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Yi-Lin Tsai...

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Chapter 1 Textbook summary : Describe the impact marketing research has on marketing decision making. Marketing research= set of activities central to all marketing-related decisions providing managers with accurate, relevant, and timely information so that they can make marketing decisions with a high degree of confidence. strategic planning → marketing research is responsible for the tasks, methods, and procedures a firm will use to implement and direct its strategic plan. Demonstrate how marketing research fits into the marketing planning process. Successful planning is accurate information related to product, promotion, pricing, and distribution. helps organizations better understand consumers and markets, used to develop theory that is useful in a broad range of marketing problems. Provide examples of marketing research studies. Examples include: concept and product testing; perceptual mapping; trade area analysis, store image studies, in-store traffic pattern studies, and location analysis; shopper marketing research; advertising effectiveness studies, attitude research and sales tracking; pricing studies for new and existing products; segmentation and consumer culture studies; and marketing theory development.

Understand the scope and focus of the marketing research industry. projects can be conducted either internally by an in-house marketing research staff or externally by independent or facilitating marketing research firms. External research suppliers are normally classified as custom or standardized, or as brokers or facilitators. Recognize ethical issues associated with marketing research. Ethical issues occur for the research information user, the research information provider, and the selected respondents. Unethical practices among research providers include unethical general business practices, conducting research below professional standards, respondent abuse, and issues specific to the Internet such as violation of privacy. Unethical behavior by clients includes requesting research proposals with no intent to follow through, promising more business that never materializes to secure low-cost research services, and exaggerating research findings. Respondents can be unethical when they provide dishonest answers or fake behavior. Discuss new skills and emerging trends in marketing research. technological and global changes will affect how marketing research will be conducted in the future. Necessary skills required to adapt to these changes include (1) the ability to understand and interpret secondary data, (2) presentation skills, (3) foreign-language competency, (4) negotiation skills, and (5) information technology proficiency. Chapter 2

Textbook summary Describe the major environmental factors influencing marketing research. The Internet and e-commerce, gatekeeper technologies and data privacy legislation, and new global market structure expansions are all forcing researchers to balance their use of secondary and primary data to assist decision makers in solving decision problems and taking advantage of opportunities. Researchers need to improve their ability to use technology-driven tools and databases. There are also greater needs for faster data acquisition and retrieval, analysis, and interpretation of cross-functional data and information among decision-making teams within global market environments.

Discuss the research process and explain the various steps. (1) identify and clarify information needs; (2) define the research problem and questions; (3) specify research objectives and confirm the information value; (4) determine the research design and data sources; (5) develop the sampling design and sample size; (6) examine measurement issues and scales; (7) design and pretest questionnaires; (8) collect and prepare data; (9) analyze data; (10) interpret data to create knowledge; and (11) prepare and present the final report.

Distinguish among exploratory, descriptive, and causal research designs. exploratory research designs= create information that the researcher or decision maker can use to (1) gain a clear understanding of the problem; (2) define or redefine the initial problem, separating the symptoms from the causes; (3) confirm the problem and objectives; or (4) identify the information requirements. intended to provide preliminary insight for follow-up quantitative research. However, sometimes qualitative exploratory methods are used as standalone techniques because the topic under investigation requires in-depth understanding of a complex web of consumer culture, psychological motivations, and behavior. For some research topics, quantitative research may be too superficial or it may elicit responses from consumers that are rationalizations rather than true reasons for purchase decisions and behavior. Descriptive research designs produce numeric data to describe existing characteristics (e.g., attitudes, intentions, preferences, purchase behaviors, evaluations of current marketing mix strategies) of a defined target population. The researcher looks for answers to how, who, what, when, and where questions. Information from descriptive designs allows decision makers to draw inferences about their customers, competitors, target markets, environmental factors, or other phenomena. Causal research designs are most useful when the research objectives include the need to understand why market phenomena happen. The focus of causal research is to collect data that enables the decision maker or researcher to model cause-and-effect relationships between two or more variables.

Identify and explain the major components of a research proposal. The proposal serves as a contract between the researcher and decision maker. There are nine sections suggested for inclusion: (1) purpose of the proposed research project; (2) type of study; (3) definition of the target population and sample size; (4) sample design, technique, and data collection method; (5) research instruments; (6) potential managerial benefits of the proposed study; (7) proposed cost structure for the project; (8) profile of the researcher and company; and

(9) dummy tables of the projected results.

Chapter 3 ●

Textbook summary

Understand the nature and role of secondary data. seek out existing information/ secondary data that may facilitate a decision or outcome for a company. they need to be evaluated on six fundamental principles: (1) purpose—how relevant are the data to achieving the specific research objectives at hand?, (2) accuracy of information, (3) consistency—do multiple sources of the data exist?, (4) credibility—how were the data obtained? what is the source of the data?, (5) methodology—will the methods used to collect the data produce accurate and reliable data?, and (6) biases—was the data-reporting procedure tainted by some hidden agenda or underlying motivation to advance some public or private concern?

Describe how to conduct a literature review. A literature review is a comprehensive examination of available information that is related to your research topic. When conducting a literature review, researchers locate information relevant to the research problems and issues at hand. Literature reviews have the following objectives: provide background information for the current study, clarify thinking about the research problem and questions you are studying, reveal whether information already exists that addresses the issue of interest, help to define important constructs of interest to the study, and suggest sampling and other methodological approaches that have been successful in studying similar topics.

Identify sources of internal and external secondary data. Internal secondary data are obtained within the company. Company internal accounting and financial information is a major source. These typically consist of sales invoices, accounts receivable reports, and quarterly sales reports. Other forms of internal data sources include social media, company websites, mobile phone transactions, past marketing research studies, customer credit applications, warranty registrations, and employee exit interviews. External secondary data are obtained outside the company. Because of the volume of external data available, researchers need a data search plan to locate and extract the right data. A simple guideline to follow is: define goals the secondary data need to achieve; specify objectives behind the secondary search process; define specific characteristics of data that are to be extracted; document all activities necessary to find, locate, and extract the data sources; focus on reliable sources of data; and tabulate all the data extracted. The most common sources of external secondary data are popular, scholarly, government, and commercial. Discuss conceptualization and its role in model development. Literature reviews can also help you conceptualize a model that summarizes the relationships you hope to predict. If you are performing purely exploratory research, you will not need to develop a model before conducting your research. Once you have turned your research objectives into research questions, the information needs can be listed and the data collection instrument can be designed. However, if one or more of your research questions require you to investigate relationships between variables, then you need to conceptualize these relationships.

The conceptualization process is aided by developing a picture of your model that shows the predicted causal relationships between variables. To conceptualize and test a model, you must have three elements: variables, constructs, and relationships.

Understand hypotheses and independent and dependent variables. A variable is an observable item that is used as a measure on a questionnaire. A construct is an unobservable concept that is measured by a group of related variables. Some examples of commonly used constructs in marketing research include service quality, value, customer satisfaction, and brand attitude. Constructs that represent characteristics of respondents may also be measured, for example, innovativeness, opinion leadership, and deal proneness. There are two kinds of hypotheses: descriptive and causal. Descriptive hypotheses are possible answers to specific, applied research problems while causal hypotheses are theoretical statements about relationships between variables. Relationships are associations between two or more variables. The relationships are often illustrated visually by drawing conceptual models. When modeling relationships, variables or constructs depicted in relationships can be either independent or dependent variables. An independent variable is the variable or construct that predicts or explains the outcome variable of interest. A dependent variable is the variable or construct researchers are seeking to explain; that is, the outcome. For example, if technology optimism and household income predict Internet adoption by seniors, then technology optimism and household income are independent variables, and Internet adoption is the dependent variable. Chapter 4 Textbook summary Identify the major differences between qualitative and quantitative research. There are many differences between these two approaches with respect to their research objectives and goals, type of research, type of questions, time of execution, generalizability to target populations, type of analysis, and researcher skill requirements. Qualitative methods may be used to generate exploratory, preliminary insights into decision problems or address complex consumer motivations that may be difficult to study with quantitative research. Qualitative methods are also useful to understand the impact of culture or subculture on consumer decision making and to probe unconscious or hidden motivations that are not easy to access using quantitative research. Qualitative researchers collect detailed amounts of data from relatively small samples by questioning or observing what people do and say. These methods require the use of researchers well trained in interpersonal communication, observation, and interpretation. Data typically are collected using open-ended or semistructured questioning formats that allow for probing attitudes or behavior patterns or observation techniques for current behaviors or events. While qualitative data can be collected quickly (except in ethnography), it requires good interpretative skills to transform data into useful findings. The small nonrandom samples that are typically used make generalization to a larger population of interest questionable. In contrast, quantitative or survey research methods place heavy emphasis on using formal, structured questioning practices where the response options have been predetermined by the researcher. These questions tend to be administered to large numbers of respondents. Quantitative methods are directly related to descriptive and causal types of research projects where the objectives are either to make more accurate predictions about relationships between market factors and behaviors or to validate the existence of relationships. Quantitative

researchers are well trained in scale measurement, questionnaire design, sampling, and statistical data analyses. Understand in-depth interviewing and focus groups as questioning techniques. An IDI is a systematic process of asking a subject a set of semistructured, probing questions in a face-to-face setting. Focus groups involve bringing a small group of people together for an interactive and spontaneous discussion of a particular topic or concept. While the success of indepth interviewing depends heavily on the interpersonal communication and probing skills of the interviewer, success in focus group interviewing relies more on the group dynamics of the members, the willingness of members to engage in an interactive dialogue, and the moderator’s abilities to keep the discussion on track. In-depth interviewing and focus groups are both guided by similar research objectives: (1) to provide data for defining and redefining marketing problem situations; (2) to provide data for better understanding the results from previously completed quantitative survey studies; (3) to reveal and understand consumers’ hidden or unconscious needs, wants, attitudes, feelings, behaviors, perceptions, and motives regarding services, products, or practices; (4) to generate new ideas about products, services, or delivery methods; and (5) to discover new constructs and measurement methods. Define focus groups and explain how to conduct them. A face-to-face focus group is a small group of people (8–12) brought together for an interactive, spontaneous discussion. Focus groups can also be conducted online. The three phases of a focus group study are planning the study, conducting the actual focus group discussions, and analyzing and reporting the results. In the planning of a focus group, critical decisions have to be made regarding whether to conduct face-to-face or online focus groups, who should participate, how to select and recruit the appropriate participants, what size the group should be, what incentives to offer to encourage and reinforce participants’ willingness and commitment to participate, and where the group sessions should be held. Discuss purposed communities and private communities. Purposed communities are online social networks that may be specific to marketing research, or they may be broader brand communities whose primary purpose is marketing but are also used to provide research insights. Private communities are purposed communities whose primary purpose is research. Consumers and customers are recruited for the purpose of answering questions and interacting with other participants within the private community. Participant samples are usually handpicked to be representative of the relevant target market, or they are devoted fans of the brand. Private communities may be short or long term, and may involve small or large numbers of participants, from 25 in small groups up to 2,000 for larger groups

Explain other qualitative data collection methods such as ethnography, case studies, netnography, projective techniques, and the ZMET. There are several useful qualitative data collection methods other than IDIs and focus groups. These methods include ethnography and case studies, which both involve extended contact with research settings. Researchers may also use projective techniques such as word association tests, sentence completion tests, and the ZMET, which use indirect techniques to access consumers’ feelings, emotions, and unconscious motivations. These techniques are less frequently used than are focus groups but are considered useful approaches for understanding more emotional and less rational motivations.

Discuss observation methods and explain how they are used to collect primary data. Observation methods can be used by researchers in all types of research designs (exploratory, descriptive, causal). The major benefits of observation are the accuracy of collecting data on actual behavior, reduction of confounding factors such as interviewer or respondent biases, and the amount of detailed behavioral data that can be recorded. The unique characteristics of observation data collection methods are their (1) directness, (2) subject’s awareness, (3) structure, and (4) observing mechanism. The unique limitations of observation methods are lack of generalizability of the data, inability to explain current behaviors or events, and the complexity of observing the behavior. Discuss the growing field of social media monitoring, including sentiment analysis. Social media monitoring is research based on analyzing conversations in social media, for example, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and product review sites. The monitoring provides marketing researchers with a rich source of existing, authentic information and organic conversations in social networks online. The data from these conversations may be analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. One strength of social media monitoring is that researchers can observe people interacting with each other unprompted by the potential bias of interviewers and questions. Another advantage of social media monitoring is individuals who may not fill out surveys or agree to focus groups might nevertheless share their experiences with online social networks. Weaknesses include expense, accuracy of automatic categorization, and the nonrepresentativeness of online posts. However, expenses are forecasted to fall, while the accuracy and depth of categorization tools is expected to increase over time.

Chapter 5 Explain the purpose and advantages of survey research designs. The main advantages of using descriptive survey research designs to collect primary data from respondents are large sample sizes are possible, generalizability of results, ability to distinguish small differences between diverse sampled groups, ease of administering, and the ability to identify and measure factors that are not directly measurable (such as customer satisfaction). In contrast, disadvantages of descriptive survey research designs include the difficulty of developing accurate survey instruments, inaccuracy in construct definition and scale measurement, and limits to the depth of the data that can be collected. Describe the types of survey methods. Survey methods are generally divided into three generic types. One is the person-administered survey, in which there is significant face-to-face interaction between the interviewer and the respondent. The second is the telephone-administered survey. In these surveys, the telephone is used to conduct the question-and-answer exchanges. Computers are used in many ways in telephone interviews, especially in data recording and telephone-number selection. The third type is the self-administered survey. In these surveys, there is little, if any, actual face-to-face contact between the researcher and prospective respondent. The respondent reads the questions and records his or her answers. Online surveys are the most frequent method of data collection, with almost 60 percent of all data collection being complete...