Final Prep Flashcards
Market Research Designs: Discuss research design as a master plan and also why knowledge of research design is important
- Research design is a master plan that is a blueprint to what methods will be used to collect and analyze the information needed for a research project
- It is the foundation for your decisions to come
- The more knowledge you have on research designs, the more helpful in choosing the right one for you will be when you are at the beginning stages of formulating what the problem and research objectives are
- Choosing a research design depends on the objectives information provided
Market Research Designs: What are the three types of research designs? Explain each type and provide an example of each
- Exploratory: Unstructured and informal research that is used to:
- Gain needed background information when not a lot is known about the problem (what’s going on)
- Defines terms (what does satisfaction mean)
- Clarify problems and create a hypothesis (what hypotheses should we formalize and possibly test)
- Establish research priorities (where should we focus)
- There are no predetermined set of procedures when conducting exploratory research
- -Methods: focus groups
- -Example: Two girls who admired the hair accessories on the show Gossip Girl and weren’t able to find affordable duplicates so they started making their own accessories and sold them and now make $10 million annual profit
- Descriptive: used to describe and examine the who, what, when, where, and how
- useful to project to a larger population
- -Methods: cross-sectional study (measures one point in time), longitudinal studies (measure the same sample units of a population over a period of time), panels (sample of respondents answer questions at regular intervals)
- -Example: the Neilsen families and how they agree to have their data collected and analyzed for a long period of time
- Causal: measures causality in relationships (if x, then y)
- Causality is the condition that one or more variables has an effect on one or more other variables.
- -Methods: experiments and A/B testing
- -Example: spend more on advertising, sales will rise
Market Research Designs: Discuss under which circumstances and conditions a researcher would choose exploratory research versus descriptive research
A researcher would want to choose exploratory research when there are more questions than answers. When very little is known about the problem or when the problem has not been clearly formulated. It also helps define terms and concepts. An example of this would be the residential mortgage example that Jesse talked about in class.
Evaluating Secondary Research: What is secondary research?
it is data that has been previously gathered by someone other than a researcher for a purpose other than a research project.
Evaluating Secondary Research: Explain the advantages and disadvantages of secondary research
Some of the advantages of secondary research are that they can be obtained quickly, in comparison to primary data, secondary data is inexpensive, for almost any application secondary data is available, secondary data may enhance primary data, and secondary data may be all you need in order to achieve the research objective.
Some of the disadvantages of secondary data are incompatible reporting units, mismatched measurement units, unusable class definitions, and outdated data.
Evaluating Secondary Research: How does one go about evaluating secondary sources?
You must carefully assess the quality and validity of secondary data and decide whether to use it as a basis to make decisions.
Some important things to know about your secondary data is what the purpose of the study is, who collected the information, what information was collected, how the information was obtained, and how consistent the information is with other information.
Qualitative and Quantitative Research Techniques: What is the difference between qualitative and quantitative research?
Qualitative research techniques show an insight to consumer behavior and really wants to know more about the consumer’s perspective and involves collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data by observing what people do and say. Focus groups
Quantitative research is concerned about facts and data and is typically survey based to answer a very specific problem. Can be generalizable to a larger population
Qualitative and Quantitative Research Techniques: What are some examples of qualitative and quantitative research methods?
An example of qualitative research is Proctor and Gamble wanting to improve their its laundry detergent, so it invites a group of women aged 30-45 years old to help brainstorm ideas on how it could perform better.
An example of quantitative research is a company who has a panel of people complete an online survey.
Qualitative and Quantitative Research Techniques: When should you use these methods
Qualitative research should be used when you have a question that involves exploratory research.
Quantitative research should be used when you are wanting to gather consumer data rather than their insights. It should be used when you are trying to validate your answer for your problem.
Writing Effective Questions and Answer Scale Design: What are the hallmarks of “good” questions?
To create a good question it should be: focused on a single topic, it should be brief and to the point, it should be grammatically simple, and it should be crystal clear.
Writing Effective Questions and Answer Scale Design: Discuss the difference between questions for focus groups (qualitative) vs. questions for surveys (quantitative).
Questions for focus group would tend to be more open ended and exploratory (asking why). Survey questions are typically more structured and fall more into the descriptive research realm.
Writing Effective Questions and Answer Scale Design: What are the different types of answer scales? When are specific types most appropriate?
- Nominal Scale: Defined as those that only use only labels. Such as race, gender, or religion.
- Ordinal Scale: Puts respondents answers into a rank order ( first is best, last is worst) they only indicate relative size differences between objects. The natural order (first, second, ext) is known, but the exact differences are unknown.
- Ratio Scale: A scale that has a true zero or origin. Such as number of purchases, dollars spent, or miles driven.
- Interval Scale: rates the scales for subjective properties. Such as how good a coffee tastes one star, two star, three star, or four star. There is an equal intervals between each level.
Writing Effective Questions and Answer Scale Design: What are some techniques that you use to write “good” questions?
Minimize potential bias of the question
- focus the question on only one topic to avoid vagueness and unfocused answers
- eliminate redundant words, keep the questions length below 20 words
- keep sentence structure simple to help reduce potential respondent error
- if necessary use two sentences instead of one, and use precise words to make sure that everyone interprets the question the same.
Writing Effective Questions and Answer Scale Design: Discuss the pros and cons of writing your own questions vs. using an existing survey instrument
When creating your own question, you can ask exactly what you are seeking to find out. But it may not be comparable to other surveys that you have taken. In using an existing survey you can compare data against all other surveys that have occurred using the same survey instrument, also using an existing survey instrument is much cheaper both in cost and time saved.
Effective Sampling (Qualitative and Quantitative): What are the different types of samples?
- Probability samples are when a members of the population have a known chance or probability of being selected into the sample.
- Non-Probability Samples are samples where members of the population do not know what their chances of being selected into the sample are.
