Marketing Research

• Good marketing requires much more than just creativity and technical tools. It requires research!

• Who needs it?

• Who wants it?

• Where should it be sold?

• What price should be set?

• Do people know about the product/service?

• Is there competition?

• Market research helps marketing managers make decisions.

MARKET RESEARCH

• is the systematic collection, analysis and interpretation of data to make marketing decisions

So….when do we need to do marketing research?

We will conduct Marketing Research when a business needs to make a marketing decision….

Ie:• Introduce new product

• Change existing product

• Location for new store

• Where / When / How to advertise

1. Determine the problem / set objectives

There are 4 steps in the “Marketing Research” process….they are:

2. Collect the information

3. Tabulate the Data

4. Analyze the Data

• Let’s take a look at each……..

Step 1: Determine the Problem / Set Objectives• What exactly are you researching / trying to find out?

Ie:

• Is there demand for my product?

• We need to clearly define what we want to find out before we can move on……

• Where should it be sold?

• What price should I charge?

• Do people know about the product?

• Did we choose the correct target market & are we reaching them?

• Is there competition close by and what are their products and prices?

Step 2: Collect Information

• How are you going to find and gather the required information?

• There are a variety of ways….but they can all be classified as either “primary” or “secondary”

• Let’s take a look at each…….

A. SECONDARY RESEARCH / DATA

• Is marketing research information that has been collected and published by others

• It involves searching for this type of information in order to be able to later analyze and interpret the data to improve their company’s marketing efforts

• Although it is limited because the information is secondhand, it is usually much cheaper to conduct than primary research

Sources of Secondary Data:

• It is available from a variety of sources

Ie:

• Books

• Periodicals / Magazines

• Internet

• Marketing Professionals (ie – industry analysis)

• Libraries (databases, indexes, etc)

• Let’s look at an example:

Secondary data can be used by any business to help develop its marketing strategy

Seaman’s Beverages

• Located in PEI

• Considering expanding into Ontario

• They might:

• Buy a marketing firm’s beverage industry analysis

• They may read magazines focused on the beverage industry (ie – Beverage Digest)

• Use the internet for periodicals, articles or other relevant research

• Use the library to search their databases and indexes for information

• Primary data is unanalyzed, current information collected by a researcher for a specific purpose

B. PRIMARY RESEARCH / DATA

• There are two main types:

A. Qualitative

B. Quantitiative

Let’s take a look at each……

1. Qualitative

• Used to measure peoples’ reactions, responses or feelings

toward a given subject problem

• Researcher is the data gathering instrument

• Aims for a complete, detailed, rich description

• Researcher may only know roughly in advance what they

are looking for…..the responses guide you

• its goal is to understand behaviour in a natural setting

Let’s look at a few examples…….

Observation

– Collect information by recording the actions of the person being observed without interacting or communicating with the person in order to keep the situation as “real” as possible

– Purpose – see how people behave and react rather than have them predict and recall responses

Focus Group Interviews

– A small group of people brought together to discuss a particular product or problem

– It combines the features of an interview with those of the observation method of collecting data

– The focus group participants are carefully selected to represent the larger target market

2. Quantitative

• Data is in the form of numbers and statistics

• Aim is to classify features, count them and construct statistical models in an attempt to explain what is observed

• Involves collecting data by surveying a representative sample of a target market population

• Researchers use the results of the sample to make predictions about the opinions and behaviours of the entire target market

» IE - Opinion polls – Liberals vs PC vs NDP

• There are several main types:

Test Marketing

– Produce a small amount of product and sell it in a representative test centre (ie – Kitchener)

– Based upon the results, the company may make predictions on the larger target market

Surveys

• A set of carefully planned questions that are used to gather data.

• There are a variety of formats (verbal, written, phone, internet, mail, in-person, etc)

Step 3: Tabulate the Information

• Once we have collected the data, we must organize it in a manner that we can begin to understand and make sense of the data

• Depending on the research, we can classify and count our responses

• the actual tallying is contingent upon the type and scope of the research conducted

THE END !