UNIT 4

Chapter 4: Managing Marketing Information to gain customer insights

Mg. Gabriela Lazzatti
Customer insights
• Fresh information-based understandings of customers and the marketplace
that become the basis for creating customer value, engagement, and
relationships.
• With the recent explosion of information
technologies, companies can now
generate marketing information in great
quantities.
• Moreover, consumers themselves are
now generating tons of marketing
information.
• Companies use these customer insights
to develop a competitive advantage.
Managing Marketing information
• Far from lacking information, most marketing managers are overloaded
with data.
• This problem is summed up in the concept of BIG DATA: huge and complex
data sets generated by today’s sophisticated information generation,
collection, storage, and analysis technologies.
Managing Marketing information
• The real value of marketing research
and marketing information lies in
how it is used in the customer
insights that it provides.
• Companies are forming customer
insights teams that:
✓ Include all company functional
areas
✓ Collect information from a wide
variety of sources
✓ Use insights to create more value
for their customers
Marketing information system (MIS)
• It refers to the people and
procedures dedicated to assessing
information needs, developing the
needed information, and helping
decision makers to use the
information to generate and validate
actionable customer and market
insights.
• It provides information to the
company’s marketing manager and
to external partners such as
suppliers, resellers, and marketing
service agencies.
Developing Marketing Information
Marketing research process
• Marketing research is the systematic design, collection, analysis, and
reporting of data relevant to a specific marketing situation facing an
organization.
• Whereas marketing intelligence involves actively scanning the general
marketing environment, marketing research involves more focused
studies to gain customer insights relating to specific marketing decisions.

1 2 3 4
1. Defining the problem and research objectives
• A marketing research project might have one of three types of objectives:

1. Gather preliminary information that will help EXPLORATORY

define problems and suggest hypotheses. RESEARCH

2. Better describe marketing problems,

situations, or markets, such as the market DESCRIPTIVE
potential for a product or the demographics RESEARCH
and attitudes of consumers.

3. Test hypotheses about cause-and-effect

relationships between variables. CAUSAL RESEARCH
Developing the research plan
• Outlines sources of existing data
(secondary data).
• Defines the specific research approaches,
contact methods, sampling plans, and
instruments to gather data (primary
data).

SECONDARY DATA PRIMARY DATA

Information that already Information
exists somewhere, collected for the
having been collected for specific purpose at
another purpose hand
Gathering Secondary Data
Primary Data Collection
• Once the secondary data has been gathered and analyzed, if necessary,
a primary data collection is carried out, having to define:
Research Approaches
QUALITATIVE QUANTITATIVE
(few cases - great depth (many cases - little depth
Not conclusive - not generalizable results) Conclusive & generalizable results)

IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS (1 to 1) SURVEY RESEARCH

involves gathering primary data by
ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH OBSERVATIONAL asking people questions about their
involves sending trained observers to watch RESEARCH knowledge, attitudes, preferences,
and interact with consumers in their “natural involves gathering and buying behavior.
environments”. primary
data by observing EXPERIMENTAL / CAUSAL RESEARCH
FOCUS GROUP relevant involves selecting matched groups of
– 6 to 10 people people, actions, and subjects, giving them different
– Trained moderator situations treatments, controlling related factors,
– Challenges: Ex: Mistery and checking for differences in group
Expensive shopping, social responses.
Difficult to generalize from small group media listening, etc.
Consumers not always open and honest
Contact methods
• Although ONLINE is the most common contact method today due to its
many advantages, however, some disadvantages must be considered.:
Sampling plan
• A sample is a segment of the
population selected for marketing
research to represent the population
as a whole.

• Issues to be considered:
1. Who is to be studied? Profiling the target.
2. How many people should be studied?
3. How should the people be chosen?
Research instruments
MECHANICAL
QUESTIONNAIRES INSTRUMENTS
• Most common. • Used to monitor consumer behavior,
• In person, by phone, or such as meters attached to television
online. sets, cable boxes, and satellite
• Flexible. systems in selected homes to record
• Researchers must be careful who watches which programs.
with wording and ordering of • Neuromarketing / eyetracking devices
questions to measure subjects’ physical
➢ Closed-ended responses (brain activity) to learn how
➢ Open-ended consumers feel and respond.
3&4. Implementation and analysis
For next class…
Read: Kotler. Chapter 5