Chapter

1. Chapter 2 The Marketing Research Process

2. The Marketing Research Process: 11 Steps • Step One: Establishing the Need for Marketing Research • Step Two: Defining the Problem • Step Three: Establishing Research Objectives • Step Four: Determining Research Design • Step Five: Identifying Information Types and Sources • Step Six: Determining Methods of Accessing Data

3. The Marketing Research Process: 11 Steps cont… • Step Seven: Designing Data Collection Forms • Step Eight: Determining Sample Plan and Size • Step Nine: Collecting Data • Step Ten: Analyzing Data • Step Eleven: Preparing and Presenting the Final Research Report

4. The Marketing Research Process Step One: Establish the Need for Marketing Research • Marketing Research is not needed when the: • required information is already available • decisions need to be made now • organization can’t afford the research • costs outweigh the value of the research

5. The Marketing Research Process Step Two: Define the Problem • The most important step in the marketing research process is defining the problem. (Ch. 4)

6. The Marketing Research Process Step Three: Establish Research Objectives • What information is needed in order to solve the problem?

7. The Marketing Research Process Step Four: Determine Research Design • Exploratory Research: collecting information in an unstructured and informal manner • Descriptive Research: refers to a set of methods and procedures describing marketing variables • Causal Research (experiments and other approaches): allows isolation of causes and effects

8. The Marketing Research Process Step Five: Identify Information Types and Sources • Secondary Data: information that has been collected for some purpose other than the research at hand • Primary Data: information that has been gathered specifically for the research objectives at hand

9. The Marketing Research Process Step Six: Determine Methods of Accessing Data • Secondary Data: accessing data through sources such as the Internet and library • Primary Data: collecting data from participants through methods such as telephone, mail, online, and face-to-face (quantitative), and observation studies and focus groups (qualitative)

10. The Marketing Research Process Step Seven: Design Data Collection Forms • The design of the data collection form that is used to ask or observe and record information in marketing research projects is critical to the success of the project. • It is easy to write a set of questions but very difficult to construct a questionnaire. • General types of “instruments” (forms) • Questionnaires • Observation Study forms (protocols)

11. The Marketing Research Process Step Eight: Determine Sample Plan and Size • Sample plan: refers to the process used to select units from the population to be included in the sample • Sample size: refers to determining how many elements (units) of the population should be included in the sample

12. The Marketing Research Process Step Nine: Collect Data • Sound data collection is very important because, regardless of the data analysis methods used, data analysis cannot “fix” bad data. 12 • Nonsampling errors may occur during data collection. These are related to poor design and/or execution of the data gathering. • Sampling errors may occur based purely on chance

13. The Marketing Research Process Step Ten: Analyze Data • Data analysis: involves entering data into computer files, inspecting data for errors (data cleaning), running tabulations (frequencies), and conducting various statistical tests

14. The Marketing Research Process Step Eleven: Prepare and Present the Final Research Report • Findings are presented, often by research objective, in a clear and concise way. • The need for a good report cannot be overstated. It is the report, and/or its presentation, that properly communicates the results to the client.