Marketing Research For

Strategic Marketing
6.1The value of marketing research
Market research defines as:
The systematic gathering and interpretation of information about individuals or organizations
using the statistical and analytical methods and techniques of the applied social sciences to gain
insight or support decision making.
Three key objectives of marketing research
A marketing research may usually have 3 different types of objectives.
 Administrative: Help a company or business development, through proper planning,
organization, and both human and material resources control, and thus satisfy all specific
needs within the market, at the right time.
 Social: Satisfy customers’ specific needs through a required product or service. The product
or service should comply with a customer’s requirements and preferences when consumed.

 Economical: Determine the economical degree of success or failure a company can have
while being new to the market, or otherwise introducing new products or services, thus
providing certainty to all actions to be implemented.
Why is Market Research So Important for business growth?
Market research, when well made, can tell you where your weaknesses and strengths are.
This means you can keep improving on your strengths, and changing what needs to be
changed.
You can easily identify, by results analysis, how your customer experience is doing, if your
product and brand need more social and environmental awareness, and if your prices are
fair to what you’re offering plus your target audience expectations and purchasing power.
And these are just a few examples of what type of finds you can have from market
research.

6.2 what are the types of marketing research?

1.Exploratory research
Has a fresh idea that no one has researched before? That’s the goal of exploratory
research -- to collect information about a problem and insights about how to solve the
problem. As a researcher, you will use secondary data that currently exists to provide
insights about your goal.
2.Descriptive research
Descriptive research tests the research question to discover if it is accurate or
inaccurate. This method measures how often and to what extent variables in
the study are correlated.
This approach works if you are asking who would buy the
product being tested, how the products are used, and who are
the competitors

3.Causal research
Causal research looks at the cause-and-effect relationship between variables. If one variable
changes, the researcher can record the impact on another variable. Causal research can answer
“what if” questions that include price changes, packaging changes, adding or removing product
changes and more.

4.Predictive research
As the name implies, researchers are looking for what will happen in the future. They may study
future sales growth, user adoption, and market size based on data collected about product
preferences and customer demographics.

6.3 stages of the marketing research planning

process
Applying the Four Ps

The steps are more effective if you follow them sequentially.

 1. Purpose

Before you start your research, you need to clarify why you are doing it. What do you ultimately
need to achieve?
Write a hypothesis – a statement or assumption that you want to test as part of your research. For
example:
"Customers in this market are willing to pay a premium for a product branded as 'luxury.'"
Use your hypothesis to design your research process. Aim to be able to accept or reject the
hypothesis at the end of your research.

2. Population
This part of the research process focuses on who you will approach.
Think about the following questions:
 Which groups make up this market?
 Which groups will I be able to address in a sufficiently cost-effective way?
 How can I best access different groups' views?
 Who are the major players or the most likely buyers in these groups?
 How should I select research participants?
3. Procedure
The next step is to decide on the research approach that you will use. You'll need to make this
decision based on your knowledge of your market, and on the resources available to you.
Think about whether there are "secondary sources" that you can use. Have other teams in your
company, or other organizations (including your competitors), carried out research in these
areas? What conclusions did they draw?
You'll probably also want to use primary research techniques to test your hypothesis.
These are often more expensive than secondary research methods, and they include questioning
(using surveys or personal interviews), observation (using focus groups or blind studies), and
experimentation (conducting business experiments).

4. Publication
The last stage in using the Marketing Research Mix is to decide how to share the results of your
tests and experiments.
Who needs to see this information – for example, leaders in your organization, sales managers,
or your team members? How will you present it to them? And how can you protect your
findings from your competitors?
 6.4 Research proposal structure

1. A summary or abstract
One or two paragraphs that summarize what you will do in the research project and how you will do it.
2. Problem, question or hypothesis
The key details, approaches or framings the research project will focus on. If hypotheses are appropriate
they should be stated along with a rationale. If a hypothesis isn’t appropriate, the research problems or
questions should be clearly stated and examined.
3. Importance of the research topic
you must show how your proposed research is important enough to justify your efforts (and the efforts of
anyone else involved in your research). You should also include a statement about how the solution to the
problem, or the answer to the question, can influence educational theory or practice.

4. Significant prior research

This should comprehensively demonstrate that you are aware of the major relevant sources of
information in your chosen area. Most research projects arise out of considerable prior research, which
should be summarized. You also need to show the relationship between your question or problem and this
prior research.
5. Research methodology
It demonstrates your understanding of the steps and skills necessary to undertake your intended research. It
should be as explicit as possible, detailing how you will collect, analyse and present your data or research.

6. Ethical considerations
Ethical concerns can arise in how research is conducted and the ways these research findings may later be
used. You must take into account any areas of responsibility towards your research subjects at the planning
stage, and provide strategies for addressing them in the methodology.

7. Analysis of information
You should clearly describe how you can answer your research questions based on the information you have
gathered. In other words, "How will you figure out what it all means?"
For example, if you plan to collect evidence by a questionnaire and subsequent statistical analysis, you should
describe the likely method of analysis and possible outcomes.

8. Limitations and key assumptions

This section should contain a paragraph or two that defines the limits of your research. This section is useful in
defining how much you will undertake and the key assumptions that you will follow in building your arguments,
models, or experiments.

9. References or bibliography
This final section details the major readings cited in your proposal, or the literature that contextualises your
proposed research.
 6.5 types of secondary data

 Secondary data is the data that have been already collected for another purpose but has some relevance to
your current research needs.
 In other words, it has already been collected in the past by someone else, not you. And now, you can use
the data.
 There are two types of secondary data, based on the data source:
 Internal sources of data: information gathered within the researcher’s company or organization (examples
– a database with customer details, sales reports, marketing analysis, your emails, your social media
profiles, etc).
 External sources of data: the data collected outside the organization (i.e. government statistics, mass
media channels, newspapers, etc.)
 Also, secondary data can be 2 types depending on the research strands:
 Quantitative data – data that can be expressed as a number or can be quantified. Examples – the weight
and height of a person, the number of working hours, the volume of sales per month, etc. Quantitative data
are easily amenable to statistical manipulation.
 Qualitative data – the information that can’t be expressed as a number and can’t be measured. Qualitative
data consist of words, pictures, observations, and symbols, not numbers. It is about qualities. Examples –
colors of the eyes (brown, blue, green), your socioeconomic status, customer satisfaction, and etc.
 6.6 gathering qualitative data

 Data collection in qualitative research focuses on gathering contextual information. Unlike quantitative
data, which focuses primarily on numbers to establish ‘how many’ or ‘how much,’ qualitative data
collection tools allow you to assess the ‘why’s’ and ‘how’s’ behind those statistics. This is vital for
nonprofits as it enables organizations to determine:

 Existing knowledge surrounding a particular issue.

 How social norms and cultural practices impact a cause.
 What kind of experiences and interactions people have with your brand.
 Trends in the way people change their opinions.
 Whether meaningful relationships are being established between all parties.
 In short, qualitative data collection methods collect perceptual and descriptive information that helps
you understand the reasoning and motivation behind particular reactions and behaviors. For that
reason, qualitative data methods are usually non-numerical and center around spoken and written
words rather than data extrapolated from a spreadsheet or report.
 6.7 What is observational research?

 Observational research is a research technique where you observe participants and phenomena in their
most natural settings. This enables researchers to see their subjects make choices and react to situations
in their natural setting, as opposed to structured settings like research labs or focus groups.
 What are different kinds of observational research?
Naturalistic observation
 With naturalistic observation, observation occurs directly in the environment where the phenomenon
occurs. The observations are made as unobtrusively as possible with the researcher not directly
interacting with the participants in any way.
Participant observation
 With participant observation, researchers actively participate in the study itself. In addition to observing
behaviors, a researcher might conduct interviews, take notes, look at documents, and take photographs
Structured observation
 With structured observation, researchers do not observe in the natural setting, but instead in a lab or a
simulated environment. A structured observation is meant to observe a specific, limited set of behaviors.
This method is less natural, but enables less variables to be at play
 6.8 What is Questionnaire Data?

 The end all be all of customer feedback collection, whether questionnaires, online reviews, or other
data, should always be the improvement of your overall customer experience for the benefit of existing
and future customers.
 The modern market has shown customer experience to be the number one differentiator between
competitors.
 This is especially relevant when it comes to customer surveys as surveys are invariably distributed to
existing and/or past users. The data they collect and the insights they derive apply directly to the
customer journey.
 By actively listening to the voices of your customers and analyzing survey data you are getting strategic
tips from the best, and most honest, possible source.
 Questionnaire data, or survey data, comes in one of two formats: close-ended data and
open-ended data.
6.9 questionnaire design
Questionnaire design
There are nine steps involved in the development of a questionnaire:
1. Decide the information required.
2. Define the target respondents.
3. Choose the method(s) of reaching your target respondents.
4. Decide on question content.
5. Develop the question wording.
6. Put questions into a meaningful order and format.
7. Check the length of the questionnaire.
8. Pre-test the questionnaire.
9. Develop the final survey form.
 6.10.SAMPLING

The importance of sampling: sampling is a fundamental aspect of market research as it enables researchers to
gather insights from a manageable subset of the target population.
population and sample: in market research, the population refers to the entire group of individuals or entities that
the researcher wants to study. the sample, on the other hand, is a subset of the population selected for research.
Sampling error: sampling error refers to the discrepancy between the characteristics of the sample and the
population it represents. it is important to minimize sampling error to obtain reliable and valid research findings.
Sampling techniques: depends on the research objectives, available resources, and the nature of the population
being studied.
1- probability sampling: involve random selection, where each member of the population has a known and equal
chance of being included in the sample. include simple random sampling, systematic sampling, stratified sampling,
and cluster sampling
2- non-probability sampling methods:
do not involve random selection and do not allow for the calculation of precise sampling error. while non-
probability sampling techniques, such as convenience sampling, judgment sampling, and snowball sampling, may be
less representative
6.11.PROFILING IN MARKET RESEARCH
1- demographic profiling:
involves analyzing demographic variables such as age, gender, income, education, occupation, and marital status.

2- psychographic profiling:
focuses on understanding consumers' attitudes, interests, opinions, values, and lifestyles.
3- behavioral profiling:
involves analyzing consumers' actual behaviors, such as their purchasing history, brand loyalty, product usage, and
online activities.
*ethical considerations
:when conducting sampling and profiling in market research, it is crucial to consider ethical guidelines and ensure the
protection of participants' privacy and confidentiality.

profiling tools:
are crucial in market research for understanding target audiences and obtaining valuable insights. common tools
include
1.surveys/questionnaires, 2.interviews,
3.focus groups, 4.observational research,
5.social media monitoring, 6.data analytics,
7.purchase/behavioral data analysis, 8.psychographic segmentation tools,
9.geodemographicprofiling, 10.and customer relationship management (crm) systems