Lecture 6

Marketing Research
Chapter 9
OBJECTIVE

 Define marketing research and explain its importance to marketing

decision making
 Describe the steps involved in conducting a marketing research
project
 Discuss the profound impact of the Internet on marketing research
 Describe the growing importance of mobile research and other
methods of research
MARKETING RESEARCH IS IMPORTANT –
MISTAKES CAN HAPPEN….
Launching the wrong product
• What market research said: New Coke
actually proved to be better in taste
choices, not only beating Pepsi but
also Old Coke among 200,000
consumers. What market research
overlooked: The brand Coke
represented an American lifestyle from
a bygone era – nostalgia. “if it isn’t
broke don’t fix”. Change can be
perceived as an admission of
weakness. 
Not understanding
customer’s changing
needs
WHAT IS MARKETING RESEARCH
• Process of planning, collecting, and analyzing data relevant to a marketing
decision
• Marketing research should be descriptive, diagnostic, and predictive
• Descriptive - What is the historic sales trend in the industry? What are
consumers’ attitudes toward a product?
• Diagnostic - What was the impact on sales after a change in the package
design?
• Predictive - “What if” questions, such as how can descriptive and diagnostic
research be used to predict the results of a planned marketing decision?
WHAT DO MARKETING MANAGERS DO WITH
MARKETING RESEARCH?

• Improves the quality of decision making

• Helps managers trace problems
• Helps managers understand detailed and complicated
relationships
• Helps managers serve customers accurately and efficiently
The marketing research
process
 Identify and formulate
the
problem/oppportunity
Secondary then
primary data
Plan the research
design
Choose between
qualitative and
quantitative methods

Specify the sampling Probability and non-

procedures probability sampling

Marketing Research
process
Collect the data

Analyze the data

Prepare and present the

report

Follow up
STEP 1: IDENTIFY AND FORMULATE THE
PROBLEM
• Determines what information is needed and how it can be obtained efficiently
and effectively
• A marketing research objective defines the specific information needed to solve
a marketing research problem
• A broad-based problem that uses marketing research in order for managers to
take proper actions is known as a management decision problem.
GROCERY SHOPPING APPS (GSA)
• Grocery retailers spend money developing them
BUT
• Consumers (You!!) don’t want to use them

the purpose of the research: to investigate the intention to use GSA among
students
STEP 2: PLAN THE RESEARCH DESIGN

• Secondary needs to be collected - this is data that has been collected to solve
another problem i.e. it exists already. Examples include
• Journals
• Internet
• Big data
• Social media data (e.g. Facebook)
• Primary research – data that is collected for the first time
RESEARCH DESIGN – PRIMARY RESEARCH
• Choose between qualitative and quantitative research methods
• Qualitative methods: these allow for deep, rich insights to be collected
• e.g. focus groups (online or offline),
• ethnographic research
• Observation e.g. mystery shoppers
• Quantitative methods:
• Surveys (collected personally, mall intercepts, panel data, telephone
surveys, mail surveys)
• Advantages of using Internet surveys
• Experiments
QUESTIONNAIRE DESIGN ISSUES
• Scales : Open-ended questions, closed-ended and scaled-response questions
(measures intensity)
• Ambiguous wording
• Loaded questions

“how much do you like our product”?

“Do you still beat your wife?”
“I like ice-cream and liquorice”
STEP 3: SPECIFY THE SAMPLING
PROCEDURES
• Population: the entire group you wish to reach
• A sample: a subset of the population
• Probability sample: everyone has a possibility to take part in the research e.g.
everyone taking Marketing Management (as a course) has the opportunity to
take part
• Non-probability sample: the research decides who would be the best people to
take part in the research e.g. convenience sample. It cannot be generalised to
the population.
• GSA: All students invited to take part – population = census i.e. use on
probability sampling
STEP 4: COLLECT THE PRIMARY DATA

• Fieldworkers
• Potential errors
• Data analysis

• Doing the interviews or analysing the comments

STEP 5: ANALYSING THE DATA
• Using SPSS or Excel – Quantitative data

• Nvivo (as an example) for Qualitative data

STEP 6: PREPARE AND PRESENT THE
RESEARCH REPORT
• Presenting the findings
• Reporting on what management should do to solve the problem
So, what about our
research?
THE RESEARCH PROCESS IN ACTION

• Step 1: formulate the research problem

Gen Y are technologically and depend on their phones, but do we see
the importance of the phone reflected when they do grocery
shopping?
RQ1: Are Gen Ys dependent on their mobile phones?
RQ2: How do they use their phones in the grocery shopping situation
• Step 2: Research design

Articles – academic, previous research

Here use was made of quantitative, descriptive research
Survey distributed electronically (via a weblink)
Items (statements) were used in previous research (e.g. Davis, 1989, Venkatesh,
2000, Yang, 2013)
Scale: 1= strongly agree; 5=strongly disagree

Step 3: All students invited to take part – population = census i.e. use of probability
sampling
Step 4: Link was sent to all students in an email and PIM. No reminders were sent.
Step 5: SPSS was used for analysis purposes

Step 6: The report (brief) follows

RESPONSE RATE
371 invited to take part
66 completed responses
62 usable (4 incomplete)
I.e. 16.71% response rate(better than 10% which is traditional)
THE RESPONDENTS
Gender
• 37.1% male
• 61.3% female
• 1.6% Prefer not to say

Nationality
• 75.8% Sweden
• 24.2% All others, including “other”
• Other
Japan (1)
USA (1)
Cypruse (1)
Vietnam (3)
HOW MANY APPS?
HOW OFTEN DO YOU GO GROCERY
SHOPPING?
Daily 1.6%
Two/three times per week 54.8%
Once per week 27.4%
AND GROCERY SHOPPING APPS? WHAT DO
YOU USE THEM FOR AND WHICH ONES DO
YOU HAVE?

Ica App 27.4%

Coop App 12.9%
Willy’s Plus 11.3%
Hemköp 12.9%
Lidl 0%
Other (e.g. Tesco, Bring, Matsmart etc) 0.8%
WHICH GSA DO YOU USE AND WHY?
Ica App 25.8%
Coop App 6.5%
Willy’s Plus 9.7%
Hemköp 8.1%
Lidl 0%
Other (e.g. Tesco, Bring, Matsmart etc) 0.3%

Personal deals 77.4%

Making shopping lists 62.9%
Checking recipes 32.3%
QR/Barcode scanning 25.8%
Finding products in the store 37.1%
WHAT ARE THE MAJOR FACTORS DRIVING
USE OF THESE APPS?
Mean Standard deviation

Perceived usefulness 5.08 0.936

Perceived enjoyment 4.733 0.929

Perceived Ease of use 5.491 0.865

Behavioural intention 4.489 1.540

Subjective norm 4.036 1.109

Attitude 5.524 0.964

ARE THERE GENDER DIFFERENCES WITH
RESPECT TO THESE APPS?
• No!
 What managerial
implications are associated
with this research?
• Telling you on which shelf/aisle to find a specific product
• I don’t know. I just don’t need them
• Write a synchronized shopping list with my girlfriend, we use paper and pen today.
• I didn’t know that they existed, but if they would market them more I probably would have used them
• I only use them to see offers, so nothing could probably make me use them more
• I can return if the product is defected
• Finding items in my local grocery store through the app (only available in certain stores for now)
• Easier accessible information to these kinds of appa
• The app should be really simple. Comparable to making a shopping list. Then it gives you suggestions
based on what you want to get and displays availability in your local store.
• More offers and deals/ More benefits
• Being able to place an order on my shopping cart in the app without going to another service.
• Actually buying the products so they are in a bag when i go to the store to pick them up
• If I had different priorities when grocery shopping, now I trend to choose the cheapest option so there is
not much place to search for inspiration for recipes for example.
LIMITATIONS OF THE RESEARCH
• Low number of respondents
• High number of Swedes in comparison to non-Swedes. This meant it was not
possible to compare the nationalities
TECHNOLOGY AND RESEARCH
• Secondary data
• Primary data
• Collection of data
• Online Panels
• Scanner-based research
• Neuromarketing
MCQ
Which of the following best defines the term secondary data?
A. It refers to data that has not been proven and is in the form of assumptions.
B. It refers to raw data that has not been processed.
C. It is data previously collected for any purpose other than the one at hand.
D. It is data collected for the first time to solve a problem.
PARAGRAPH QUESTION

IKEA wants to research customer satisfaction among their Jönköping

customers, and this is defined as their research problem.
• Discuss the research design you would recommend they use to
answer this research problem (3)
• Comment on the sampling procedures they should use in their
research. (2)
(5)