Chapter 8 Marketing PDF

Preview

Summary

Marketing notes on chapter 8 of Marketing: The Core...

Description

Chapter 8 Marketing research = the process of defining a marketing problem and opportunity, systematically collecting and analyzing info, and recommended actions Challenges of Doing Good Marketing Research ● When it comes to personal/status questions, will people give honest answers? ● Will consumers behaviors match their stated interests? ● Will consumer’s really know whether they are likely to buy a new product that they have never prior thought about? Five-Step Marketing Research Approach 1. Define The Problem a. Set research objectives i. Specific, measurable goals that are being seeked when conducting marketing research ii. 3 main types of marketing research 1. Exploratory research = provides ideas about a vague problem 2. Descriptive research = trying to find the frequency that something occurs or the relationship between two factors 3. Casual Research = tries to determine extent the change in one factor changes another one b. Identify possible marketing actions i. Must develop measures of success = criteria/standards used in evaluating proposed solutions to the problems ii. Different research outcomes, based on measures of success, lead to different marketing actions 2. Develop Research plan a. Specify Constraints i. Constraints are the restrictions placed on potential solutions to a problem (limits on time/money) b. Identify Data Needed for Marketing Actions c. Determine How to Collect Data i. Concepts = ideas about products/services 1. Marketing researchers develop a new product concept to find out about consumer reactions through verbal/physical description ii. Methods = approaches that can be used to collect data to solve a problem 1. May observe behavior of users 2. Ask various questions to users 3. Special methods to marketing are sampling and statistical inference 4. Sampling = selecting a group of people and asking them questions and using their answers as a generalization of whole

population 5. Statistical inference = generalize results from sample to much larger group (say the population) 3. Collecting Relevant Information a. Data = facts and figures related to the project, divided into 2 main parts i. Secondary data = facts/figures that have already been recorded prior to the project at hand 1. Internal/external data = secondary data divided into these 2 things depending on whether they come from inside or outside of an organization needing the research 2. Marketing input data = effort expended to make sales (sales/advertising budgets, # of sales call per day) 3. Marketing outcome data = results of marketing efforts (accounting records, sales) 4. General rule to obtain secondary data first then primary 5. Advantages of secondary data is the tremendous time savings and the low cost 6. Secondary data may be out of data and definitions/categories might not be right for researchers projects ii. Primary data = facts/figures newly collected for the project 1. Observational data = watching how people behave (best marketing research data collection) can be collected by 3 ways a. Mechanical Methods (using technology) b. Personal methods = watching consumers in person i. Ethnographic research is specialized observational method where trained observers seek to discover subtle behavioral and emotional reactions as consumers encounter products in their natural use environment ii. Can reveal what they do, not always why c. Neuromarketing Methods =brain scanning to analyze customers reactions to producers 2. Asking People = giving out surveys a. Each survey method results in valuable questionnaire data = facts/figures obtained by asking people about their attitudes, awareness, intentions, and behaviors b. Idea generation methods i. Individual interview most common way of collecting questionnaire data, involves single researcher asking questions of one respondent ii. Has advantages such as being able to probe additional ideas using follow up questions iii. Very expensive method iv. Depth interview = a researcher asks lengthy, free-

flowing kind of questions to probe for underlying ideas/feelings c. Idea Evaluation Methods=trying to test ideas discovered earlier to help marketing manager recommend marketing actions i. Utilize surveys of a large sample of past, present, and prospective consumers ii. Personal interview surveys =enable interview to be flexible and can see physical reactions iii. Mail surveys usually biased because those most likely to respond have had especially positive or negative experiences iv. Telephone interviews allow flexibility, unhappy respondents may hung up v. Online surveys via email and internet, low cost, turn around time much quicker, bias if someone does multiple surveys vi. Dichotomous question - simplest form of a fixed alternative question, only allows yes/no vii. Fixed alternative question w 3 or more choices uses a scale viii. Semantic differential scale, uses a scale in which opposite ends have one or two word adjectives that have opposite meanings ix. Likert scale is where respondent indicates the extent to which he/she agrees/disagrees with the statement x. Mall intercept interviews = personal interviews of consumers visiting shopping centers 3. Other sources of primary data can be extracted using social media, panels/experiments, information technology, and data mining a. Marketing researchers want to glean information from sites to “mine” their raw consumer generated content in real time, however when relying on consumer generated content it does not represent the whole of marketplace b. A panel is a sample of consumers/stores where researchers take a series of measurements, need to recruit new members continually to replace those who drop out c. Experiment = obtaining data by manipulating factors under controlled conditions to test cause and effect. Interest is in whether changing one of the independent variables (a cause) will change the behavior of the dependent variable (the result)

d. Independent variables of interest (known as drivers) e. Test markets offer a product for sale in a small geographic area to help evaluate potential marketing actions f. Difficulty with experiments is that outside factors can distort results and affect dependent variable 4. Information Technology = operating computer networks that can store and process data a. Include data warehouses which are databases linked together through sophisticated communication networks to access/retrieve data from internal/external sources b. Marketers can extract information to perform sensitivity analysis (“what if” questions to determine how hypothetical changes in product/brand drivers can affect sales) 5. Data Mining = extraction of hidden predictive info from large databases to find statistical links between consumer purchasing patterns and marketing actions iii. Advantages of Primary Data 1. More flexible and more specific to problem being studied 2. But usually far more costly and time consuming to collect iv. Cross Tabulations = method of presenting and analyzing data involving two or more variables to discover relationships in the data 1. Can be misleading if % are based on too few observations 2. Can hide some relationships because each cross tab typically shows only two or three variables 4. Develop Findings a. Marketing data and info have little value unless analyzed carefully and translated into findings b. Analyze Data + Present Findings i. Should be clear and understandable from way data presented, managers responsible for actions 5. Take Marketing Actions a. Must evaluate the decision itself and evaluate the decision process used Sales Forecasting ● The total sales of a product that a firm expects to sell in a specific period ● Three main sales forecasting techniques are sued ○ Judgments of the Decision Maker ■ Direct forecast involves estimating the value to be forecast without any intervening steps ■ Lost-horse forecast involves starting with last known value, listing factors that could affect the forecast, assessing their impact, and making final forecast ○ Surveys of Knowledgeable Groups

■

○

Two common groups surveyed are prospective buyers and firms salesforce ■ A survey of buyers intentions forecast involves asking prospective customers if they are likely to buy the product during a future time period ■ A salesforce survey forecast involved asking the firm’s salespeople to estimate sales during a forthcoming period (these people in contact w customers are likely to know what they like/dislike) ● Can be unreliable, painting too rosy a picture if they are enthusiastic about a new product, or too grim if their sales quota and future compensation based on it Statistical method ■ Best known stat method is trend extrapolation, involves extending a pattern observed in past data into the future (regression analysis)...