marketing chapter 5

involves collecting interpreting and reporting info to address clearly defined marketing problems

help companies understand and satisfy the needs and wants of customers

as markets continue to become globalized, product life cycles continue to become shorter and markets continue to change rapidly

consumers rely on companies to develop and market goods/services that they need/want

in this information rich age, companies want info systems that give managers access to the right info, in the right form, at the right time to help them create customer value and strengthen relationships

consists of the people, technologies, and procedures aimed at supplying an organizations marketing info needs

-in house systems

-decision support systems (DSS)

-online systems that support social media sites, allow companies to collect and analyze huge amounts of data

- internet enables researchers to conduct a variety of research, such as surveys, focus groups, and social media website monitoring

-internal company data (largest source of data a company has) helps organize and make sense of data in order to make them useful for marketing purposes

-companies systematically gather competitive intelligence about what direct/indirect competitors are doing in terms of new product development and their marketing mix

well defined set of 5 steps that yield invaluable info concerning a firms market and its competition

1. define the problem

2. develop a plan

3. collect data

4. analyze the data

5. present results and take action

firm clarifies the exact nature of the problem

• specify the research objectives

• define the consumer population of interest

• identify relevant contextual factors

identifying what type of research to do: exploratory, descriptive, or casual

• specifying what info is needed

• determining what type of research techniques may be used to acquire it

• presenting this research plan to management

begins with the firms decision to use secondary or primary data

• primary data - collected by various qualitative techniques such as focus groups, interviews, observations, quantitative techniques such as surveys and experiments

• secondary data - may already reside in the companies mis or may be obtained from outside sources like the internet

• sampling - marketing researchers to obtain feedback from a subset of the population that is representative of the population as a whole

converting the data into information that will be useful to marketers

• the culmination of the research is a formal, written report to decision makers that includes an executive summary, research objectives, method used, findings, and recommendations about how the firm should take action

data visualization enables marketing researchers to present data and research results in pictorial or graphical format, which helps uncover new patterns in data and grasp difficult to understand concepts

-unfamiliar nature of foreign markets

-companies can learn about consumer behavior in other regions by using local marketing research companies

-political, legal, sociocultural, technological factors influence whether a company product can be successfully marketed in a particular country

largest change in online research has come from the ever increasing volume of user generated content associated with social media

use of insights and tools from neuroscience to better understand consumer responses to different kinds of marketing stimuli

-neuroscience “toolbox” consists of imaging technologies, such as fMRI or EEG, that directly measure brain activity

-includes variety of methods for measuring behavioral and physiological responses to marketing stimuli, such as eye tracking, facial expression coding, core biometrics (heart rate, respiration, skin conductance), and implicit response testing

1. increasingly powerful computer capabilities available to companies allow for collection, storage, and analysis of data from millions of consumers

2. misuse of research methods and findings

3. firms may be compelled by clients to return findings favorable to the client or arrive at a conclusion predetermined by client

4. marketing orgs (American marketing association, marketing research association, ESOMAR) concerned with reliability of search restyles and have set up ethical standards for conducting research

survey based and experiments, can be done quickly low cost but uncertainty ab how well sample represents population

focus groups, depth interviews, ethnographic research, observation research. results difficult to measure objectively, sample sizes can be small and poor interpretation

describes both the growth in information that inundates businesses each day and the complex tools used to analyze the data and derive meaningful insights

data collected specifically for the research problem at hand

information collected for alternative purposes prior to the study

analyzing raw data to make conclusions