Marketing: An Introduction

Fourteenth Edition
Global Edition

Chapter 04
Managing Marketing
Information to Gain Customer
Insights

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Objectives Outline (1 of 4)
4.1 Explain the importance of information in gaining insights
about the marketplace and customers.
4.2 Define the marketing information system and discuss its
parts.
4.3 Outline the steps in the marketing research process.

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Objectives Outline (2 of 4)
4.4 Explain how companies analyze and use marketing
information.
4.5 Discuss the special issues some marketing researchers
face, including public policy and ethics issues.

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First Stop: Ferrero: Managing
Marketing Information and Customer
Insights
Ferrero successfully analyzes
and uses marketing information
and customer insights to better
tailor its offerings to the local
market. Its ability to gain fresh
understandings of customers
and the marketplace from
marketing information has
become the basis for the
company’s success.

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Objective Outline 4-1
• Explain the importance of information in gaining insights
about the marketplace and customers.

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Marketing Information
• Customer needs and motives for buying are difficult to
determine.
• Required by companies to obtain customer and market
insights
• Generated in great quantities with the help of information
technology and online sources

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Today’s “Big Data”
• Big data refers to the huge and complex data sets
generated by today’s sophisticated information generation,
collection, storage, and analysis technologies.

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Customer Insights (1 of 2)
• Fresh marketing information-based understandings of
customers and the marketplace
– Become the basis for creating customer value,
engagement, and relationships
• Customer insights teams collect customer and market
information from a wide variety of sources.

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Customer Insights (2 of 2)
PepsiCo’s various marketing
research departments are
integrated “customer
insights teams”.

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Marketing Information System (MIS)
• Consists of people and procedures to
– Assess information needs
– Develop the needed information
– Help decision makers use the information to generate
and validate actionable customer and market insights

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Objective Outline 4-1 Summary
• Marketing process starts with a complete understanding of
the marketplace and consumer needs and wants
• Turn consumer information into customer insights
• Marketing Information System
• Big Data

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Objective Outline 4-2
• Define the marketing information system and discuss its
parts.

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Figure 4.1 The Marketing Information
System

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Assessing Marketing Information
Needs
• A good MIS balances the information users would like to
have against
– What they really need
– What is feasible to offer
• Obtaining, analyzing, storing, and delivering information is
costly.
– Firms must decide whether the value of the insight is
worth the cost.

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Developing Marketing Information
• Information needed can be obtained from
– Internal databases
– Competitive marketing intelligence
– Marketing research

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Internal Databases (1 of 2)
Financial services
provider Westpac Bank
uses its extensive
database to tailor its
services to the specific
needs of individual
customers, creating
incredible loyalty.

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Internal Databases (2 of 2)
• Internal databases are collections of consumer and
market information obtained from data sources within the
company network.

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Competitive Marketing Intelligence
(1 of 2)
Systematic monitoring, collection, and analysis of
information
• About consumers, competitors, and developments in the
marketing environment
Techniques
• Observing consumers firsthand
• Quizzing the company’s own employees
• Benchmarking competitors’ products
• Conducting online research
• Monitoring social media buzz
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Competitive Marketing Intelligence
(2 of 2)

• Offers insights about consumer opinions and their

association with the brand
• Provides early warnings of competitor strategies and
potential competitive strengths and weaknesses
• Helps firms to protect their own information
• Raises ethical issues

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Objective Outline 4-2 Summary
• Marketing information system (MIS)
– Assess information needs
– Develop information
 Internal databases, marketing intelligence, and
market research
– Analyze and use the information

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Objective Outline 4-3
• Outline the steps in the marketing research process.

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Marketing Research
• Systematic design, collection, analysis, and reporting of
data relevant to a specific marketing situation facing an
organization
• Approaches followed by firms:
– Use own research departments
– Hire outside research specialists
– Purchase data collected by outside firms

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Figure 4.2 The Marketing Research
Process

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Defining the Problem and Research
Objectives
Exploratory research
• Used to gather preliminary information
• Helps to define problems and suggest hypotheses
Descriptive research
• Used to better describe the market potential for a product
or the demographics and attitudes of consumers
Causal research
• Used to test hypotheses about cause-and-effect
relationships

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Research Plan (1 of 2)
• Outlines sources of existing data
• Spells out
– Specific research approaches
– Contact methods
– Sampling plans
– Instruments that researchers will use to gather new
data

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Research Plan (2 of 2)
• Should be presented in a written proposal
• Topics covered in a research plan:
– Problems and research objectives
– Information to be obtained
– How results will help decision making
– Estimated research costs
– Type of data required

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Secondary Data (1 of 2)
• Information that already exists
• Collected for another purpose
• Sources:
– Company’s internal database
– Purchased from outside suppliers
– Commercial online databases
– Internet search engines

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Secondary Data (2 of 2)
• Advantages
– Low cost
– Obtained quickly
– Cannot collect otherwise
• Disadvantages
– Potentially Irrelevant
– Inaccurate
– Dated
– Biased

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Table 4.1 Planning Primary Data
Collection

Research Contact Research

Approaches Sampling Plan
Methods Instruments
Observation Mail Sampling unit Questionnaire
Survey Telephone Sample size Mechanical
instruments
Experiment Personal Sampling
procedure
Online

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Research Approaches
Observational research
• Gathering primary data by observing relevant people, actions,
and situations
• Ethnographic research: Sending trained observers to watch
and interact with consumers in their natural environments
Survey research
• Asking people questions about their knowledge, attitudes,
preferences, and buying behavior
Experimental research
• Selecting matched groups of subjects, giving them different
treatments, controlling related factors, and checking for
differences in group responses
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Primary Data
Landor researchers visit
families, peeking into their
refrigerators and diving deeply
into their food shopping
behaviors and opinions.

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Mail, Telephone, and Personal
Interviewing
• Mail questionnaires are used to collect large amounts of
information at a low cost per respondent.
• Telephone interviewing gathers information quickly, while
providing flexibility.
• Personal interviewing methods include
– Individual interviewing
– Group interviewing

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Online Marketing Research
• Data is collected through
– Internet surveys
– Online focus groups
– Web-based experiments
– Tracking consumers’ online behavior

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Copyright

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