Chapter 7: Marketing Research: From Customer Insights to Actions

Marketing research process of collecting and analyzing info in order to recommend

actions
Decision conscious choice from among two or more alternatives
1. Define the problem
set research objectives specific, measurable goals
Identify possible marketing actions measure of success criteria or
standards usd in evaluating proposed solutions to a problem
2. Develop research plan
Specify constraints restrictions placed on potential solutions to a
problem
Identify data needed for marketing action
Determine how to collect data
i. Concepts ideas about products or services
1. New product concept picture or verbal descript. Of a
product or service the firm might offer for sale
ii. Methods approaches that can be used to collect data to solve
all or part of a problem
1. Sampling selecting group of people and asking them
questions
2. Statistical inference generalize result from the sample to
much larger group of distributors to help decide action
3. Collect relevant info
Data facts and figures related to a problem
Secondary data facts and figures that have already been recorded
prior to the project at hand
i. Internal secondary data
1. Market input data relate to effort expended to make
sales
2. Marketing income data relate to the results of the
marketing efforts
ii. External secondary data published data from outside the
organization
iii. Advantages tremendous time saving, low cost
iv. Disadvantage out of date, not the specific info you need
Primary data facts and figures that are newly collected for a project
i. Observational data collected by mechanical, personal, and
neuromarketing methods
ii. Mechanical method data collected from tv view
iii. Personal methods watching people and observing behavior
iv. Neuromarketing method brain scanning analysis
v. Questionnaire data facts or figures obtained by asking people
about their attitudes, awareness, intentions, and behaviors
vi. Idea evaluation method online survey cheap

vii.
viii.
ix.
x.
xi.

Opened ended questions express opinion

Closed ended select from responses
Dichotomous question yes or no
Social media using facebook likes, online polls
Panel and experiments panel sample of consumer .
experiment cause and effect
xii. Info technology involves operating computer networks that can
store and process data
xiii. Data mining extraction of hidden predictive info from large
database to find statistical link between consumer purchasing
patterns and marketing actions
xiv. Advantage more flexible and specific
xv. Disadvantage costly, time consuming
4. Develop findings
Analyze data
Present findings
5. Take marketing actions
Make action recommendation
Implement action recommendation
Evaluate result
i. Decision itself
ii. Decision process used
Sales forecast- total sales of a product that a firm expects to sell during a specified
time period under specified conditions
1. Judgments of the decision maker
a. direct forecast involves estimating the value of the forecast without
any intervening steps
b. long horse forecast starting with last known value of item being
forecast, listing factors, accessing impact, making decision
2. surveys of knowledgeable groups
a. survey of buyers intentions forecast asking perspective customers if
they are likely to buy product in the future
b. salesforce survey forecast involves asking firms salepeople to
estimate sales during upcoming year
3. statistical methods
a. trend extrapolation extending a pattern observed in past data into
the future (linear trend- straight line)