ELEMENTS IN AN

EFFECTIVE MARKETING
RESEARCH PROGRAM
D.SOMA SHEKHAR REDDY
M.B.A
The Oxford college of business management
 A good service marketing research program
includes multiple types of research studies.
The particular portfolio for any company will
match company resources and address the
key areas needed to understand the
customer of the business. So that it will be
easier for the company to identify the
appropriate type of research for different
research objectives.
• TYPES OF RESEARCH
1) Complaint solicitation.
2) Critical incident studies.
3) Requirements research.
4) Relationship & SERQUAL survey.
5) Trailer call or post translation surveys
6) Service expectation meeting & Reviews.
7) process checkpoint evaluations.
8) Market-Oriented ethnography.
 Complaint solicitation
Good service organization take
complaints seriously. Not only do they listen
to complaints-they also seek complaints as
communication about what can be done to
improve their services & their service
employees. Firms that use complaints as
research & document them, then use the
information to identify dissatisfied customers,
correct individual problems where possible,
and identify common service points. Research
on complaints is one of the easiest type of
research for firms to conduct, leading many
companies to depend solely on complaints to
stay in touch with customers. “complaint”
 CRITICAL INCIDENT
STUDIES
It is a procedure in which customers are asked in
to provide verbatim stories about satisfying and
dissatisfying service encounters they have
experienced. It has many benefits like data are
collected from the respondent’s perspective & are
usually vivid because they are expressed in
consumers own words and reflect the way they
think, this method also provides concrete
information about the way the company & its
employees behave & react, there by making the
research easy to translate into action, finally this
method is suited for assessing perception of
customers from different cultures.
 REQUIREMENT RESEARCH

This technique involves identifying the benefits

& attributes that customers expect in a service .
This type of research is very basic & essential
because it determines the type of questions that
will be asked in surveys & ultimately the
improvements that will be attempted by the firm .
RELATIONSHIP & SERVQUAL
SURVEYS
These surveys typically monitor & track services
performances annually with a initial survey
providing a baseline. Relationship surveys are also
effective in comparing company performance with
that of competitors ,often focusing on best
competitor’s performance as a benchmark. A sound
measure of service quality is necessary for
identifying the aspect of service needing
performance improvement ,assessing how much
improvement is needed for each aspect ,and
evaluating the impact of improvement efforts.
The SERVQUAL scale involves a survey containing
21 service attributes, grouped into 5 service quality
dimensions of Reliability, Responsiveness,
 TRAILER CALLS or POSTTRANSACTION
SURVEYS

In this method, customers are asked a short list of

questions immediately after a particular transaction
( hence the name trailer call) about their
satisfaction with the transaction and contact
personnel with whom they interacted, they are
more effective than complaint solicitation (where
the information comes only from dissatisfaction
customers). This type of research is fresh and
simple & provides mgmt with continuous
information about interaction with customers. It also
serves as initiative for employees to provide better
service because they understand how & when they
have been evaluated.
SERVICE EXPECTATION MEETINGS
& REVIEWS

It is a form of customer research that is highly

effective involves
eliciting the expectorations of the client at a
specified time of the year and then following up
later to determine whether the expectation are
fulfilled.
The format consist of :
1) asking clients what they expect in terms of 8 to
10 basic requirements determined from group
research ,
2) inquiring what particular aspect of these
requirement need improvement and,
 PROCESS CHECK POINT
EVALUVATION

With professional services such as consulting,

constructing, and architecture, service are provided
over a long period, and there are not obvious ways
or time to collect customer information. Process for
delivering the service & then structures the
feedback around the process, checking in frequent
points to ensure that the client’s expectations are
being met.
 MARKET-ORIENTED
ETHNOGRAPHY

In this type of research make key assumption

about what people are conscious of or can recall
their behavior and what they are willing to explain
to researcher about their opinions. To understand
how customers of other cultures access and use
services. This set of approaches allows the
researchers to observe the consumption behavior in
natural settings.
By..
D.SOMA SHEKHAR REDDY
M.B.A
The Oxford college of business management