Marketing Research – Theory

Sessions 1: Research Process and Types of Research design

1. Marketing Research
- Marketing Research is the application of the scientific method in searching for the truth
about market and market and marketing phenomena.
- The systematic and objective process of gathering, recording, and analyzing data to aid in
marketing decisions
Applications:
- Define marketing opportunities or threats, generate, and evaluate ideas, monitor
performance, understand the marketing process and consumers
- Appropriate, when an organizational problem or opportunity is characterized by uncertainty
Important factors:
- Time constraints, availability of data, benefits, complexity
2. Marketing Research Methods
- Explore new ideas, underlying customer motivations, develop new products, etc.
- Describe segments, product sales, customer preferences, etc.
Cause Decisions:
- Product decisions -> choosing design features, packaging, customer segments
- Place decision -> choice of channels, incentives for channels members
- Price decisions -> setting price and discounts
- Promotion decisions -> determining ad budget, what media to use
3. Scientific Method
- Prior Knowledge/theory, Discovery/Idea generation, Research question / Hypothesis,
Hypothesis testing, Conclusion
4. Types of research design: Exploratory research
Objectives:
- Formulate problems more precisely
- Help develop hypothesis of what causes a specific problem
- Establish priorities for research, eliminate impractical ideas
- Clarify concepts
- Discover new ideas, such as business opportunities or new products
Characteristics:
- Flexible, versatile, possibly unstructured,
- Typically, not an end in itself
5. Types of research design: Descriptive research
Objectives:
- Describe characteristics of certain groups, objects, organizations, environment
- Estimate proportion of people in a population who behave in a certain way
- Investigate relationships
- Make specific predictions
Characteristics:
- Directed to a specific issue
- Structured
 6. Types of research design: Causal Research
Objective:
- Provide evidence regarding the causal relationship between two or more variables
- Exploratory and descriptive research mostly cannot infer causality theoretically and
statistically
7. Research process
a) Define research objectives
- What is the research problem?
- Wrong or poorly identified problem, objectives are not deliverable
b) Planning research design:
- Exploratory, descriptive, or causal design? Quantitative or qualitative research? Single or
multi-country research? External or internal data provider?
- Ambiguous questions or poor study design result in invalid responses
c) Planning a sample
- What is the group to draw conclusion from?
- Poor sample selection, small sample, wrong sample
d) Collecting data
- Is the data available or should new data be collected?
- Errors cause by on-respondents, poor selection of respondents, the interviewer
e) Analyzing Data
- How can the data be summarized? What techniques can be used?
- Errors occur while transforming raw data from questionnaires into research findings
f) Formulating conclusions and preparing a report
- How can the research aid decision-making and solve the research problem?
- Wrong interpretation, report not written well

Session 2: Mostly exploratory Research: Secondary data und qualitative Data

1. Secondary vs Primary Data
Secondary Data:
- Data that have been previously collected for some purpose other than the one at hand.
- Internal and External sources
Primary Data:
- Primary Data is usually gathered by the researcher for present investigation
- Communication, Observation, Primary research
 Both can be used for exploratory, descriptive, and causal research
2. Sources of Secondary Data:
Internal:
- In-house records and databases, accounting, sales data, newsletter subscriptions
External:
- Government and private suppliers of reports and statistics
- External database services
- Geodemographic services
- Consumer panels
- Scanner data
 Data is collected for some other reason but may provide useful for you purpose
 Availability and Quality are determining factors
3. Use of Secondary Data
- Study Scanner data to identify consumption patterns
- Analyze annual reports of competitors to find potential blind spots
- Check Nielsen Consumer Survey to find emerging trends
- View student enrolment of other universities to find most sought-after courses
- Use historic sales data to forecast sales
4. Advantages of Secondary Data
- Economical and speedy to obtain
- Collection independent from respondent cooperation
- Possibly more accurate than primary data
- Data collection is non-reactive and unobtrusive
- Sometime the only kind of data available
5. Disadvantages of secondary Data
- Compatibility and relevance to research
- No control over the accuracy
- Can be out of date
- Units of measure and level of aggregation
- Accessibility problems
- Sufficiency problems
6. Summary of secondary data
- Data collected utilized for other purposes
- Possibly readily available but data quality can be problematic
- Secondary data is often a starting point but may also be used for descriptive or conclusive
projects
7. Qualitative Research
- Qualitative research is not quantified thus not numerical. Instead, words or actions need to
be interpreted. Interpretations are subjective.
- Discovering new insights and true inner meanings. Developing new products, making sense
of product failure despite prior research, and understanding consumer behavior
- Qualitative data mal help to develop a hypothesis and quantitative research would seek to
answer it
- The simple way to gather qualitative date are open questions
8. Focus Groups
Modus:
- Moderator leads a free-flowing interview with a small group of people
Application:
- Perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes
Advantages:
- Quickly organized, easy to execute, group dynamic, multiple perspectives, and spontaneous
answers
Disadvantages:
- Lack of anonymity, little control over group dynamic, Hard to analyze due to group context,
subjective responses, need for highly skilled observers / Moderators, high cost per
participant, difficult to use for sensitive topics
9. Depth Interviews
Modus:
- One-on-One interview with interviewer assuming a critical role
Application:
- Opinion, beliefs, values, expertise
Advantages:
- Considerable insight from everyone, prefund understanding/insight
Disadvantages:
- Time consuming, difficult to interpret and easy to bias, expensive
10. Projective Techniques
Modus:
- Beliefs or feelings are projected onto a third party, an inanimate object, a task
Application:
- When respondents are unable or unwilling to respond meaningfully to direct questions
Advantages:
- Bypass potential hesitance
- Usually fast and cheap
Disadvantages:
- Highly dependent on interpretation
Types:
- Rorschach-test. Word association test, completion test, bubble exercise, third person
technique
11. Conversation:
Modus:
- Unstructured dialogue recorded by a researcher
Application:
- Opinions, beliefs, values, expertise
Advantages:
- Gain unique insight from enthusiasts, can cover sensitive topics, less expensive than depth
interviews or focus groups
Disadvantages:
- Easy to get off course, interpretations are very researcher depended
12. Observation
Modus:
- Recorded notes describing observed event
Applications:
- Unobtrusive, can yield actual behavior patterns
Disadvantages:
- Can be very expensive, Motivation may be unclear
13. Collages
Modus:
- Collage is created, researcher ask about its meaning
Application:
- Portraying brands beyond scale- or word-based constraints
Advantages:
- Deep insights into consumers perceptions, relatively unbiased and unobtrusive
Disadvantages:
- Requires details monitoring in both the data sourcing and data analysis stage. Complex and
intense analysis, researcher bias
Session 3: Mostly descriptive Research: Survey research and observation
1. Why mostly descriptive?
a) Observation
- Often, observations are used to describe what people do
- One may also use observations to explore what people do
b) Surveys
- Often, surveys are used to describe what people do
- One may also use surveys to explore what people do
 The research technique used does not define the research design
 Research objective defines research design, which defines the techniques
2. Observations
- The systematic process of recording the behavioral patterns of people, objects, and
occurrences as they take place
- Physical movement, verbal behavior, expressive behavior, physiological reaction, spatial
tension, location
- Advantages:
- Unobtrusive observation captures actual behavior without bias
- Potentially quick, easy, simple, inexpensive
- Recording subliminal reactions or behavior
- Disadvantages:
- Not all information is observable
- Observer bias
- Ethical concerns
3. Types of observation
- Direct observation:
- Researcher observes and records what naturally occurs
- Contrived observation
- Researcher creates artificial situation
4. Two ways of observing
- Unobtrusive observation -> Subjects are unaware
- Visible observation -> Subjects are aware
5. Survey vs questionnaire
- A survey is a research technique in which a sample is interviewed in some form or the
behavior of respondents is observed and describe in some way
- Questionnaire is the tool used, questionnaires are also part of experiments
6. Survey research
- Primarily relates to characteristics, motives, attitudes, and behavior of consumers
- Focus typically on obtaining quantifiable information
- Methods employed are structure and direct rather than unstructured
- Samples tend to be large and representative of the target population
- Data analysis is statistical
 Surveys are mostly associated with quantitative research but can be qualitative as well
- Advantages:
- Efficiency
- Analysis can be straightforward
- Results are easy to understand
- Disadvantages:
- Ease of use may lead to suboptimal application and presentation
 7.Sources of Error in Survey Research
- Sampling Error:
- Sample does not represent population
- Systematic Error:
- Error regarding respondents, data collection, or data processing resulting from some
imperfect aspect of the research design
- Respondent Error:
- Nonresponse error -> non contacts, refusals, self-selection bias
 Size of this error cannot be known
- Response Bias -> respondents answer misrepresents the truth
 Conscious misrepresentation
- Acquiescence bias -> tendency of a respondent to go along and agree with the viewpoint of a
survey
- Extremity Bias -> Respondents tend to use extremes when responding to questions
- Interviewer bias -> presence of the interviewer may influence respondent’s answers
- Social desirability bias -> Respondents may desire to be perceived more favorable
- Administrative errors:
- Data processing errors -> error that occurs of incorrect data entry, incorrect computer
programming, or other procedural errors during data analysis
- Sample selection error -> administrative error caused by improper sample design or sampling
procedure execution
- Interviewer error -> mistakes made by interviewer failing to record survey responses correctly
- Interviewer cheating -> filling in fake answers or falsifying questionnaires while working as an
interviewer
-

Session 4: Causal -> Experiments

Session 5: Questionnaire design