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”
broadly to include all comments—both negative & positive –as
well as questions from customers.
 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, Assurance, Empathy & Tangibles.
The survey asks customers to provide two different rating on
each attribute , it shows the difference between expectation &
 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.
E.g. :- BizRate.com
 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,
3) Requesting that the client rank the relative importance of the
requirement.
 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