MR Crash Course Flashcards
11 steps in the marketing research process
1) Establish need
2) Define problem
3) Research objectives
4) Determine design
5) Identify information sources
6) Decide data collection method
7) Design questionnaire
8) Determine sample plan and size
9) Collect data
10) Analyze data
11) Write and present report
Step 2 defining research problems/questions
- Problems are situations calling for managers to make choices among alternatives
- With the right information, managers can choose the correct decision alternative.
2 potential situation where managers need to make decisions
- A problem exists when a gap exists between what was supposed to happen and what did happen
- An opportunity occurs when there is a gap between what happened and what could have happened.
Problem or Opportunity?
When united airlines violently dragged a passenger off an overbooked flight?
problem
Problem or Opportunity?
When Elon Musk and his co-founders decided to create Paypal as an alternative to the traditional payment system
opportunity
Problem or Opportunity?
When apple realized the iPhone XR didn’t turn out to be as popular as expected
problem
Problem or Opportunity?
When apple launched Apple Card with no “foreign transaction fee”
opportunity
recognizing the situation that managers need to make decisions
- Recognize a problem managers must be knowledgeable of goals and actual performance
- To be aware of a opportunity managers must have a process for monitoring opportunities, such as opportunity identification system
symptoms
are effects or results
problems
are causes
Identification of causes
- Once symptoms have been validated, it is important to identify ALL possible causes for the symptoms
- The researcher and the manager should reduce ALL possible causes to probable causes
Step 3: Defining Research Objectives
- Research objectives are totally dependent on the “problem” but they different in that they tell the researcher more specifically what to do
- Research objectives state specifically what information, including what, who, and the unit of measurement, will be collected in order to allow the manager to select the correct decision alternative.
Step 4: Research Design
- Research design can be thought of as different types of data collection tools
- The choice of the most appropriate design depends largely on the objectives of the research and how much is already known about the problem and research objects
Appropriate design:
to gain background information, to define terms, to clarify problems and hypotheses, to establish research priorities
exploratory
Appropriate design:
To describe and measure marketing phenomena
descriptive
Appropriate design:
To determine causality, to make “if-then” statements
casual
Exploratory Research - “what happened”
a variety of methods are available to conduct exploratory research
- interview
- focus group
- observation
- secondary data analysis
- case study
Descriptive Research - “ .. here is what happened” - more specific
- descriptive research is undertaken to describe answers to questions of who, what, when, where, and how
- descriptive research is desirable when we wish to project a study’s findings to a larger population if the study’s samples is representative
Descriptive research
- cross sectional studies
- longitudinal studies
cross sectional studies
focus more on the “breadth” -width
- measures unit from a sample of the population only one point in time (snapshot/single photo)
ex: how many ppl. shop online at this moment
longitudinal studies
focus more on “depth”
- repeatedly measures the same sample units of a population over a period of time (series of photos/movies)
ex: track spending over course of time
casual research
causality may be thought of as understanding a phenomenon in terms of conditional statement of the form “if X, then Y”
- Casual studies are conducted through the use of experiments
ex: “give a pill, loose weight”
indecent variable (x)
are those variables which the researcher has control over and wishes to manipulate
dependent variable (y)
are those variables that we have little or o direct control over yet we have strong interest
extraneous variable
are those variables that may have some effect on a depends variable YET ARE NOT IND variables
Experiments
an experiment is defined as manipulate an ind. variable to see how it affects a dep. variable, while also controlling the effects of additional extraneous variables.
max
maximize the variance due to the indecent variable
min
minimize the variance due to error
con
control all extraneous variables
identifying causality
evidence of causality:
- the appropriate sequence of the occurrences: the “causes” always happen before the “effects
- concomitant variation - two phenomena vary together : whenever “X” changes, “Y” also changes
- an absence of alternative plausible explanations: there is only one probable cause
Step 5: Identify Data type and sources
Primary v secondary
primary
information that is developed or gathered by the researcher specifically for the research project at hand
secondary
information that has previously been gathered by someone other than the researcher and for some other purpose than the research project at hand
secondary data sources
internal - data that has been collected such as sales records, purchase orders, invoices, complaints, and customer service logs
external databases- databases supplied by organizations outside the firm
internal secondary sources
database Marketing - building and maintianing customer databases and other databases for …
- to identify prospects
- to decide which customers should receive a particular offer
- to deepen customer loyalty
- to reactivate customer purchases
- to avoid serious customer mistakes
external databases
supplied by organizations outside the firm
- published sources
- official data
- data aggregators
Step 6: decide the data collection method
qualitative vs quantitative
qualitative research
research involving collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data by observing what people do and say
quantitative research
research involving the use of structured questions in which response options have been predetermined and large number of respondents involved
qualitative data collection methods
- observation
- focus group
- ethnographic research
- in-depth interview
- projective techniques
qualitative - observation
observation methods- techniques in which the researcher relies on his or her powers of observation rather than communication with a person in order to obtain information
types of observation
- direct vs indirect
- disguised vs undisguised
- structure vs unstructured
- human vs mechanical
qualitative observation:
Direct vs indirect
direct - observing behavior as it occurs (active) ex: watch Super Bowl on tv - current game time
indirect- observing the effects or results of the behavior rather than the behavior itself (passive) ex: crime scene - happens later
qualitative observation:
disguised vs undisguised
disguised- subject is unaware that he or she is being observed ex: cop - speeding
undisguised- respondent is aware of observation ex: LG Slim tv stealing
qualitative observation:
structured vs unstructured
- structured- research identifies beforehand which behaviors are to be observed and recorded . often there is a checklist
- unstructured - all behavior is observed and the observer determines what is to be recorded
qualitative observation:
human vs mechanical
human - observer is a person hired by the researcher or perhaps the observer is the researcher
ex: Cop
mechanical- observation - human observer is replaced with some form of static observing device
ex: siri or devices with a camera when you run a red light
pros and cons of observation
- insight into actual , not reported , behaviors
- no chance for recall error
- better accuracy
- less cost
- small number of subjects
- subjective interpretations
- inability to pry beneath the behavior observed
- motivation, attitudes, and other internal conditions are unobserved
qualitative - focus group
focus groups - small groups of people brought together and guided by a moderator through an unstructured , spontaneous discussion for the purpose of gaining information relevant to the research problem
- focus groups should be used when the research objective is to describe RATHER THAN predict
ex: how do consumers describe a better package?
- how would they describe their satisfaction with our service?
pros and cons of a focus group
- can generate fresh ideas
- allow clients to observe their participants
- may be directed at understanding a wide variety of issues such as motives, perceptions, attitudes
- allow fairy easy access to special respondent groups
- representatives of participants
- dependance on the moderator
- difficult interpretation sometimes
