program.
Market demand
the company’s estimated share of market demand at alternative levels of com-
pany marketing effort in a given time period. It depends on how the company’s products, services, prices,
and communications are perceived relative to those of competitors.
Company demand
The market demand corresponding to the actual level of industry marketing expenditure
market forecast.
expected level of company sales based on a chosen marketing
plan and an assumed marketing environment.
company sales forecast
consists of the maximum sales available to all firms in an industry dur-
ing a given period, under a given level of industry marketing effort, and under extant environmental
conditions
Total market potential
the sales limit approached by company demand as company marketing
effort increases relative to that of competitors
Company sales potential
