COURSE CODE : MM 211

COURSE DESCRIPTION : Marketing Management

TARGET POPULATION : 2nd Year BSBA-MM Students
COURSE FACILITATOR : Ms. Roda Jean D. Fernando

WEEK 10

CHAPTER X. CONDUCTING MARKETING RESEARCH

Learning Objectives:

When you have completed this chapter, you should be able to:
1. Understand what is good marketing research;
2. Calculate good metrics for marketing productivity;
3. Assess return of investment of marketing expenditures;
4. Analyze and forecast demand; and
5. Develop a marketing plan or strategy for a product or service.

In this chapter, we review the scope of marketing research and the steps involved in the
marketing research process. We also consider how marketers can develop effective
metrics for measuring marketing productivity.

LESSON 1. MARKETING RESEARCH

Companies often used Extensive Market Research
when designing their products or services. For
instance, Gillette make good use of information based
on research output. Gillette was widely known as
famous provider of men’s razors, engineered to give
comfort shave for every man. Gillette used Extensive
Market Research when they design the Venus (Figure
11.1).
To make the best possible tactical decisions in the
short run and strategic decisions in the long run,
marketers need timely, accurate, and actionable
information about consumers, competition, and their
brands. Discovering a marketing insight and
understanding its implications can often lead to a
successful product launch or spur the growth of a
brand. It is especially important to stay tuned in online.

In launching its new Galaxy S III smart phone, Samsung faced a formidable opponent in
Apple. To gain the upper hand, Samsung sifted through hundreds of thousands of tweets
and online conversations to uncover recurring negative comments about the iPhone. One
ad in its new campaign mocked Apple fanatics eagerly waiting in line for the latest iPhone
model. With a tagline “The Next Big Thing Is Already Here,” the ad showcased features
such as screen size and NFC file-swapping technology where Samsung had an
advantage. It ended with the clever twist that the Samsung phone user in the line—whose
phone had all the features the Apple users were hoping for—was just saving a spot for his
parents. A huge hit online, the ad attracted millions of YouTube downloads. The TV ad
was a follow-up to an earlier print ad contrasting a long list of Galaxy S III features with a
much smaller list for the iPhone. It also poked fun at Apple and its Genius retail
employees, adding the tagline “It Doesn’t Take a Genius.”

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LESSON 2. THE SCOPE OF MARKETING RESEARCH
Marketing managers often commission formal marketing studies of specific
problems and opportunities, like a market survey, a product-preference test, a
sales forecast by region, or an advertising evaluation. It’s the job of the marketing
researcher to produce insight to help the marketing manager’s decision making.
Formally, the American Marketing Association says:
Marketing research is the function that links the consumer, customer, and
public to the marketer through information—information used to identify
and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and
evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve
understanding of marketing as a process. Marketing research specifies the
information required to address these issues, designs the method for
collecting information, manages and implements the data collection
process, analyzes the results, and communicates the findings and their
implications.
Kotler (2009) defined marketing research as the systematic design, collection,
analysis, and reporting of data and findings relevant to a specific marketing
situation facing the company.

LESSON 3. IMPORTANCE OF MARKETING INSIGHTS

Marketing research is all about generating insights. Marketing insights provide
diagnostic information about how and why we observe certain effects in the
marketplace and what that means to marketers.
Good marketing insights often form the basis of successful marketing programs.
 When an extensive consumer research study of U.S. retail shoppers by Walmart
revealed that the store’s key competitive advantages were the functional
benefit of “offers low prices” and the emotional benefit of “makes me feel like a
smart shopper,” its marketers used those insights to develop their “Save
Money, Live Better” campaign.
 When marketing research showed that consumers viewed Walgreens largely as
a convenience store with a pharmacy in the back, the company took steps to
reposition itself as a premium health care brand, putting more emphasis on its
wellness offerings such as its walk-in clinics.
Gaining marketing insights is crucial for marketing success. To improve the
marketing of its $3 billion Pantene hair care brand, Procter & Gamble conducted a
deep dive into women’s feelings about hair, using surveys with mood scales from
psychology, high-resolution EEG research to measure brainwaves, and other
methods. As a result, the company reformulated Pantene products, redesigned
packages, pared the line down from 14 “collections” to eight, and fine-tuned the
ad campaign.

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 If marketers lack consumer insights, they often get in trouble. When Tropicana
redesigned its orange juice packaging, dropping the iconic image of an orange
skewered by a straw, it failed to adequately test for consumer reactions—with
disastrous results. Sales dropped by 20 percent, and Tropicana reinstated the old
package design after only a few months.

Difference between Market Research and Marketing Research

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKqqH38Jj8Y

LESSON 4. WHO DOES MARKETING RESEARCH?

Spending on marketing research topped $40.2 billion globally in 2013, according
to ESOMAR, the world association of opinion and market research professionals.
Most large companies have their own marketing research departments, which
often play crucial roles within the organization. Here is how Procter & Gamble
describes its marketing research department.
Consumer & Market Knowledge (CMK) Department is P&G’s key internal
compass guiding and championing decisions related to brand and
customer business development strategy based on in-depth analysis of
consumers, shoppers and the retail trade. CMK leads analysis of market
trends and consumer habits/motivations, shopper behavior, customer and
competitive dynamics; designs and analyzes qualitative and quantitative
consumer and shopper research studies as well as syndicated market
data. CMK is an integral partner, involved in all the stages of the brand life
cycle starting with design of a concept to final product development and
through to the in-market launch driving business growth. CMK brings to life
P&G stated global strategy “Consumer is Boss.
Marketing research, however, is not limited to large companies with big budgets
and marketing research departments. Often at much smaller companies,
everyone carries out marketing research—including the customers. Small
companies can also hire the services of a marketing research firm or conduct
research in creative and affordable ways, such as:
1. Engaging students or professors to design and carry out projects
2. Using the Internet
3. Checking out rivals
4. Tapping into marketing partner expertise
5. Tapping into employee creativity and wisdom

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 Most companies use a combination of resources to study their industries,
competitors, audiences, and channel strategies. They normally budget marketing
research at 1 percent to 2 percent of company sales and spend a large
percentage of that on the services of outside firms. Marketing research firms fall
into three categories:
1. Syndicated-service research firms
2. Custom marketing research firms
3. Specialty-line marketing research firms

LESSON 5. MEASURING MARKETING PRODUCTIVITY

Although we can easily quantify marketing expenses and investments as inputs in the
short run, the resulting outputs such as broader brand awareness, enhanced brand
image, greater customer loyalty, and improved new product prospects may take months
or years to manifest themselves. Meanwhile internal changes within the organization and
external changes in the marketing environment may coincide with the marketing
expenditures, making it hard to isolate its effects.

MARKETING METRICS
Marketers employ a wide variety of measures to assess marketing effects.
Marketing metrics is the set of measures that helps marketers quantify,
compare, and interpret their performance.

4 Ways to Measure Social Media ROI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rulGSOYZJRo

Table 10.1. Sample Marketing Metrics

MARKETING DASHBOARDS
Management can assemble a summary set of relevant internal and external
measures in a marketing dashboard for synthesis and interpretation. Marketing

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 dashboards are like the instrument panel in a car or plane, visually displaying
real-time indicators to ensure proper functioning. Formally, marketing
dashboards are “a concise set of interconnected performance drivers to be
viewed in common throughout the organization.”
Dashboards are only as good as the information on which they’re based, but
sophisticated visualization tools are helping bring data alive. Color-coding,
symbols, and different types of charts, tables, and gauges are easy to use and
effective.
As input to the marketing dashboard, companies should include two key
market-based scorecards that reflect performance and provide possible early
warning signals.
 A customer-performance scorecard records how well the company is doing
year after year on such customer-based measures.
 A stakeholder-performance scorecard tracks the satisfaction of various
constituencies who have a critical interest in and impact on the company’s
performance: employees, suppliers, banks, distributors, retailers, and
stockholders.

Figure 10.2. Sample Customer-Performance Scorecard Measures

LESSON 6. THE MARKETING RESEARCH PROCESS

The market research process is a systematic methodology for informing business
decisions. The figure below breaks the process down into six steps.
Step 1. Define the Objective & Your “Problem”
The foremost decision that every firm has to undertake is to find out the
problem for which the research is to be conducted. The problem must be
defined adequately because if it is too vague, then it may result in the
wastage of scarce resources and if it is too narrow, then the exact
conclusion cannot be drawn. In order to define the problem appropriately,
each firm must have a clear answer to the questions viz. What is to be
researched (content and the scope)? And Why the research is to be done
(decisions that are to be made)?

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 Step 2. Develop the Research Plan
This step involves gathering the information
relevant to the research objective. It includes:
 Data Sources: The researcher can collect
the data pertaining to the research problem
from either the primary source or the
secondary source or both the sources of
information. The primary source is the
first-hand data that does not exist in any
books or research reports whereas the
secondary data is the second-hand data
which is available in the books, journals,
reports, etc.
 Research Approaches: The Secondary data
are readily available in books, journals,
magazines, reports, online, etc. But the
primary data have to be collected and to do
so, the following research can be
conducted:
 Observational Research: The
researcher can collect the
information by just observing the
happenings in the market and
sometimes having a friendly
conversation with the customers
to know about their purchase
experiences.
 Ethnographic Research: It is one of the forms of an
observation research where the researcher studies an
individual in the real-life situation and not under any market
setup or a lab. The purpose of this research is to know the
way people live (their lifestyles), What they do to earn their
livelihood, how they consume goods and services, what
they need in their personal and professional lives etc.
 Focus Group Research: It is a form of group discussion
wherein six to ten people gather and discuss the common
topic given by the moderator. A moderator is a person who
conducts the group discussion and is skilled in group
dynamics. He also keeps the discussion focused on the
topic so that relevant information can be obtained from the
group members.
 Survey Research: These are the descriptive research
generally conducted to know the about the customer’s
knowledge about the product, their preferences, and
satisfaction level. The best way to conduct surveys is
through the Questionnaires.
 Behavioral Data: The customer’s actual purchases at the
store reflects its behavior and the choice of products. Thus,
observing what customers are buying gives more accurate
information about the customer rather than the planned
answers given by them in the surveys.
 Experimental research: This is done to find out the cause
and effect relationships. This research is undertaken to

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 study the effects of change in the customer’s behavior due
to the change in the product’s attributes.
 Sampling plan: Once the research approach is decided, the researcher
has to design a sampling plan and have to decide on the following:
 The sampling Unit i.e. whom, shall we survey?
 The sample size, i.e., How many units in the population
shall be surveyed?
 The sampling procedure, i.e. How the respondents shall be
chosen?
 Contact Methods: The researcher has to choose the medium through
which the respondents can be contacted. The respondents can be
reached via emails, telephone, in person or online.

Figure 10.3. Conducting Focus Group Discussion

Step 3. Collect the Information

This is one of the most expensive methods of marketing research. At this stage,
the researcher has to adopt the methods to collect the information, he may find it
difficult to gather the correct information because of the respondent’s biasedness,
unwillingness to give answers or not at home.

Figure 10.4. Wells Fargo’s Consumer Surveys

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 RESEARCH INSTRUMENTS
Marketing researchers have a choice of three main research instruments in
collecting primary data: questionnaires, qualitative measures, and technological
devices.
Questionnaires
A questionnaire consists of a set of questions presented to respondents. Because
of its flexibility, it is by far the most common instrument used to collect primary
data. The form, wording, and sequence of the questions can all influence the
responses, so testing and de-bugging are necessary.
Closed-end questions specify all the possible answers, and the responses are
easier to interpret and tabulate. Open-end questions allow respondents to answer
in their own words. They are especially useful in exploratory research, where the
researcher is looking for insight into how people think rather than measuring how
many think a certain way.

Table 10.2. Types of Questions

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 Figure 10.5. Marketing Questions Do’s and Don’ts

QUALITATIVE MEASURES
Some marketers prefer qualitative methods for gauging consumer opinion because
they feel consumers’ actions don’t always match their answers to survey questions.
Qualitative research techniques are relatively indirect and unstructured measurement
approaches, limited only by the marketing researcher’s creativity, that permit a range
of responses.
Qualitative research does have its drawbacks. The samples are often very small, and
results may not generalize to broader populations. And different researchers
examining the same qualitative results may draw very different conclusions.
Other popular methods include:
1. Word associations. To identify the range of possible brand associations, ask
subjects what words come to mind when they hear the brand’s name. “What
does the Timex name mean to you? Tell me what comes to mind when you
think of Timex watches.”
2. Projective techniques. Give people an incomplete or ambiguous stimulus and
ask them to complete or explain it. In “bubble exercises” empty bubbles, like
those in cartoons, appear in scenes of people buying or using certain products
or services. Subjects fill in the bubble, indicating what they believe is
happening or being said. In comparison tasks people compare brands to
people, countries, animals, activities, cars, nationalities, or even other brands.
3. Visualization. Visualization requires people to create a collage from magazine
photos or drawings to depict their perceptions.
4. Brand personification. Ask “If the brand were to come alive as a person, what
would it be like, what would it do, where would it live, what would it wear, who
would it talk to if it went to a party (and what would it talk about)?” For
example, the John Deere brand might make someone think of a rugged
Midwestern male who is hardworking and trustworthy.
5. Laddering. A series of increasingly specific “why” questions can reveal
consumer motivation and deeper goals. Ask why someone wants to buy a
Nokia cell phone. “They look well built” (attribute). “Why is it important that the
phone be well built?” “It suggests Nokia is reliable” (a functional benefit). “Why

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 is reliability important?” “Because my colleagues or family can be sure to
reach me” (an emotional benefit). “Why must you be available to them at all
times?” “I can help them if they’re in trouble” (a core value). The brand makes
this person feel like a Good Samaritan, ready to help others.

SAMPLING PLAN
After choosing the research approach and instruments, the marketing researcher must
design a sampling plan. This calls for three decisions:
1. Sampling unit: Whom should we survey?
2. Sample size: How many people should we survey?
3. Sampling procedure: How should we choose the respondents?

SAMPLING TECHNIQUES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoBFgd2X_ew

CONTACT METHODS/DATA GATHERING PROCEDURE

Marketing researcher must decide how to contact the subjects: by mail, by
telephone, in person, or online.

Mail Contacts
The mail questionnaire is one way to reach people who would not give
personal interviews or whose responses might be biased or distorted by
the interviewers. Mail questionnaires require simple and clearly worded
questions. Unfortunately, responses are usually few or slow.
Telephone Contacts
Telephone interviewing is a good method for gathering information quickly;
the interviewer is also able to clarify questions if respondents do not
understand them. Interviews must be brief and not too personal.

Personal Contacts
Personal interviewing is the most versatile method. The interviewer can
ask more questions and record additional observations about the
respondent, such as dress and body language. Personal interviewing is
also the most expensive method, is subject to interviewer bias, and
requires more planning and supervision.

Online Contacts
The Internet offers many ways to do research. A company can embed a
questionnaire on its Web site and offer an incentive for answering, or it can
place a banner on a frequently visited site, inviting people to answer
questions and possibly win a prize. Online product testing can provide
information much faster than traditional new-product marketing research
techniques.
Other means to use the Internet as a research tool including tracking how
customers clickstream through the company’s Web site and move to other

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 sites. Marketers can post different prices, headlines, and product features
on separate Web sites or at different times to compare their relative
effectiveness.
Researchers like Bluefin Labs monitor all relevant Twitter tweets,
Facebook posts, and broadcast television stories to provide companies
with real-time trend analysis.

Figure 10.6. Survey Monkey Online Survey Platform

Step 4. Analyze the Information

Once the information is collected the next step is to organize it in such a way that
some analysis can be obtained. The researchers apply several statistical
techniques to perform the analysis, such as they compute averages and
measures of dispersion. Also, some advanced decision models are used to
analyze the data.

Step 5. Present the Findings

Finally, all the findings and the research are shown to the top management level
viz. Managing director, CEO, or board of directors to make the marketing
decisions in line with the research.

Step 6. Make the Decision

This is the last step of the marketing research, once the findings are presented to
the top-level management it is up to them either to rely on the findings and take
decisions or discard the findings as unsuitable.
Thus, marketing research is done to gather all the relevant information about the
market and design the marketing strategies accordingly.

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 Table 10.3. 7 Characteristics of Good Marketing Research

Marketing Research Process

https://businessjargons.com/marketing-research.html

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REFERENCES:

Business Jargons (2016, June 13). “Marketing Research Process”, Retrieved from:
https://businessjargons.com/marketing-research.html
GoDaddy. (2019, April 20). “4 Ways to Measure Social Media ROI”. [Youtube Video].
Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rulGSOYZJRo
Gyan Post. (2019, February 22). “DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MARKET RESEARCH
AND MARKETING RESEARCH” [YouTube Video]. Retrieved from:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKqqH38Jj8Y
Kotler, P., & Keller, K., (2015). Marketing Management, 15th edition, Pearson
Education Limited 2016, ISBN 978-0-13-385646-0
Your Stat Class. (2013, May 30) “Sampling Techniques” [Youtube Video]. Retrieved
from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoBFgd2X_ew

SUMMARY

1. Companies can conduct their own marketing research or hire other companies to do
it for them. Some of ways companies can creatively and affordably conduct research
include: engage students or professors to design and carry out projects; use the
Internet; check out rivals; tap into marketing partner expertise; and tap into
employee creativity and wisdom.
2. Good marketing research is characterized by the scientific method, creativity,
multiple research methods, accurate model building, cost-benefit analysis, healthy
skepticism, and an ethical focus.
3. The marketing research process consists of defining the problem, decision
alternatives, and research objectives; developing the research plan; collecting the
information; analyzing the information; presenting the findings to management; and
making the decision.
4. In conducting research, firms must decide whether to collect their own data or use
data that already exist. They must also choose a research approach (observational,
focus group, survey, behavioral data, or experimental) and research instruments
(questionnaire, qualitative measures, or technological devices). In addition, they
must decide on a sampling plan and contact methods (by mail, by phone, in person,
or online).
5. Two complementary approaches to measuring marketing productivity are: (1)
marketing metrics to assess marketing effects and (2) marketing-mix modeling to
estimate causal relationships and measure how marketing activity affects outcomes.
Marketing dashboards are a structured way to disseminate the insights gleaned
from these two approaches within the organization.
6. Assessing the ROI of social media is challenging but requires a range of short-term
and long-term financial and brand-related measures. Although Facebook “likes” and
Twitter tweets provide some sense of the engagement for a brand, a more complete
set of measures is typically needed to get a more accurate picture of social media or
other online activities.

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Name: Date:
Year/Set: Grade/Score:

ACTIVITY #8 – MARKETING RESEARCH

Marketing Debate
What Is the Best Type of Marketing Research?
Many market researchers have their favorite research approaches or techniques,
though different researchers often have different preferences. Some researchers
maintain that the only way to really learn about consumers or brands is through
in-depth, qualitative research. Others contend that the only legitimate and
defensible form of marketing research uses quantitative measures.
Take a position: (a) the best marketing research is quantitative in nature versus (b)
the best marketing research is qualitative in nature.
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 Name: Date:
Year/Set: Grade/Score:

ACTIVITY #9 – SURVEY QUALITY

Marketing Discussion
Answer the following question.
(In case you need additional page, please WRITE it on a clean sheet of long-sized
bond paper and attached it to this page.)
1. When was the last time you participated in a survey?

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2. How helpful do you think the information you provided was?

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3. How could the research have been done differently to make it more effective?
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End of Week 10
----- Nothing Follows ----

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