The Marketing Research Process

Steps in the Marketing Research Process

Few comments about the process:1. It is rare in practice a research project follows all the

exact steps.

2. May not involve every step shown

3. What’s important is although every research project is different, there are enough commonalities to follow the eleven steps of marketing research.

Steps in the Marketing Research Process1. Establish the need for the marketing research.

2. Define the problem.

3. Establish research objectives.

4. Determine the research design.

5. Identify information types and sources.

6. Determine the methods of accessing data.

7. Design data collection forms.

8. Determine sample plan and size.

9. Collect data.

10. Analyze data.

11. Prepare and present the final research report.

Step 1: Establish the Need for Marketing Research

A good monitoring system constantly searches for hints that the companies marketing mix may be out of “sync” in the market place.

Marketing research may not be needed Information is already available

There is insufficient time for marketing research

Resources are not available

Costs outweigh the value of the research

Step 2: Define the Problem

Problem definition involves:1. Specifying the symptoms

2. Itemising the possible causes of the symptoms

3. Listing the reasonable alternative courses of action that the marketing manager can undertake to solve the problem.

Step 3: Establish the Research Objectives

Research objectives identify what specific pieces of information are necessary to solve the problem at hand.

Research objectives also specifies what the managers are trying to achieve through the research.

Step 4: Determine Research Design There are three types of research design:

1. Exploratory Research Design – Explorator research is research conducted for a problem that has not been clearly defined. Examples: Reading periodicals, visiting competitors premises, examine company sales and profits vs. industry sales and profit, clipping service.

2. Descriptive Research Design - refers to a set of methods and procedure that describe marketing variables. Descriptive research is used to describe characteristics of a population or phenomenon being studied. it addresses the "what" question (what are the characteristics of the population or situation being studied?)

3. Causal Research Design – designs allow us to isolate causes and their effects.

By changing one factor, say price, we can monitor its effect on a key consequence, such as sales. In other words, causal design allows us to determine causality, or which variable is causing another variable to change.

Step 5: Identify Information Types and

Sources.

Basically two types of data information available to a marketing researcher:

A. Secondary data – as it name implies, refers to information that has been collected for some other purpose.

B. Primary data - refers to information that has been gathered specifically to serve the research objectives at hand.

Step 6: Determine Methods of Accessing Data

Once the researcher has determined which type or types of information are needed, he or she must determine methods of accessing data.

Methods of accessing external secondary data have improved over the last five years:

Information processing technology.

Easy and Quick retrieval.

Internal data- company reports, salespersons, executives, MIS and other information sources.

There are several different methods of collecting primary data including:

Telephone surveys

Mail surveys

Door-to-door interviews

Mall-intercept studies

New data collection methods are emerging.

Step 7: Design Data Collection Forms

Questionnaires and observation forms must be designed with great care.

Structured Questionnaires - list questions that have pre-specified answer choices.

Unstructured questionnaires – have open ended questions and/or questions that are asked based on a response.

Disguised Questionnaires -true object of the study is not identified.

Undisguised Questionnaires - respondent is made fully aware of the purpose/or sponsor of the survey.

Step 8: Determine Sample Plan and Size

A sample plan identifies who is to be sampled and how to select them for study.

A sample element refers to a unit of the entity being studied.

A sample Frame is a list from which the sample elements are drawn for the sample.

Sampling Methods are available to help the researcher determine the sample size required for the research study. Probability and non probability sampling

Step 9: Collect Data

Data collection is usually done by trained interviewers who are employed by field data collection companies to collect primary data.

Being aware of errors that may occur is important.

Step 10: Analyse Data

Data analysis involves entering data into computer files, inspecting it for errors and running tabulations and various statistical tests.

Data cleaning – process by which the raw data are checked to verify that the data has been correctly inputted from the data collection form to the computer software program. Use SPSS

Coding – is the process of assigning all response categories a numerical value males=1, females=2.

Step 11: Prepare and Present the Final Research Report

Preparing the marketing research report involves describing the process used, building meaningful tables, and using presentation graphics for clarityand presenting it in a standardized manner

DIFFERENCES B/W MKIS V/S MARKETING RESEARCH :MARKETING RESEARCH :

It is post mortem

Marketing research is not continuous

Marketing research became popular in 1950’s

Marketing research may be or may not be.

To achieve certain objective marketing research is conducted.

Marketing research is a part of MKIS.

MKIS :

It is future oriented

MKIS is continuous

MKIS became popular in 1960’s

MKIS uses computer

The main objective is to assist decision making

MKIS is wider scope