MKT 3010 Chapter 7 Study Guide PDF

MKT 3010: Chapter 7 Study Guide Marketing research refers to procedures that develop and analyze new information about a market. It is a key source that marketing managers turn to for information to make better decisions. It involves a wide range of techniques, including Internet searches, customer...

MKT 3010: Chapter 7 Study Guide Marketing research refers to procedures that develop and analyze new information about a market. It is a key source that marketing managers turn to for information to make better decisions. It involves a wide range of techniques, including Internet searches, customer surveys, experiments, direct observation of customers, and many more. A marketing information system (MIS) is an organized way of continually gathering, accessing, and analyzing information that marketing managers need to make ongoing decisions. Marketing managers need marketing research, an MIS, or a combination of both during any step in the marketing strategy planning process to make good marketing decisions or to improve implementation and control. Most large companies have a separate marketing research department to plan and manage research projects. People in these departments usually rely on outside specialists to carry out the work on particular projects. A marketing information system can provide a continual flow of information that is available and quickly accessible when it's needed. An MIS should collect external information from the marketplace. Marketing managers should have a system in place to routinely scan the external market environment, customers, and competitors to ensure that important information is available when needed for marketing strategy planning. Big data are data sets too large and complex to work with typical database management tools. It has been estimated that organizations today process 1,000 times as much data as they did in the year 2000. The explosion of data collection has created data sets too large and complex to work with typical database management tools. These days data are more than just sales numbers; marketing managers can collect a wide variety of data from many sources, including social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, or wearable technology like the Fitbit or Apple Watch. Velocity refers to the speed at which big data are generated and can be processed. Velocity is important for marketing managers who seek to do predictive analytics. Volume refers to the quantity of data generated and stored. Data in raw form are not useful to a marketing manager, so an MIS includes software programs that convert the data to information that is useful to managers. Data become information when they provide answers to questions of "who," "what," "where," "how much," and "when." That information then becomes knowledge when it helps a marketing manager answer "how" and "why" questions. Marketing research develops and analyzes new information about a market. An MIS is an organized way of continually gathering, accessing, and analyzing information managers need to make ongoing decisions. The results portion of the marketing information system includes marketing metrics such as profits, market share, customer lifetime value, etc. Wisdom is the result of a combination of knowledge and experience. As marketing managers gain experience and understanding of why things happened in the past, they can put that together to build wisdom and better predict changes in a marketing strategy to turn things around. Marketing dashboards display up-to-the-minute marketing data in an easy-to-read format. They are usually customized to a manager's areas of responsibility. Software can "learn" when sending a promotional offer is most effective. The software does not know why the time frame works---no knowledge is generated---but it does know what works best and creates a marketing strategy based on that. The scientific method is a decision-making approach that focuses on being objective and orderly in testing ideas before accepting them. It guides marketing research. The scientific method involves researchers using their intuition and observations to develop *hypotheses*. Then they test their hypotheses before making final decisions. Hypotheses are educated guesses about the relationships between things or about what will happen in the future. They are tested by marketing managers before they make final decisions. The marketing research process is a five-step application of the scientific method that includes (1) defining the problem; (2) analyzing the situation; (3) getting problem-specific data; (4) interpreting the data; and (5) solving the problem. Good marketing research requires cooperation between researchers and marketing managers. Marketing managers must be able to explain what their problems are and what kinds of information they need. Researchers must be sure their research focuses on real problems. A situation analysis is an informal study of what information is already available in the problem area. It can help define the problem. The situation analysis may begin with quick research---perhaps an Internet search, utilizing an MIS, and phone calls or informal talks with people familiar with the industry, problem, or situation. Government data, like that of the U.S. Census Bureau, are secondary data because they were already created or published. Secondary data refers to information that has been collected or published already. Secondary data are available inside the company, from sales and cost data and previously published marketing research studies. Secondary data from outside the company include searches of the Internet, library, and private research organizations. Primary data represents information that is specifically collected to solve a current problem. Loyalty card data from retailers is considered primary data. One way to monitor and review what others are saying about a company or its products is to conduct a sentiment analysis, which is an automated process of analyzing and categorizing social media to determine the amount of positive, negative, and neutral online comments a brand receives. A consumer panel is a group of consumers who provide information on a continuing basis. In primary data collection, there are two basic methods for obtaining information about customers: questioning and observing. Primary data collection includes customer journey maps, focus group interviews, surveys, and observation methods. Unlike an interview, which produces answers from one interviewee, focus groups generate answers from up to ten participants in an informal group setting. In a focus group, an interviewer seeks group interaction---to stimulate thinking and get immediate reactions. Qualitative research seeks in-depth, open-ended responses, not yes or no answers; quantitative research seeks structured responses. The real advantage of the qualitative approach is depth. A focus group involves simultaneously interviewing 6 to 10 people in an informal group setting. It is a form of qualitative questioning in marketing research. Most survey research is quantitative research. It seeks structured responses that can be summarized in numbers, like percentages, averages, or other statistics. The response rate is the percentage of people contacted who complete the questionnaire in a survey. Observing, as a method of collecting data, focuses on a well-defined problem. With this method, researchers try to see or record what the subject does naturally. They don't want the observing to influence the subject's behavior. Clickstream analysis is the process of collecting and analyzing data about website visitors---including which pages they visit, the order they visit them in, and possibly even what keywords were searched before arriving at the site. Statistical packages are easy-to-use computer programs that analyze data and facilitate data interpretation. The term *population* refers to the total group the researcher is evaluating. The *sample* is the part of the population that is studied. Marketing researchers typically study only a sample, a part of the relevant population. How well a sample represents the total population affects the results. Results from a sample that is not representative may not give a true picture. Validity concerns the extent to which data measure what they are intended to measure. Validity problems are important in marketing research. Researchers can employ confidence intervals to help determine the likely accuracy of the sample value.