Marketing Research

procedures that develop and analyze new information about a market

- May involve use of questionnaires, interviews with customers, experiments, and many other approaches

• role of research specialists
• scientific method: define problem, analyze situation, gather problem-specific data, interpret the data, and solve the problem

Marketing Information System (MIS)

which is an organized way of continually gathering, accessing,and analyzing information that marketing managers need to make ongoing decisions

• accessing multimedia data
• data warehouses
• decision support systems
• marketing models

Intranet

a system for linking computers within a company

- works like the internet, but is usually limited to employees to maintain security, access to websites and data

Data Warehouse

a place where databases are stored so that they are available when needed

- an electronic library, where all of the information is indexed extremely well

Decision Support System (DSS)

is a computer program that makes it easy for a marketing manager to get and use informaiton as he or she is making decions

- now provided my most MIS systmes

Search Engine

a computer program that helps a marketing manager find information that is needed - by searching key terms in a database or computer file

Marketing Dashboard

displays up-to-the-minute marketing data in an easy-to-read format

- usually customized to a manager's areas of responsibility

- with this early warning about potential problems, the manager can quickly make corrections

Marketing Model

a statement of relationships among marketing variables

- drawing on data showing how a promotion worked in the past, the DSS will make sale estimates using a marketing model

- the manager can look at the sales (and costs) expected with different types of promotion and select the marketing mix that is best for that target market

Sales Analysis

a detailed breakdown of a company's sales records

- salespeople, products, types of customers, or channels of distributions

- also can include costs, profitability, market share, ect.

Scientific Method

a decision-making approach that focuses on being objective and orderly in testing ideas before accepting them

- managers develop a hypotheses: an educated guess about the relationship between things or about what will happen in the future

Situaiton Analysis

an informal study of what information is already available in the problem area

- helps define problems and specify what additional information, if any, is needed.

Secondary Data

information that has been collected or published already

- this should be found using the situation analysis

Primary Data

information specifically collected to solve a current problem

- to often researchers rush to gather this when much relevant secondary information is already available - at little or no cost!

Research Proposal

a plan that specifies what information will be obtained and how

- to be sure no nisunderstandings occur later

- may include information about: costs, what data will be collected, how it will be collected, who will analyze it and how, and how long the process will take

Qualitative Research

seeks in-depth, open-ended responses, not yes or no answers

- try to get people to share their thoughts on a topic - without giving them many directions or guidelines about what to say

Focus Group Interview

involves interviewing 6 to 10 people in an informal group setting

- the focus group also uses open-ended questions, but here the interviewer want to get group interaction- to stimulate thinking and get immediate reactions

Quantitative Research

seeks structured responses that can be summarized in numbers, like percentages, averages, or other statistics

ex: calculating what percentage of respondents have tried a new product and then figure an average score for how satisfied they were

Response Rate

the percentage of people contacted who complete the questionnaire

- this is often low and respondents may not be representative

Consumer Panels

a group of consumers who provides information on a continuing basis

- whenever a panel member shop for groceries, he or she gives an ID card to the clerk, who scans the number

- sometimes members of a panel answer questions and the answers are merged with the scanner data

Experimental Method

researchers compare the responses of two or more groups that are similar except on the characteristics being tested

- researchers what to learn if the specific characteristic which varies among groups - causes differences in some response among the groups

Statistical Packages

easy-to-use computer programs that analyze data have made this step easier

• cross tabulation is on of the most frequently used approaches for analyzing and interpreting marketing research data
  • it show the relationship of answers to two different questions

Population vs Sample

the population is the total group they are interested in

- however, marketing researchers typically study only a sample, a part of the relevant population

• it is important to make sure the sample is representative of the true population to ensure results

Confidence Intervals

the rang on either side of an estimate that is likely to contain the true value for the whole population

- some managers are surprised to learn how wide that range can be

Validity

concerns the extent to which data measures what it is intended to measure

- is a real problem because many people will try to answer even when they don't know what they're talking about