SMU MBA ASSIGNMENTS

Marketing research is “the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information – information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process. Marketing research specifies the information required to address these issues, designs 

designs the method for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, analyzes the results, and communicates the findings and their implications.”^[1] Marketing research is the systematic gathering, recording, and analysis of data about issues relating to marketing products and services. The goal of marketing research is to identify and assess how changing elements of the marketing mix impacts customer behavior. The term is commonly interchanged with market research; however, expert practitioners may wish to draw a distinction, in that market research is concerned specifically with markets, while marketing research is concerned specifically about marketing processes.^[2]

Marketing research is often partitioned into two sets of categorical pairs, either by target market:

• Consumer marketing research, and
• Business-to-business (B2B) marketing research

Or, alternatively, by methodological approach:

• Qualitative marketing research, and
• Quantitative marketing research

Consumer marketing research is a form of applied sociology that concentrates on understanding the preferences, attitudes, and behaviors of consumers in a market-based economy, and it aims to understand the effects and comparative success of marketing campaigns. The field of consumer marketing research as a statistical science was pioneered by Arthur Nielsen with the founding of the ACNielsen Company in 1923.^[3]

Thus, marketing research may also be described as the systematic and objective identification, collection, analysis, and dissemination of information for the purpose of assisting management in decision making related to the identification and solution of problems and opportunities in marketing

Well, smack me on the wrist and call me shorty, they are. You would think that’s a good thing and it is except… That’s the operative word, ‘except.’ The little critters are still multiplying around the web like rabbits in heat, but there is a little problem. Actually, the problem isn’t so little.

This darn problem haunts me. At least a couple of times a week it drives me insane. Whenever I run across it I feel like the dullest axe in the shed.

If I were double jointed, I’d kick myself in the ‘hello there.’

So what is this dumb mistake that:

• Has me pulling my hair out by the roots
• Has me kicking myself over and over
• Haunts me like that house in Amityville

Outdated resource boxes with links leading to that dreaded 404 error.

I’m afraid to guess how much money and traffic I’m losing. It’s a nightmare. Those babies are doing their part, but crazy John has made the ultimate dumb mistake.

How did this happen? How could I end up looking like the ‘village idiot?’

The only answer I can give is, ‘I didn’t realize.’

I never realized how viral articles were. I had no idea that little articles could circle the globe for years.

I didn’t see the big picture. I wrote those resource boxes with no regard for the future.

How can you avoid making the same mistake?

1. If you’re going to promote an affiliate program, don’t link directly.

Sometimes programs just disappear. Other times, you may find the program hasn’t lived up to your expectations.

Set up a redirect page on your website. If the program disappears, or you no longer wish to promote it, you can reset the page to lead wherever you choose.

2. Don’t lead directly to your opt in list.

You never know when a list may change their pricing or services. For one reason or another you may change listservs.

A better option is to set up a page on your site to capture addresses. If you leave your present service, you can edit the page to lead to your new list.

If I had set up my links according to option number one for affiliate programs, or two for list building, I’d have kept the leads flowing and the orders coming for years.

Creating killer articles can drive traffic and pull in profits for years. So avoid the mistakes of this ‘dumb monkey’ and reap the full rewards of your efforts.

 

 

2. Explain the role of Marketing research in “decision-making” process

The role and limitations of marketing research

“Marketing research does not make decisions and it does not guarantee success”. Marketing managers may seek advice from marketing research specialists, and indeed it is important that research reports should specify alternative courses of action and the probability of success, where possible, of these alternatives. However, it is marketing managers who make the final marketing decision and not the researcher. The second observation, that marketing research does not guarantee success, is simply a recognition of the environment within which marketing takes place. In the fields of science and engineering researchers are often working with deterministic models of the world where y = f(x). That is, x is a necessary and sufficient condition for y to occur. For instance, an increase in pressure is usually necessary and sufficient to bring about a rise in air temperature. In the social sciences, and this includes marketing and marketing research, the phenomenon under investigation rarely, if ever, lends itself to deterministic modelling. Consider the marketing problem of determining how much to spend on promotion in order to achieve a given market share. The link between promotional expenditure and sales is not so direct as that between pressure and temperature. There are a great many more intervening variables, including: the media used, the effectiveness of the promotional message, the length and frequency of the campaign, not to mention the many dimensions of the product, price and distribution. Marketing researchers work with probabilistic models of the form:

y = f(x₁)..(fx₂)…f(x_n)…

This reflects the fact that in order for a target market share to be reached some promotion (amount unknown) is necessary but will not be sufficient, on its own, to achieve the target. Y is a function of a number of variables and the interactions between them. The model is further complicated by the fact that these interactions are themselves often not understood. It is for these reasons that marketing researchers cannot guarantee that decisions based on their information will always prove ‘successful’. Rather the best that a competent researcher and a well designed study will be able to offer is a reduction in the amount of uncertainty surrounding the decision.

A definition of marketing research

Green and Tull¹ have defined marketing research as follows:

“Marketing research is the systematic and objective search for, and analysis of, information relevant to the identification and solution of any problem in the field of marketing.”

The key words in this definition are; systematic, objective and analysis. Marketing research seeks to set about its task in a systematic and objective fashion. This means that a detailed and carefully designed research plan is developed in which each stage of the research is specified. Such a research plan is only considered adequate if it specifies: the research problem in concise and precise terms, the information necessary to address the problem, the methods to be employed in gathering the information and the analytical techniques to be used to interpret it.

Maintaining objectivity in marketing research is essential if marketing management is to have sufficient confidence in its results to be prepared to take risky decisions based upon those results. To this end, as far as possible, marketing researchers employ the scientific method. The characteristics of the scientific method are that it translates personal prejudices, notions and opinions into explicit propositions (or hypotheses). These are tested empirically. At the same time alternative explanations of the event or phenomena of interest are given equal consideration.

Not many years ago an agricultural engineering company developed an improved rice milling machine. The machine was introduced into Thailand where existing rice milling machines were of a design which resulted in a high percentage of brokens (broken kernels). The new rice mill produced a negligible percentage of brokens. Intuitively a successful product would be predicted, launched with hardly any need for marketing research when the new mill had such obvious advantages over existing products. The agricultural engineering company went through the expensive and time-consuming process of importing the machine into Thailand. They set up extensive distribution and servicing facilities only to be surprised when the mill failed to gain acceptance. In Thailand, smallholders take their rice to a miller.

Since they do not have sufficient cash to pay for milling their rice they get paid in ‘brokens’. The miller then sells the ‘brokens’ for animal feed. The more effective milling machine simply did not fit into the Thai rice processing system. The company’s assessment of the market was hardly objective. They saw the ‘brokens’ as a problem which their product solved. The prospective customer did not see it as a problem at all.

The third of the key terms in the definition given a little earlier was analytical. The marketing researcher’s task goes beyond the collecting of data. He/she must also interpret the data in terms of what the it means to the organisation which commissioned the research. Knowing that 60% of those interviewed thought that product A was superior to product B is, in itself, of little value. The organisation needs to know the alternative ways it can respond to this data. Data is equivalent to the raw materials of manufacturing; it has to be converted into information before it becomes useful in decision making. The process of convening data into information is achieved through analysis.

Although the need for precision and thoroughness in marketing research has been stressed here, it is to be remembered that, in practice, there is a perpetual conflict between the demands of expediency and the search for truth. The reality is that management is frequently under pressure to make timely decisions. Therefore management often seeks answers through marketing research in the shortest time possible and, moreover, at minimum cost. On such occasions its methods tend to be less theoretically rigorous and its analysis more superficial.

The market research brief

Marketing research can be concerned with any of a variety of aspects of the market: the product, sales, buyer behaviour, promotion, distribution, pricing, packaging, etc. Since the researcher cannot investigate everything about a market, he/she must be selective. The question remains as to how the researcher decides where to focus the study, and to what depth each issue should be investigated. The answer should lie in a document called the research brief. The research design is a set of guidelines given to the researcher by the person(s) who have commissioned the research and/or the individual(s) who are to make use of the results in their decision making. The brief must inform the researcher which aspects of the market are particularly important. In particular, the research brief should include:

· the purpose of the research
· the objectives stated in a clear, concise, attainable, measurable and quantifiable way
· a time horizon
· a resource allocation, including the budget and facilities
· a reporting period.

Each of these components of the brief is explained in a little more detail in the section that follows.

The purpose of the research

It is not at all unusual for marketing managers to neglect to tell the researcher the precise purpose of the research. They often do not appreciate the need to do so. Instead, they simply state what they think they need to know. This is not quite the same thing. To appreciate the difference consider the case of the marketing research agency which was contacted by the International Coffee Organisation (ICO) and asked to carry out a survey of young people in the age group 15-24. They wanted information on the coffee drinking habits of these young people: how much coffee they drank, at what times of day, with meals or between meals, instant or ground coffee, which other beverages they preferred and so on. In response, the research organisation developed a set of wide-ranging proposals which included taking a large random sample of young people.

In fact much of the information was interesting rather than important. Important information is that information which directly assists in making decisions and the ICO had not told the research company the purpose of the research. The initial reason for the study had been a suspicion, on the part of the ICO, that an increasing percentage of young people were consuming beverages other than coffee, particularly soft drinks, and simply never developed the coffee drinking habit. Had this been explained to the research company then it is likely that their proposals would have been radically different. To begin with, the sample would have been composed of 15-24 year old non-coffee drinkers rather than a random sample of all 15-24 year olds. Second, the focus would have been non-coffee drinking habits rather than coffee drinking habits.

Unless the purpose of the research is stated in unambiguous terms it is difficult for the marketing researcher to translate the decision-maker’s problem into a research problem and study design.

Clear, concise, attainable, measurable and quantifiable objectives

Suppose that the marketing manager states that he needs to know the potential market for a new product his/her organisation has been developing. At first glance this might appear to meet all of the requirements of being clear, concise, attainable, measurable and quantifiable. In practice it would possibly meet only one of these criteria, i.e. it is concise!

Here is another case to be considered. A small engineering firm had purchased a prototype tree-lifter from a private research company. This machine was suitable for lifting semi-mature trees, complete with root-ball intact, and transplanting such trees in another location. It was thought to have potential in certain types of tree nurseries and plantations.

The problem with the objective is that the marketing manager needs to know the potential market for the new tree-lifter is that it is not attainable. One could find out how many tree-lifters were currently being sold but this is not the same as the objective set by the marketing manager. The market potential for any new brand is a function of at least 4 things, as shown in Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1 The components of market potential

 

It was possible to test customer reaction to the concept of the new tree-lifter by showing pictures, line drawings and by supplying product specifications to prospective buyers. However, since the company had not decided their pricing policy an important element could not be tested. In large measure, it was also possible to gauge the likely reaction from competitors. The researchers began by looking at the basis of competition to determine whether it was on price, product quality or unique product features. The researchers were able to look at precedents. They examined the pattern of response on past occasions when one or other of those companies already in the market had launched a new product. An audit of the environment was undertaken too, but the missing component was the company’s’ own plans for exploiting the market. Since the company had no involvement in the agricultural engineering sector, prior to acquiring the rights to the tree-lifter, they had no agreements with distributors, no idea of which, if any, of the distributors would be prepared to stock their product; they had no salesmen trained in selling into this industry and so on. The product’s potential depended very much on such initiatives.

The solution would have been to undertake a study which would have described the market in detail in terms of customers, competitors and the environment. The company could then have put a marketing plan together and conducted a follow-up study to test their propositions out on the marketplace.

The need to set a time horizon for marketing research

Inevitably there are deadlines which the marketing research activity must fit and these must be stated clearly at the outset of the research. As was said earlier, because of time pressures, management is often seeking quick answers from marketing research. If the researcher is aware of the time constraints then this will become an overriding factor when he/she plans the research design. He or she is likely to put forward a design which is less elegant, and gives rise to less precise information but delivers the results on schedule.

A resource allocation, including the budget and facilities

There are essentially two approaches to establishing the resource allocation to a particular marketing research exercise. Management can start with the problem and work out how much it will cost to solve it. Alternatively, they can decide how much the management can afford to spend, at the time, and seek the best answer they can for the time, money and manpower allocated. In practice the decision-makers prefer the latter approach and the researchers the former. In the end, some kind of compromise develops. The researcher rarely gets all of what he/she judges is required to reach a satisfactory conclusion but if the research proposal is well thought out and persuasively presented some concessions can be obtained.

Whichever the approach to resource allocation adopted, it is imperative that the researcher is aware of the financial and other constraints within which he/she must complete the work.

 

3. Describe consumer research process in detail.

The discipline of consumer research has its roots in marketing research. There are two paradigms of consumer research — qualitative and quantitative. While qualitative deals with consumer insights in a visual form or in words, quantitative is primarily number driven. Some researchers now use both these techniques together to get more accurate insights. The consumer research process focuses on defining the research problem, conducting exploratory and evaluation, conclusive research design and qualitative and data collection, analysis, and report.

Exploratory research involves collecting secondary data, i.e., already published data. If the research problem is solved by the secondary data, no conclusive research is needed. Conclusive research involves collecting primary data, directly from consumers, retailers, etc. The conclusive research project has to be designed before data collection can be done.

The researcher has to select the methods of data collection, which can be quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative data collection methods include: observation (researcher observes the activities of the consumer), experimentation (the consumer reactions to change in product feature, price etc. are studied in the laboratory, under controlled conditions, or in the field), and survey (consumer is directly approached for information). There are many quantitative techniques or tools which are used for primary data collection — questionnaire (consumer is directly asked questions through mail, over telephone, online, or through personal interview) and attitude scales (attitude measurements techniques like graphic rating, semantic differential, ranking, and Likert scale).

The qualitative methods of data collection are — depth interviews like in-depth interviews (personal interview with unstructured questionnaire) and focus groups (group interaction to study the consumer); projective techniques like completion technique (sentence and story completion), association technique (single word, phrase, or sentence), and construction technique; and metaphor analysis (collage making, ZMET, and means-end chain model). Sampling is an important part of the research design and involves the selection of sampling unit, sampling method, and sample size depending on the time and cost factors. Sampling is followed by data collection, analysis, and report.