Marketing Research

Lecture # 1
 What is Marketing?
⮚ Marketing includes all activities necessary
for the conception, pricing, promotion and
distribution of goods, services and ideas to
create exchanges that satisfy individual and
organizational objectives (needs).
⮚ If you want to describe marketing in one
sentence, it is “customer satisfaction”.
⮚ Marketing Research is,
✔To hear the customer
✔To know the opinion of the customer
 What is Marketing Mix?
⮚ Four Ps of marketing program are
collectively called Marketing Mix. These
are,
i. Product/ Service
ii. Price
iii. Promotion
iv. Distribution
 Marketing Plan

⮚ It is basically the tactics/ strategies through

which we perform all these activities.
Marketing Strategy
⮚ Marketing managers need some pertinent
informations to develop a good marketing
strategy. These informations come through
marketing research.
⮚ Required information for developing marketing
strategy may include:
✔What is the market?
✔How do we segment the market?
✔What are needs and wants of each segment?
✔How do we measure the size of each segment?
✔Who are our competitors?
✔What is the marketing strategy of our competitors?
✔Which segments should we select for targeting?
✔Which size, model and quality of product should we
produce that best suits our target market?
✔What is the best price?
✔Which method shall we use to distribute our product/
service?
✔What kind of advertisement, publicity should we use?
 Marketing Research
⮚ The American Association (AMA) has defined
marketing research as the:
“Function that links the customer, customer and
public to the marketer through information-
information used to identify and define marketing
opportunities and problems; generate, refine and
evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing
performance; and improve understanding of
marketing as a process.
⮚ For the purpose of this course, a short definition is
adopted:
“Marketing research is a systematic and objective
process of designing, gathering, analyzing, and
reporting information that may be used to solve
specific marketing problems and assisting the
management to improve their decisions relating to
marketing”
Role of Marketing Research
⮚ First role of Marketing research is that it
helps you to serve your competitors better.
⮚ Second role of marketing research is that it
improves marketing decisions.
⮚ Role of marketing research is much critical.
 Situation Analysis
⮚ Understand the market and the customer-
who they are, how they behave, what and
why do they buy, and how they are likely to
respond in future-is the heart of marketing
research.
⮚ Marketing research helps in acquiring an in
depth understanding of both environment
and the markets.
⮚ Situation analysis is to take stock of
existing situation. To know what are our
✔Strengths
✔Weaknesses
✔Opportunities
✔Threats
 Market Environment
⮚ To know about:
✔Economical trends
✔Social trends
✔Technological trends
✔Legal requirements on quality, labeling and
safety
 Market Characteristics
⮚ To know about:
✔ Market size, potential, growth
✔ Location and spread of customers
✔ Different segments and group of customers
✔ Competition: number, size and performance of
competitors, competitive products
✔ Channel of distribution: wholesale and retail coverage
⮚ Through marketing research we collect data
to decide about marketing mix, this data is
called “Marketing Mix Pre-specific data”
 Product
⮚ What product attributes are important for
customer?
⮚ How should the product be differentiated from
competitor?
⮚ How should the packaging be designed?
⮚ How important is warranty, after sale service etc?
 Price
⮚ What is the elasticity of demand?
⮚ How should the product be priced?
⮚ What is the paying capacity of market?
⮚ How do we react to competitive price change?
⮚ How important is the price to the buyer?
 Promotion

⮚ Promotion is the market communication

 Promotion Mix
⮚ Promotion Mix includes:
✔Advertisement
✔Public relation
✔Personal selling
✔Sales promotion
 Promotion
⮚ What should be the promotional budget?
⮚ What media are most effective for our product?
⮚ How do we measure the effectiveness of
advertising etc?
⮚ Which advertising agency be hired to handle our
promotion campaign?
 Place/ Distribution
⮚ It is also called channel of distribution.
⮚ It means to move the product/ services from
producer to consumer.
 Place/ Distribution
⮚ What kinds of outlets should handle our product:
wholesale’s distribution, dealer, agents, retailer etc
⮚ How many intermediaries should be there?
⮚ What rate of commission/ discount is appropriate?
⮚ How can channel of distribution be motivated to
push our product?
⮚ How physical distribution of products be managed?
⮚ Marketing research will tell us whether the
distribution will be:
✔Exclusive
✔Intensive
✔Selective
 Consumer Behavior
⮚ Who buy our product? Demographic and
psychographic characteristics
⮚ Brand preference
⮚ Where do they buy? Outlet types
⮚ Motivation. Why do they buy?
 Consumer Behavior
⮚ Maslow theory of five needs:
✔Physiological needs
✔Safety needs
✔Sociological needs
✔Psychological needs
✔Self actualization
 Consumer Behavior
⮚ Influence of different groups: peers, family
⮚ When do they buy? Frequency of buying
⮚ How do they evaluate the product?
⮚ Influence of advertising
Marketing Research Industry
 Research suppliers
⮚ Internal research suppliers are the firms
own research and development
departments.
⮚ External research suppliers are outside of
the firm.
 Scope of Research Suppliers
⮚ Full time research surveys companies.
⮚ Limited surveys research supplier.
⮚ Some researchers do only data analysis.