As a Marketing research consultant you have been invited to a sixth form college to give a talk to the students about the marketing research process, the benefits of the research and its limitations. You are to prepare the detailed notes of this presenta
...now what the problem is so that it focuses on it only. Common symptoms are decline in sales, decline in profits and customers not returning so often. The firm has to conduct research to answer questions like why? How? When… At this stage the company also set up the objective. There are three types of objective: Exploratory research is conducted to clarify the nature of a problem o gain a better understanding of a market situation and to discover ideas. Descriptive objectives seek to determine answers to who? What? When? Where? and how? Example Demographics profile of heavy users of car cleaning products. You discover that they have 21-40 age, have a certain amount of income, more males etc… Casual objectives are set if an organization wants to understand more about the relationship between 2 factors. Example advertising and the effect on sales, product quality/packaging and the effect on sales. This stage is very important because the firm has to make sure that it is worth to make a research to solve the problem because research tend to be a bit expensive. Especially if outside agencies are used. 2. Developing the research plan for data collection: - The next stage is to determine the type of method to use to make the research. The firm can use either the primary research or the secondary research. Secondary data- information that already exist somewhere, having been collected or another purpose. Secondary data is compiled both inside and outside the organization. * Internal sources include data, which are generated by the organization itself. A wide variety of useful marketing data tends to be spread throughout the different departments of an organisation. For example the sales persons (the people who are closest to the consumers) observe the customers everyday, they know their reactions. They may be able to spot needs for new products. * External sources are generated by sources outside the organisation. Example government statistics and reports, trade directories on specific industries, universities, newspapers, and on-line databases. When collecting secondary data the marketer must be sure that data is relevant, accurate and complete. Primary data- consists of facts and figures collected or the first time for a specific purpose to a company. It is also known as field research. Before starting any primary research, the marketer must make sure that information doesn’t exist. It can be Ad Hoc, continuous, qualitive or quantative. There are 4 types of primary data: * Survey research- is a method mostly used to gather descriptive data. It is gathering primary data by asking questions about their knowledge, attitudes, preferences, and buying behaviour. These are different methods of communications: -Postal questionnaire; posting questionnaire to respondents for them to complete at their pleasure -Telephone interviews; involves telephoning respondents to ask questions and complete questionnaires. -Personal interviews; trained interviewers speaking to respondents face to face. -On-line survey; sending questionnaires via e-mails. * Depth interviews and group discussions- are prolonged one-to-one interviews during which the interviewer asks questions on a series of topics but is free to phrase he questions as seems more appropriate. Focus groups involve an interviewer known as a moderator, chairing a discussion among a group of 8 to 12 people. * Observation- this technique involves watching people’s behaviour and their actions. For example observing consumers in shopping malls and see how they react to factors like price, product itself etc. The observation can also be mechanical e.g. traffic counter. It can be done with the customer knowing he is being observed or in a hidden way. The overt observations can turn out to be bias, as the customers do not act normally. * Experimentation- concerns with measuring relationship between 2 variables. It can be...