INTRODUCTION TO MARKETING

RESEARCH
 Marketing Research

• Market research:-is the systematic and objective identification, collection,

analysis and reporting of information for the purpose of assisting organizations in
decisions relating to the understanding of the behaviors and attitudes of people and
their organizations, the ultimate aim being the development and implementation of
solutions to problems or opportunities in marketing.

• In this chapter, the role and importance of market research will be reviewed:

 What is market research?

 Classification of Market Research
 Marketing Research Process
 The role of market research
 Whether to conduct market research
 Classification of Marketing Research

Marketing Research

1. Problem- Identification Once problem or 2. Problem-Solving Research

Research opportunity identified (to arrive at a solution)

•Market Potential
•Market Share
•Image •Segmentation
•Market Characteristics •Product Research
•Sales Analysis Research •Pricing
•Forecasting (Short and Long •Promotion
Term) •Distribution
•Business Trends
Problem-Solving Research

• Segmentation- divide the market according to lifestyle, demography,

product image characteristics and also select the target market etc
• Product Research- test concept, product design, package test, product
modification, brand positioning & repositioning.
• Pricing- importance of price in brand selection, pricing policies, product
line pricing, price elasticity of demand, response to price changes
• Promotion- promotional budget, sales promotion relationship,
promotional mix, copy decision, creative advertising testing, evaluation
of advertising effectiveness.
• Distribution- type of distribution, attitudes of channel members, intensity
of wholesale and retail coverage, channel margins, location of retail and
wholesale outlets.
 Marketing Research Process

1. Problem Definition
2. Development of an Approach to the problem
3. Research Design Formulation
4. Field Or Data Collection
5. Data Preparation and Analysis
6. Report Preparation
 Marketing Research Process

1. Problem Definition 2. Development of an

(define the problem) Approach to the problem

•Formulating an objective or
theoretical framework
•Analytical Models
•Purpose of study
•Research Questions
•Finding out the information
•Hypotheses
needed
•Identification of information
•Interview with industry experts
required
•Collection of secondary data
•Interview with industry experts
•Analysis of secondary data
•Collection of secondary data
•Qualitative research on focus
•Analysis of secondary data
group
•Qualitative research on focus
group
•Considerations or Conclusions
 3. Research Design 4. Field work or data
Formulation collection

• Definition of information
needed
• Secondary data analysis To minimize data collection error we
• Qualitative research collect data in the following manner:-
• Methods of collecting
qualitative data (survey, •Personal Interviewing
observation, and •Telephonic interviewing
experimentation) •Electronically i.e. through mails
• Measurement and scaling
procedure “Proper training and selection of
• Questionnaire design employees with proper supervision
• Sampling process and sample and evaluation of data can minimize
size the problem”
 5. Data Preparation 6. Report Preparation
and Analysis and Presentation

Data Preparation includes:-

•Coding
•Editing
•Transcription
•Verification of data
•Also questionnaires or
observation form is inspected or
edited if required.
Role of Marketing Research
 Role of Marketing Research in decision making

Customer Group
Consumers
Employees
Shareholders
Suppliers Uncontrollable
Environmental
Factors
Controllable
•Economy
Marketing Variables:-
•Technology
Marketing Research •Compensation
•Product
•Laws &
•Pricing
Regulations
•Promotion
• Social & Cultural
•Distribution
Factors
•Political Factors
Marketing Managers
•Market Segmentation
•Target market selection
•Performance and Control
 Managers need information…..
• Identification and Satisfaction of customer needs by implementing marketing
strategies

• Information required of customers, competitors, and other forces of market

• Wider scope of firms, as they are expanding business on international ground

as well as domestic one.

• As the income level of consumers are going higher, so to check the respond
and market offerings.

• The competition has become more intense

• Changing market environment

“The task of marketing research is to assess the information needs and provide
management with relevant, accurate, reliable, valid, current and actionable
information”
• The role of marketing research in managerial decision making is explained
further using the framework of the "DECIDE" model:

• D- Define the marketing problem

• E- Enumerate the controllable and uncontrollable decision factors
• C- Collect relevant information
• I- Identify the best alternative
• D- Develop and implement a marketing plan
• E- Evaluate the decision and the decision process
 International marketing Research

• Globalization of companies is a trend today. Going to the global market it

is important to know the business environment, competitors, customer, their
needs, desires.
• Companies who do not do the research properly they face difficulty to
stand out in the international market.
• Specifically for international products

• Difficult to analyze because:-

-Market is more wide
-Segmentation is difficult because of large population of consumers
-Finding out consumer preferences is difficult.

• Conducting international marketing research, foreign research,

or multinational research is much more complex than domestic
marketing research
RESEARCH DESIGN
 Research Design

• It is a master plan specifying the methods and procedures for

collecting and analyzing the needed information.

• In other words, it is a framework or blueprint for conducting

research project. It specifies the details of the procedures necessary
for obtaining the information needed to structure and/ or solve MR
problems

Three types of design are there:

• Exploratory
• Conclusive :-Descriptive , Casual
 Exploratory research
• It is a type of research conducted for a problem that has not been
clearly defined.
• Exploratory research helps determine the best research design, data
collection method and selection of subjects.
• It should draw definitive conclusions only with extreme caution.
• Given its fundamental nature, exploratory research often concludes
that a perceived problem does not actually exist.
• Exploratory research often relies on secondary research such as
reviewing available literature and/or data, or qualitative approaches
such as informal discussions with consumers, employees,
management or competitors, and more formal approaches through
in-depth interviews, focus groups, projective methods, case studies
or pilot studies.
• The results of exploratory research are not usually useful for
decision-making by themselves, but they can provide significant
insight into a given situation. Although the results of qualitative
research (through primary data) can give some indication as to the
"why", "how" and "when" something occurs, it cannot tell us "how
often" or "how many".
• Exploratory research is not typically generalizable to the population
at large. The sample is small in this.
• The objective of exploratory research or formulative research is to
gather preliminary information that will help define problems and
suggest hypotheses.
 Exploratory research could be used for any of the following purposes

• Formulate a problem or define a problem more precisely

• Identify alternative courses of action

• Develop hypotheses

• Isolate key variables & relationships for further examination

• Gain insights for developing an approach to the problem

• Establish priorities for further research.

METHODS FOR EXPLORATORY
RESEARCH
 Methods for Exploratory Research

Experience
Pilot Study
Survey

Secondary or
Historical Data Case Study

Exploratory
Research
• Secondary data :- are the data which have already been collected for the
purposes other then the problem at hand. These data can be collected
quickly and inexpensively.

• Pilot Study:-
• It is a small scale preliminary study conducted before the main research, in
order to check the feasibility or to improve the design of the research.
• It is a collective term for any small-scale exploratory research technique
that uses sampling.
• A pilot experiment is often used to test the design of the full-scale
experiment which then can be adjusted with it.
• Should anything be missing in the pilot, it can be added to the experiment
to improve chances of a clear outcome that will influence the full-scale
(and more expensive) experiment.
• In other words, Pilot study is a smaller version of a larger study that
is conducted to prepare for that study.
• A pilot study can involve pretesting a research tool, like a new data
collection method.
• It can also be used to test an idea or hypothesis.
• Pilot studies can also be used in clinical trials, in order to test
different doses, routes of administration, dosing schedules and
possible barriers to adherence before a large-scale multicenter drug
study is launched.
• Pilot studies are used as feasibility studies, to ensure that the ideas
or methods behind a research idea are sound, as well as to “work out
the best or good” before launching a larger study.
• It is also called feasibility Study.
 How a Pilot Study is Different From a Full Study

• Before beginning such a full research project, researchers need to know

that their study is valid and the study’s design will be able to capture the
data they are looking for. They need to know that the research they plan to
do will be the most accurate and reliable research possible. The best way to
do this is to perform a pilot study.

• Think of a pilot study as a miniature study. Typically, it will call for fewer
literary resources, a shorter time frame, and fewer research subjects. Like:-

1. For example, if the full study is going to reference 50 previous books or

articles, the pilot study might reference five or ten.

2. If the full study will call for a survey of 100 people, the pilot study might
rely on surveying a small handful of individuals.

3. If the full study is going to take many months or years to complete, the
pilot study can focus on two or three lakes over the course of a few weeks.
 How to Do a Pilot Study

• The pilot study is the place where mistakes can be made. No research
project is perfect, and this is the time when those imperfections will be
discovered. Even as the researcher is gathering and analyzing data, and
writing it up into a report, he or she should be thinking: “What questions
should I have asked? What data should I have looked for that I didn’t?”

• Those questions and gaps in information should be noted and added to the
full study later on. If a professor or other supervisor is available to assist
with the study, he or she should scrutinize the pilot study for additional
problems.

• In many ways, the pilot study will look very much like the full study will,
and it should be documented similarly, with an abstract, research goal,
literature review, method, data analysis, and conclusion. The same method
that will be used in the full study should be applied as best as possible in
the pilot study. If done correctly, the pilot study will point the researcher in
the right direction for a successful and enlightening research project.
•
CASE STUDY METHOD
 Case Study

• Case study refers to the collection and presentation of detailed

information about a particular participant or small group, frequently
including the accounts of subjects themselves.
• A form of qualitative descriptive research, the case study looks
intensely at an individual or small participant pool, drawing
conclusions only about that participant or group and only in that
specific context.
• Researchers do not focus on the discovery of a universal,
generalizable truth, nor do they typically look for cause-effect
relationships; instead, emphasis is placed on exploration and
description.
• Case studies typically examine the interplay of all variables in order
to provide as complete understanding of an event or situation as
possible.
• Unlike quantitative methods of research, like the survey, which focus on the
questions of who, what, where, how much, and how many, and archival
analysis, which often situates the participant in some form of historical context,
case studies are the preferred strategy when ,how or why questions are asked.
Likewise, they are the preferred method when the researcher has little control
over the events, and when there is a contemporary focus within a real life
context.

• In addition, case studies require a problem that seeks a holistic understanding

of the event or situation in question using inductive logic--reasoning from
specific to more general terms.

• This type of comprehensive understanding is arrived through a process known

as thick description, which involves an in-depth description of the entity being
evaluated, the circumstances under which it is used, the characteristics of the
people involved in it, and the nature of the community in which it is located.

• Thick description also involves interpreting the meaning of demographic and

descriptive data such as cultural norms and mores, community values, ingrained
attitudes, and motives.
CONCLUSIVE RESEARCH
 Conclusive research
• Conclusive research is meant to provide information that is useful in
reaching conclusions or decision-making. It tends to be quantitative in
nature, that is to say in the form of numbers that can be quantified and
summarized.

• It relies on both secondary data, particularly existing databases that are re-
analyzed to shed light on a different problem than the original one for
which they were constituted, and primary research , or data specifically
gathered for the current study.
• The purpose of conclusive research is to provide a reliable or
representative picture of the population through the use of a valid research
instrument. In the case of formal research, it will also test hypothesis- an
unproven statement or proposition about a factor or phenomenon that is of
interest to the researchers.

• Conclusive research can be sub-divided into two major categories:

  1.   Descriptive or statistical research, and
2.    Causal research
 Qualitative Quantitative
"There's no such thing as qualitative data.
All research ultimately has
Everything is either 1 or 0"
a qualitative grounding"

1. The aim is to classify features, count them, and

1. The aim is a complete, detailed description. construct statistical models in an attempt to explain
what is observed.
2. Researcher may only know roughly in advance what 2. Researcher knows clearly in advance what he/she is
he/she is looking for. looking for.
3. Recommended during earlier phases of research 3. Recommended during latter phases of research
projects. projects.
4. All aspects of the study are carefully designed
4. The design emerges as the study unfolds.
before data is collected.
5. Researcher uses tools, such as questionnaires or
5. Researcher is the data gathering instrument.
equipment to collect numerical data.
6. Data is in the form of words, pictures or objects. 6. Data is in the form of numbers and statistics.
7. Subjective - individuals� interpretation of events is 7. Objective � seeks precise measurement & analysis
important ,e.g., uses participant observation, in-depth of target concepts, e.g., uses surveys, questionnaires
interviews etc. etc.
8. Qualitative data is more 'rich', time consuming, and 8. Quantitative data is more efficient, able to test
less able to be generalized.  hypotheses, but may miss contextual detail.
9. Researcher tends to become subjectively immersed 9. Researcher tends to remain objectively separated
in the subject matter. from the subject matter.
 Difference b/w

Exploratory research Conclusive research

• To provide insights & • To test specific hypotheses and

understandings examine relationships.
• Information needed is not clearly • Information needed is clearly
defined define
• Research process is flexible and • Research process is formal and
unstructured structured
• Sample is small and non • Sample is large and
representative representative
• Analysis of data is qualitative • Data analysis is quantitative
• Results and findings are tentative • Findings and results are
• Findings generally followed by conclusive
further exploratory research or • Findings used as inputs into
conclusive research decision making
 Descriptive Research

• A type of conclusive research that has as its major objective the description
of something- usually market characteristics or functions.

• It is concluded for following reasons:-

(a) To describe the characteristics of relevant groups, such as consumers,

salespeople, organization or market areas.
(b) To estimate the % of units in a specified population exhibiting a certain
behavior
(c) To determine the perception of product characteristics in the eyes of
consumers
(d) To determine the degree to which marketing variables are associated.
For .e.g. to what extent is shopping at department stores related to eating
out?
(e) To make specific predictions about a specific store for its specific product.
 Focus group interview

Advantages

• Fresh unstructured reactions

• Reduced costs
• Quick to initiate
• Group dynamics stimulate ideas
• Preference for verbal rather than written communication

Disadvantages

• Requires a well-trained discussion moderator

• Relies on interpretation
• Small Sample Size Effects on Diversity
• Suggestive but not conclusive