Marketing Research Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Why do we even need Marketing Research?

• Marketing research is the systematic and objective collection, analysis, and dissemination of information to assist management in making decisions. It's objective-based, helping firms identify and solve marketing problems and opportunities.
• Marketing research can be categorized by activities (how it's done), knowledge, or purpose. Activities include defining what is/isn't known (articulating what is unknown, awareness of what is known that hasn't been used), and recognizing what is unknown (unarticulated unknowns).
• Purpose-based research includes exploratory research (little prior knowledge, few hypotheses), descriptive research (describing a situation numerically), and predictive research (relating variables to predict outcomes).
• The marketing ecosystem involves external suppliers (full-service firms, field agencies, niche market firms, advertising agencies, consulting firms) and client organizations (internal researchers, internal clients, other stakeholders).

The Marketing Research Value Chain

• A consumer-centric organization structure is one in which marketing insights are strategically incorporated.
• Characteristics of a company with significant market influence include transcending organizational walls, owning strategic research programs (measuring customer satisfaction/loyalty), and forming independent allies.
• Market research teams need to be technically adept, organized, and skilled in communication and relationship building.

Market Research Framework

• A reliable partner, emotional connection, and strong executive presence are essential for effective market research.
• An empathy map helps researchers understand the perspectives of those who will receive research results.
• To become a strategic partner, researchers must understand their clients' business contexts and the implications of their recommendations.

The Five Disruptive Trends in Market Research

• The analytics trend signifies an increase in data availability for firms.
• Big Data is characterized by volume (large datasets), variety (diverse data), and velocity (continuous influx).
• The marketing research budget trend emphasizes efficiently allocating resources for maximum output.
• Mobile technology and video trends enable marketers to connect with consumers based on needs, motivations, and behaviour.
• Behavioural economics and neuro-marketing trends focus on subconscious influences.

How external disruptions affect the industry

• Companies need rapid insights into evolving consumer behavior and brand preferences to maintain competitiveness.
• The shift from strategic to tactical research emphasizes the need for immediate solutions.
• Online research is gaining prominence.
• A reduction in research budgets is expected.

Chapter 2: The Marketing Research Problem and Process

• Marketing research involves a cyclical process, beginning and ending with defining a business problem. Steps include formulating a problem, reviewing existing/developing hypotheses, defining the marketing problem, evaluating existing data, developing a research brief, designing the study, collecting data, analyzing data, interpreting data, and providing recommendations.
• Key outputs include recommendations, presentations and dissemination, and plans for deployment of results.

The business problem and the market research problem

• Marketing research helps provide data to make better decisions in business.
• Market research utilizes deductive and inductive methods, both starting with existing knowledge. Deductive research follows a formal hypothesis testing approach to confirming/disproving these hypotheses.
• Inductively, data is gathered/analyzed to potentially build theory.
• A hypothesis is a preliminary assumption that guides the research process and can be either true or false.
• Use hypothesis-based approaches in market research for efficient data collection and analysis.

RFPs and Proposals

• Research proposals are important for alignment of expectations amongst all stakeholder, clarifying objectives, outlining the research strategy, and presenting potential budget constraints.
• Research proposals contain structured sections including background, problem definition, description of methodology, costs and timelines.
• The process for developing a research proposal frequently includes contacting clients, outlining the research methodologies, establishing costs, presenting the proposal, and follow-up communications

Chapter 3: Deliverables, Communication and Activation

• Research results should have a positive impact on business outcomes by being clear, understandable, credible, and communicated effectively to stakeholders.
• Sharing findings through PowerPoint presentations, alongside deeper analyses, is common practice.
• The format of the presentation should ensure that the client and other stakeholders can extract and understand the insights effectively and consider them credible.
• Workshops and other forums facilitate discussion.
• The engagement model emphasizes communication in different ways: from presentations to workshops, aiding in actionable processes.

Extracting insights

• Consumer insights are crucial information that creates a tension, acting as a means to understand a company's challenging business situation/opportunity.
• They can differ in value, broadness, validity, and time.
• The quality of communication in market research aims to present a concise and impactful narrative from the raw data.
• The presentation structure (often using the pyramid principle) streamlines insight delivery in a more impactful manner

Context

• Contextual insight is an important part of market research; it's contextual data not primarily focused on the specific study topic.
• This secondary data analysis, which may involve external sources like client advertising, competitors websites, personal experiences, friends, and family.
• Using client brand experiences in a "live experience" allows the researcher to quickly and accurately grasp relevant insights. Sources include visiting client's physical stores, reviewing ads in magazines, visiting websites, purchasing and evaluating the product. Data gathering can include reviewing financial reports.

Chapter 4: Market Research Data

• External data includes marketing research reports. Syndicated commercial/free reports. Data scrape from the internet. Public data.
• Internal data is mostly a by-product of company operations.
• Data can be aggregated at various levels (monthly sales, store level sales).
• Types of data include cross-sectional (collected at a set time point), longitudinal (ongoing data collection over time), and time series (numerous data points over a period).

Chapter 6: Product and Advertising Research

• The Ansoff Matrix is a common framework use for new product development- existing markets, market development, product development, and diversification.
• The product development lifecycle includes idea generation, concept development (design), manufacturing (development), and launching.
• Businesses use different models for conducting research on customer needs, including focus groups, individual interviews, online communities, and online conversations, enabling the identification of pain points and opportunities.

Chapter 7: Foundational Research (U&A Research).

• U&A research helps understand consumer usage and attitudes toward a product category.
• It involves questions about brand perceptions, usage patterns, motivations, and attitudes toward the category.
• Useful to gauge the specific needs and preferences of consumers for a product category.
• The results of U&A research are used for making better business decisions. Usage analysis involves determining how a product is used by its customers.

Chapter 8: Brand Research

• Theories of Brand include the law of double jeopardy and memory theory (declarative and implicit).
• Brand theory focuses on how a brand creates perceptions and values to aid in product purchasing.
• Brand equity, brand funnel models, brand associations, and positioning is important to measure.
• These frameworks enable a deeper comprehension of consumers and their relationships with brands.

Brand Positioning Research

• Brand positioning research is used to visualize how brands are mentally represented by consumers.
• This research uses methods like mapping to visualize how associations are connected for the target consumer.

Explore the fundamentals of marketing research in this quiz, which covers its definition, categorization, and the purposes it serves. Understand how marketing research aids management in decision-making and the various methodologies involved in the process.