APPLIED MARKETING STRATEGIES Lecture 15 MGT 681

Marketing Ecology Part 2

Lecture Agenda What is Marketing Research

Marketing research Process Marketing research process follows six steps Defining the problem and research objectives Developing the research plan Collecting information Analyse the information Present the findings Make the decisions

Research Instruments There are three main data collection instruments – Questionnaires – Qualitative measures – Technological devices

Questionnaires Consist of questions presented to respond Questionnaires are flexible The most common instrument for data collection Needs to be developed tested and debugged before large-scale administration Form wording and sequencing of question may affect responses

Questionnaires There are two types of questions – Close-ended questions – Open-ended questions

Qualitative measures Qualitative research techniques are relatively unstructured Permit range of possible responses Variety is limited to creativity It is an information rich Qualitative measures include the range of options

Qualitative measures Word association: What comes to your mind when you hear the word Projective techniques: Give an incomplete stimulus and ask people to complete it or give them an ambiguous stimulus and ask them to make sense of it eg bubble exercise Visualization: To create a collage from magazines photos or drawing to depict their perception Brand personification: What kind of the person they think when the brand is mentioned Laddering: Increasingly more why questions

Technological devices Glavanometer can measure the interest or emotion aroused by exposure to specific ad or pictures Tachistoscope Flashes an ad to a subject with an exposure interval that may range from less then 100 th of a second to several seconds Eye camera: Studies respondents’ eye to see where did their eyes land first and how they linger on a given item and so on Skin sensors, Brain wave scanners and Full body scanners Audiometer can be attached to television sets in participating homes now records when the set is on and to which channels it is tuned. Global positioning systems can locate the position of a respondent

Sampling plan Sampling unit: who is to be surveyed? Sample size: how many people should be surveyed? – Large samples give more reliable results – 1% of total population is a reliable sample Sampling procedure: how should we choose the respondents?

Contact Method Mail contacts Telephone contact Personal contacts Online contacts

Online Research Pros and Cons Advantages Online research is inexpensive Online research is fast People tend to be honest and thoughtful online Online research is versatile Disadvantages Sample can be small and skewed Online panels and communities can suffer from excessive turnovers Online market-research can suffer from technological problems and inconsistencies

Collect the information The data collection phase of marketing research is generally the most expensive and the most prone to errors. Data collection is a daunting task Respondents may be inaccessible or contacted again or replaced Respondents may refuse to cooperate Give biased are dishonest answers Internationally of the biggest obstacle to collect information is the need to achieve consistency

Analysis of information This is the step to extract finding by tabulating the data and developing summary measures Researchers use’s advanced statistical techniques and decision models to find and discover hidden trends in the data Researcher may test hypotheses and theory applying sensitivity analysis to test assumptions and strength of the conclusion Researchers use many sophisticated software packages is to analyze data for example SPSS, EViews etc.

Last Two Steps Present the findings Make the decisions