What is Marketing Research?

What is Marketing Research?

• Set of Processes that
• Specifies information required to address marketing issues
• Design methods for collecting information
• Manages and implements data collection process
• Analyse Results
• Communicates findings and implications
• Formation of Links from the Marketer to
• producers
• customers
• end users
• Finding Information that is used to 
• Identify and define marketing opportunities and problems
• Generate, refine and evaluate marketing actions
• Monitor Marketing Performance
• Improve Understanding of Marketing as a Process

More Concepts Behind Marketing Research

• History of Marketing Research
• First pioneered by Arthur Nielsen with the founding of the ACNielsen Company in 1923. Mainly conducted by in-person focus groups and pen and paper surveys.
• With the internet and Web Analytics, two way communication was possible and large amounts of primary data was made available for data mining and analysis.
• Need to understand buyer rationale led to New tools to Track Behavior of Site Visitors, collection and interpretation. e.g. online focus groups, pop-up or website intercept surveys.
• Development of innovations in technology allows even more methods to understand buyers in various methods, means, platforms, devices etc.
• Other Definitions of Marketing Research:
• Systematic gathering, recording and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data about issues related to marketing products and services
• A form of applied sociology that concentrates on understanding preferences, attitudes, behaviors of consumers in a market-based economy.
• Systematic and objective identification, collection, analysis and dissemination of information for the purpose of assisting management in decision making related to identification and solution of problems and opportunities in marketing
• Goal
• identify and access how changing elements of the marketing Mix impacts customer behavior

What Types of Marketing Research are there?

• Marketing research Vs Market research

• Marketing Research focuses on Processes
• Market Research focuses on Customers

• Marketing Research By Target Market

• Consumer Marketing Research
• Business to Business Marketing Research
• Decision making unit far more complex in B2B than consumer markets
• B2B products and applications more complex than consumer products
• B2B marketers address smaller number of customers who are much larger in consumption of products
• Personal relationships are of critical importance

• Problem Identification Vs Problem Solving

• Problem Identification Research: 
• Identify problems not apparent on surface, yet to exist or likely to arise in future like
• Company image
• Market characteristics
• sales analysis
• short-range forecasting
• long-range forecasting
• business trends research.
• Provides information about marketing environment and diagnose problems.
• Problem Solving Research

• Sources of Data

• Primary Research: Original data collected to solve problem in hand.
• Secondary Research: Pre-existing and published data collected for other purpose

• Exploratory Research Vs Conclusive Research

• Exploratory Research: 
• Provides insights into an issue or situation. To get basic idea about solution at preliminary stage of research
• Usually unstructured and qualitative in nature. Small sample size can be collected if secondary source of data is not present.
• Serve as input to conclusive research
• Definitive conclusions are accepted only with extreme caution
• Simplify findings of conclusive or descriptive research if findings are hard for managers to interpret.
• Methods
• Focus Group Interviews
• Reviewing Literature or books
• Discussing with experts
• Conclusive research: 
• Draws conclusions about a problem 
• Usually Structured and qualitative in nature.
• Can be generalised to whole population
• Output of research is input to management information systems

• By Methodological Approach

• Based on questioning
• Qualitative marketing Research
• Used for exploratory purposes
• Small number of respondents
• Not generalizable to whole population
• Statistical significance and confidence not calculated. 
• Data collection Examples:  Focus groups, in-depth interviews, projective techniques
• Quantitative Marketing Research
• Used to draw conclusions
• Involves large number of respondents
• Uses random sampling techniques to infer from sample to population
• Tests specific hypothesis
• Data collection Examples: Choice modeling, maximum difference preference scaling, covariance sampling
• Based on Observations 
• Ethographic studies (Qualitative nature)
• Researcher observes social phenomena in natural setting
• Observations can occur 
• cross-sectionally (made at one time)
• longitudinally (over several time-periods)
• Examples: product-use analysis, computer cookie traces
• Experimental Techniques (Quantitative nature)
• Researcher creates quasi-artificial environment to control spurious factors, then manipulates at least one of the variables
• Examples: purchase laboratories, test markets

What are the different kinds of Marketing Services available?

• Customised Services: 
• Customised services to suit client's specific needs.Each project is treated uniquely.
• Limited-Service Suppliers
• specialisation in one or few phases of project. Examples:
• Field services: Field service Organisations collect data throgh internet, traditional mail, in-person, telelphone interviewing.
• Coding and data entry services: editing completed questionnaires, developing coding scheme, transcribing data to digital format
• Analytical services: Designing and pretesting questionnaires, determining best means of collecting data, designing sampling plans and other aspects of research design that may include sophisticated procedures, specialised designs and analytical techniques such as conjoint analysis and multidimensional scaling.
• Data analysis: Tab houses that specialise in computer analysis of quantitative data i.e. Tabulations (Frequency counts) and cross Tabulations (Frequency counts that describe 2 or more variables simultaneously)
• Branded Marketing Research Products and Services
• Procedures that are patented, given brand names.
• Specialised data collection and analysis procedures developed to address specific types of marketing research problems
• Standardised Research Studies
• Research studies conducted for different client firms but in a standard way. Example: Procedures for measuring advertising effectiveness standardized so results can be compared across studies and evaluative norms can be established.
• Starch readership Survey: Most widely used for evaluating print advertisements
• Gallup and Robinson Magazine Impact Studies

Marketing Research Techniques

• Ad Tracking
• periodic or continuous in-market research to monitor a brand’s performance
• measures such as brand awareness, brand preference, and product usage. (Young, 2005)
• Advertising Research
• used to predict copy testing or track the efficacy of advertisements for any medium, measured by the ad’s ability to 
• get attention (measured withAttentionTracking)
• communicate the message
• build the brand’s image
• motivate the consumer to purchase the product or service. (Young, 2005)
• Brand equity research — how favorably do consumers view the brand?
• Brand association research — what do consumers associate with the brand?
• Brand attribute research — what are the key traits that describe the brand promise?
• Brand name testing - what do consumers feel about the names of the products?
• Commercial eye tracking research — examine advertisements, package designs, websites, etc. by analyzing visual behavior of the consumer
• Concept testing - to test the acceptance of a concept by target consumers
• Coolhunting - to make observations and predictions in changes of new or existing cultural trends in areas such as fashion, music, films, television, youth culture and lifestyle
• Buyer decision making process research — to determine what motivates people to buy and what decision-making process they use; over the last decade, Neuromarketing emerged from the convergence of neuroscience and marketing, aiming to understand consumer decision making process
• Copy testing
• predicts in-market performance of an ad before it airs by 
• analyzing audience levels of attention, brand linkage, motivation, entertainment, and communication, 
• breaking down the ad’s flow of attention and flow of emotion. (Young, p 213)
• Customer satisfaction research - quantitative or qualitative studies that yields an understanding of a customer's satisfaction with a transaction
• Demand estimation — to determine the approximate level of demand for the product
• Distribution channel audits — to assess distributors’ and retailers’ attitudes toward a product, brand, or company
• Internet strategic intelligence — searching for customer opinions in the Internet: chats, forums, web pages, blogs... where people express freely about their experiences with products, becoming strong opinion formers.
• Marketing effectiveness and analytics — Building models and measuring results to determine the effectiveness of individual marketing activities.
• Mystery consumer or mystery shopping - An employee or representative of the market research firm anonymously contacts a salesperson and indicates he or she is shopping for a product. The shopper then records the entire experience. This method is often used for quality control or for researching competitors' products.
• Positioning research — how does the target market see the brand relative to competitors? - what does the brand stand for?
• Price elasticity testing — to determine how sensitive customers are to price changes
• Sales forecasting — to determine the expected level of sales given the level of demand. With respect to other factors like Advertising expenditure, sales promotion etc.
• Segmentation research - to determine the demographic, psychographic, cultural, and behavioural characteristics of potential buyers
• Online panel - a group of individual who accepted to respond to marketing research online
• Store audit
• to measure the sales of a product or product line at a statistically selected store sample in order to determine 
• market share,
• whether a retail store provides adequate service
• Test marketing — a small-scale product launch used to determine the likely acceptance of the product when it is introduced into a wider market
• Viral Marketing Research
• designed to estimate the probability that specific communications will be transmitted throughout an individual's Social Network. 
• Estimates of Social Networking Potential (SNP) are combined with estimates of selling effectiveness to estimate ROI on specific combinations of messages and media.

Characteristics of The Marketing Research Methodology, Process and Design

• Systematic

• Planning is required at all stages of marketing research process.
• Procedures followed are methodologically sound, well documented, planned in advance
• Scientific method used to collect & analyze data, Test prior notions or hypothesis

• Objective

• Provide accurate information reflecting true state of affairs
• Conducted impartially, free from personal or political bias of researcher or management.
• Similarities to Political Polling and Social Science Research
•  Meta-analysis (also called the Schmidt-Hunter technique) refers to a statistical method of combining data from multiple studies or from several types of studies. Conceptualization means the process of converting vague mental images into definable concepts. Operationalization is the process of converting concepts into specific observable behaviors that a researcher can measure. Precision refers to the exactness of any given measure. Reliability refers to the likelihood that a given operationalized construct will yield the same results if re-measured. Validity refers to the extent to which a measure provides data that captures the meaning of the operationalized construct as defined in the study. It asks, “Are we measuring what we intended to measure?”
  • Applied research sets out to prove a specific hypothesis of value to the clients paying for the research. For example, a cigarette company might commission research that attempts to show that cigarettes are good for one's health. Many researchers have ethical misgivings about doing applied research.
  • Sugging (from SUG, for "selling under the guise" of market research) forms a sales technique in which sales people pretend to conduct marketing research, but with the real purpose of obtaining buyer motivation and buyer decision-making information to be used in a subsequent sales call.
  • Frugging comprises the practice of soliciting funds under the pretense of being a research organization.

Traits of Market Research by SME and Non-profits

• Overall analysis should be based on 6W+1H (What, When, Where, Which, Who, Why and How) question.
• Marketing information can be derived by observing the environment of their location and the competitions location. 
• Small scale surveys and focus groups are low cost ways to gather information from potential and existing customers. 
• Most secondary data (statistics, demographics, etc.) available to the public in libraries or on the internet and can be easily accessed by a small business owner.
• Steps 

1. Provide secondary and or primary data (if necessary);
2. Analyze Macro & Micro Economic data (e.g. Supply & Demand, GDP,Price change, Economic growth, Sales by sector/industries,interest rate, number of investment/ divestment, I/O, CPI, Social anlysis,etc.);
3. Implement the marketing mix concept, which is consist of: Place, Price, Product,Promotion, People, Process, Physical Evidence and also Political & social situation to analyze global market situation);
4. Analyze market trends, growth, market size, market share, market competition (e.g. SWOT analysis, B/C Analysis,channel mapping identities of key channels, drivers of customers loyalty and satisfaction, brand perception, satisfaction levels, current competitor-channel relationship analysis, etc.),etc.;
5. Determine market segment, market target, market forecast and market position;
6. Formulating market strategy & also investigating the possibility of partnership/ collaboration (e.g. Profiling & SWOT analysis of potential partners, evaluating business partnership.)
7. Combine those analysis with the SME's business plan/ business model analysis (e.g. Business description, Business process, Business strategy, Revenue model, Business expansion, Return of Investment, Financial analysis (Company History, Financial assumption, Cost/Benefit Analysis, Projected profit & Loss, Cashflow, Balance sheet & business Ratio,etc.).

Organisations for Market Research

• Stanford Research Institute

Reference

• The Definition of Marketing. American Marketing Association. http://www.marketingpower.com/AboutAMA/Pages/DefinitionofMarketing.aspx
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_research

Backstory: (more later!)

What happened?

I have been doing much research on books and the internet, without any proper methodology and plan. 
It was just random learning. 
It is time to be able to do things proper and follow a set course of Action.  I have to differentiate between Research for gathering more knowledge just for knowledge sake, VS Research for a specific purpose. i.e. for business

What did I do?

The first type I learnt about was Marketing Research. I had many notes on my wiki, and had several book reviews. Now to consolidate everything onto this blog post.

Resolution

This blog post will be part of a larger concept called Business Analysis/ Business Intelligence/ Business Research.

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About Aldrin