Domain 1 - Market Research (13%) Flashcards
What is the primary objective of market research?
To help you develop a realistic marketing plan
On average, what percentage of firms waste their marketing budgets chasing jobs for which there is no justification?
30%
What is a prerequisite to developing a market research plan?
Taking an inward look at your firm (what market sectors are you in, what geographic territories you’re in, etc.)
What are the 2 most important things to focus on in market research?
- The work that is out there
- Whether the work you have the most experience in will still be available over the next few years
What are some side benefits of market research?
- reducing risk
- achieving a competitive edge
- boosting your firm’s performance
- demonstrating and improving the effectiveness of PR and marketing
- improving the effectiveness of firm’s sales process by giving BD staff sales intelligence
- gain clout w/ lenders
What is market research?
The gathering and evaluating of data regarding consumers’ preferences for products and services
What is the foundation of strategic and marketing planning process? And why?
SWOT analysis, because it allows you to systematically review the internal & external elements that have a direct influence on a company’s success.
Elements of the SWOT analysis
- Strengths - list the factors that are your unique strengths
- Weaknesses - what are the things you don’t do as well as you could?
- Opportunities - what’s changing in the market? Are there new services that could be offered? Broader geographic area?
- Threats - factors that could hurt your current position. What are your competitors doing that threaten your position in the market? Are there any market trends that could negative affect your firm?
What are the four phases of the life cycle of goods & services?
- Development phase (“the newest thing”)
- Growth phase (“it’s heating up”)
- Maturity phase (peaking)
- Decline phase (it’s over)
What is the difference between primary and secondary research?
Primary research = original research that you conduct yourself
Secondary research = research that has already been collected by outside groups
What is the advantage and disadvantage of primary research?
Advantage: no one else has the information you acquire from your exclusive research effort
Disadvantage: it’s time consuming
What is the advantage and disadvantage of secondary research?
Advantage: cheaper, available immediately
Disadvantage: less control over the data
What is the difference between quantitative and qualitative research?
Quantitative research = OBJECTIVE. It is numerically based research.
Qualitative research = SUBJECTIVE. It is verbal and descriptive.
What is a client satisfaction survey?
A method of market research used to gauge clients’ feelings about a project. Often includes elements of perception and market intelligence surveys. Often uses both qualitative and quantitative research methods.
What is the difference between exploratory and confirmatory research?
What is the goal of each?
Exploratory research
- open-ended research and often calls for qualitative data
- goal = explore possibilities and discover new ideas
Confirmatory research
- use hard data to quantify qualities identified in exploratory research
- goal = narrow down a list of options and figure out which one is right
What is Evidence-Based Marketing?
A tool that allows one to gather information from prospective clients and use it to develop a niche-specific campaign for one’s firm.
Ex) A healthcare architect conducts research on how his firm’s design influences healthcare outcomes. They published this evidence in a white paper.
What are some ways you can show off the results of your evidence-based marketing?
- White paper
- Brochure
- Visually appealing email
- Press release summarizing findings
What are the 2 biggest benefits of evidence-based marketing?
- Establishing name recognition in a specific niche area
- Gathering market-specific info to enhance credibility in the field
What is the difference between “push” vs “pull” method of gathering secondary research?
Push = pushes the info to you based on keywords (RSS feeds, Dodge, Reed)
Pull = proactively researching on your own
What are the 4 basic steps of a research project?
- Define the problem
- Collect the data, using a combo of primary & secondary research
- Analyze the data
- Present the findings, verbally or in writing
What are the 3 main methods of ethical reasoning?
- Utility
- Justice
- Rights
What is the Utility approach to ethical reasoning?
Researcher makes a decision based on what will bring the greatest net benefit to society as a whole.
If the benefits outweigh the costs, the action is ethical.
What is the Justice approach to ethical reasoning?
It’s all about fairness.
Will the costs and benefits be spread equally among those affected by the decision? If so, the action is ethical.
What is the Rights approach to ethical reasoning?
The emphasis is placed on individual welfare. If a person’s rights are violated, then the action is unethical regardless of what it produces.
What is the first step in understanding your marketing research objective, and why?
Performing an internal audit
Why? To assess your current position
What are the 5 elements of a company audit?
- Look at your market sectors
- Look at your sub-sectors
- How effective are the services you’re currently providing
- Perform a SWOT analysis
- Look at your competition
What are the 4 stages of a research objective?
- Exploratory/environmental (what is going on out there?)
- Generate options (what are the possible research problems that will help answer my question?)
- Select option (which option is best?)
- Evaluate outcome (how well did we do?)
What is a Research Request Agreement?
A document that clearly states the research problem to be addressed
What are the 6 elements of a Research Request Agreement?
- Background
- Decision problem
- Research problem
- Use
- Population & subgroups
- Logistics (how much time & money)
What is “publicly sourced, no cost” resource material?
Free data sourced by government groups and private-sector entities
What is “privately sourced, no cost” resource material?
Info from a professional organization that conducts a member survey and then makes the results available to their members
What is “privately sourced, low cost” resource material?
Industry or segment surveys
What is “privately sourced, moderate to high cost” resource material?
Primary research that is conducted specifically for you
What are “publicly released corporate documents”?
Investor reports for publicly traded companies
What is a Literature Search?
A method of exploratory research where info is gathered from secondary sources (e.g., Dodge, the internet, real estate brokers,
What is Big Data?
A collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using typical database management tools or traditional data-processing applications
What are some big-data-related technologies?
- Advanced analytics (most popular)
- Advanced data visualization
- Collaborative business intelligence
What are the 4 things that influence a market?
- Economics
- Demographics
- Technology
- Public policy
What is a CRM?
Customer Relationship Management
It’s a database that focuses on creating 2-way exchanges with customers so that firms have an intimate knowledge of their needs and buying patterns. CRM is intended to help firms understand and anticipate the needs of customers.
The ability to leverage intelligent connections among people/companies through technology to achieve your business goals.
What are the 4 parts of a comprehensive marketing information and reporting system?
- An internal reports system (accounting)
- Marketing intelligence
- Marketing research systems
- Analytical marketing system
What is an RSS Feed?
Real Simple Syndication
It’s a push tool to aggregate secondary research. You can set up a feed on a browser.
What does B = K x R x 1/F help you determine?
Whether it’s worth it to pursue a market research study
What is the K in the B = K x R x 1/F budget equation?
How do you calculate K?
K = the $ amount that could be lost if the project didn’t pan out
K = revenue minus the cost of the project
What is the R in the B = K x R x 1/F budget equation?
How do you calculate R?
R = % that effective research will reduce the chances of a mistake being made
R = firm’s failure rate minus what failure rate would drop to if project was a success
ex) firm’s current failure rate = 50%
firm’s projected failure rate if market research project was successful = 33%
R = 17%
What is the F in the B = K x R x 1/F budget equation?
How do you calculate F?
F = the ROI that you want from the project (between 5 - 20 usually)
500% ROI = 5
1000% ROI = 10
What is the average cost of conducting primary research?
$10K or more
What is the average range of costs for a firm to move into a new market sector?
$50K - $100K
What’s the most effective format for a questionnaire?
Multiple choice questions to start, then open-ended questions at the end
In probability sampling, what is the Margin of Error?
The % that you are willing for your research to be inaccurate.
In probability sampling, what is the Confidence Level/Interval?
A statistics term that defines a range of values within which the population parameter of interest is likely to be included.
In social sciences, 95% is common to use as a confidence interval.
A 95% confidence interval translates to a significance level of p = .05
In probability sampling, what is the Z-value?
The value on a normal bell curve associated with a confidence interval
- There are charts online that will tell you the Z value of your confidence interval
- Most common confidence interval is 95% which translate to a 2.0 Z value
What is the formula for calculating the sample size of a representative population?
Z2 x variance
_____________
(margin of error)2
What is cross-tabulation?
When the data is tabulated (organized) according to multiple characteristics
What is a reasonable number of completed surveys/interviews in any cross-tabulating group?
25
What is a client satisfaction survey?
A survey used to gauge clients’ perceptions of your firm’s capabilities, staff, level of service, and success
(the most popular type of survey among SMPS members)
What is a perception survey?
A survey focused on the perception of a firm by clients, potential clients, and/or the larger community
What is a benchmarking survey?
A survey that helps you compare your firm with competitors
(It is the least popular)
What is an internal survey?
Surveys done internally (among coworkers).
Ex) staff satisfaction, perception of issues, policies, best practices
What is a focus group?
In-person gatherings that are meant to gauge their opinions on specific topics
What is a proposal survey?
Surveys that ask your prospective client for feedback after submitting your proposal, but before you’ve been selected.
Rank the response rates of the different types of survey delivery (mail-in, online, phone, in-person, focus group)
Highest response rate to lowest:
- In-person
- Phone
- Online
- Mail-in / focus group
Rank the cost of the different types of survey delivery (mail-in, online, phone, in-person, focus group)
Most expensive to least expensive:
- In-person
- Phone / focus group
- Mail-in
- Online
What is the best way but probably most time-consuming and expensive way to deliver a survey?
In-person interview
Which type of survey delivery is the most difficult to control and why?
Focus groups because the quality of the info you get depends on how the questions are formulated and the skill of the moderator.
What are some benefits of hiring an outside consultant to conduct market research?
- clients may be more honest
- they will make this project their top priority (unlike in-house staff that may put it on the back burner)
- they will report their findings with no bias
- they are familiar w/ a broad range of primary/secondary sources
- they know how to put together a good survey
What is forecasting?
The ability to predict a future event or condition as the result of study and analysis.
What is “groupthink”?
The tendency of a group to analyze data in homogenous ways
What is a “wild card” in the forecasting process?
Low-probability but high-impact events that happen so quickly that we can’t respond to them effectively.
What are the 7 factors used to rank a wild card event? And what is this measuring tool called?
- power
- vulnerability
- opposition
- timing
- reach
- rate of change
- outcome
“The Impact Index”
What is revenue?
A firm’s overall income
What is a Marketing Information System (MIS)?
A system that uses information from the company’s database to produce standardized reports on a regular basis.
What is a Decision Support System (DSS)?
Software that enables managers to access the information in a company’s database and produce customized reports on an as-needed basis to assist in decision making. It combines data systems and commercial databases, modeling software, and graphical user interface.
What is a Data System and what is a part of?
It’s part of the DSS (decision support system) and it’s all the hardware and software required by a company to coordinate and store a company’s data, as well as the data coming in from external sources (like a commercial database).
What is a Model System and what is a part of?
It’s part of the DSS (decision support system) and it includes all of the various types of data modeling software that enable us to manipulate/visualize info from our company’s databases.
What is Data Triangulation?
When a piece of data can be verified through multiple research methods.
What is data tabulation?
The process of arranging quantitative data in a table, using some sort of classification.
What is coding?
The process of combining qualitative data into meaningful categories and then marking the categories with a code label so they can be easily compared & analyzed.
What are the 3 steps of the coding process?
- Order the info you’ve collected (chronologically, for ex)
- Conduct initial coding by making category codes
- Use focused coding to eliminate/combine/subdivide category codes (look for repeating ideas/themes)
Correlation vs causation
Correlation = a statistical relationship between 2 variables
Causation = a predictive relationship between 2 variables, where one causes the other
What is the best way to convey comparing values and quantifying change?
Percentages
What percentage of the population are visual learners?
65%
This is why charts and graphs are the best way to communicate info!
What is a Comparison Chart? What are some examples?
A chart used to compare relationships between points of data and to demonstrate patterns. They are vertical.
Examples: bar charts, dot charts, line charts, bubble charts
What is a Contribution Chart?
A chart used to demonstrate part-to-whole analysis. They are horizonal.
Examples: waterfall chart, venn diagram, pie chart, donut chart
What is a Distribution Chart?
A chart used to provide a perspective on data. All data points are displayed across a set scale.
Examples: column chart, line chart, histogram, scatter plot chart, word cloud
What is a Trending Chart?
A horizontal left to right chart that reveals patterns of change
Best shown through line charts
Example: showing modificatoins in data points over time
