UNIT 4 – DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH

Market research problems can arise from two main sources:

1. Gap between what is supposed to happen and what happened (referred to as a real problem)
- The objective was to sell 10.000 shampoos in March, but we managed to sell only 5.600 so
what happened to cause this drop in sales?

2. Gap between what happened and what could have happened (referred to as an opportunity)
- We sold 100 cars in July, but we could have sold 200 cars if we had adopted the new hybrid
technology in our cars?

Defining the market research problem helps identifying the research objective, what type of
information is needed to solve the problem…

EXAMPLE
MR problem – A bank is concerned about how satisfied its customers are with its services
Research objectives: determine the type of research design and methods used to conduct the MR
- Determine the average level of customer satisfaction with the bank’s overall services
- Determine the average level of customer satisfaction with each aspect of the bank’s services
- Determine the demographic profile of customers who are at least satisfied with bank’s services
- Determine customer’s attitudes toward the bank compared to competitors
- Identify aspects of the bank’s services that need improvement

INTERNAL SECONDARY DATA

Accounting records (goods sold; unit sales by product, region, customer; expenditures by time
period); sales records

EXTERNAL SECONDARY DATA

Statistics, INE, World Bank…
Trade association reports, academic research, syndicated services…

CONCLUSIVE RESEARCH DESIGN

Descriptive RD:
Who, what, when, where and how questions – data suitable for statistical analysis
Marked by a clear statement of the problem, specific hypotheses & detailed information need
Its major objective is the description of something; usually market characteristics or functions
- Market studies, advertising studies, sales analysis, pricing…

What is the market potential for a product?

What is the profile of our most likely customers?
From where do our customers buy our products more often

Causal RD:
The major objective is to obtain evidence regarding cause and effect relationships

Will an increase in our advertising budget increase sales?

Will a price change affect customers’ perception of our product?
USE QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS WHEN…
Want to know how many and/or how often
Want to profile a target audience:
- By determining what proportion of the audience has certain behaviors
- Behavioral intentions, attitudes, and knowledge
- Whether specific determinants predict behaviors at a statistical level

Surveys are NOT the same thing as questionnaires:

Questionnaires are a specific method for obtaining a structured set of survey data
Surveys involve typically a sample of the population to be investigated, and is often used to collect
information that are difficult to otherwise be counted or measured
- Satisfaction, recognition, performance, preference and demand

Quantitative research questions:

- How many? How often? How much? What percentage? What proportion? To what extent? …

Sources of survey errors:

Insufficient sample size; nonresponse from many selected participants
Poorly constructed survey instruments
Influence of interviewer biases on the way questions are asked
Lack of trustfulness in respondents’ answers

SURVEYS
A survey is an inspection of a particular society or part of society and a collection of facts about that
society, institution on group. When we survey something, we inspect in detail

Survey design – purpose & rationale

- Indicate why a survey is the preferred type of data collection
- Indicate whether the survey is cross-sectional (collected at one point in time) or longitudinal
(collected over a period of time)
- Specify the form of data collection (mail, interview…) and provide a rationale for the procedure
(cost, availability, convenience…)

Advantages:
- Data can be collected and analyzed fairly quickly
- Surveys can provide reliable repeatable direction for planning programs and messages
- Surveys can be anonymous, which is useful for sensitive topics
- Surveys can include visual material and can be used to pretest hypotheses
- You can generalize your findings beyond your participant group

Disadvantages:
- They have a limited ability to probe answers
- They can be very costly
- People who are willing to respond may share characteristics that don’t apply to the audience as
a whole, creating a potential bias in the study

Telephone interviewing – Traditional and Computer-Assisted Telephonic Interview

Personal interviewing – Mall Intercept, Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing, In-Home…
Mail interviewing – Mail and Mail panel
Online surveys
PANEL SURVEY
Longitudinal study that measures the behavior of people over time, including their thoughts, feelings
and emotions, and can be occurring over the span of weeks, months, years or decades
Survey respondents may include customers, consumers, employees, patients, voters and other
people who provide valuable insights
The same target audience is surveyed at different points in time to understand better how
respondents’ attitudes and behaviors change

What to study with a panel survey?

Changes in attitudes, opinions and sentiments
Changes in customer buying behavior
Changes in customer lifestyle or preferences
How your target views your competitors
The willingness of your customers to repeat purchases
A more in-depth glance of your market segments and buyer personas

ONLINE SURVEYS
Collecting primary data:
- Demographic and psychological characteristics
- Attitudes and opinions
- Awareness or knowledge
- Motivation and behavior

Neuromarketing research à test consumers’ emotional and cognitive responses

UNIT 5 – THE QUESTIONNAIRE

A questionnaire is a measurement tool integrated by a group of formalized questions to obtain

information from the participants in a research
There is a 10-step process but the critical point is to have a theoretical support

The objectives of a questionnaire are:

- Gathering information through the right set of questions
- Encourage people to actively participate in the process
- Minimize the error in the answer

Some quantitative research questions are:

- How many? How often? How much? To what extent? What percentage? What are?

STEP 1: Specify the information that is needed

- Which are the components of the problem?
- What is the hypothesis we propose?
- What it the group of consumers we’ll be addressing? Is it diverse or homogenous?

STEP 2: Define the type of interview / questionnaire

- Face-to-face, personal, direct interview (ex. long and complex questions)
- Phone interview (ex. short, simple questions)
- Paper & pencil questionnaires
- Online questionnaires

STEP 3: Determine the content of the questions

- How many questions needed?
- Some customers might not informed or fluent about the subject which is been researched
- The why questions involve product attributes & influences that lead to awareness of it:
o Why do you buy in Nike Town? – INCORRECT
o What do you like about Nike Town compared to other stores? – CORRECT
o How did you buy in Nike Town for the first time? – CORRECT

STEP 4: Design the specific questions – reluctancy

- Effort that entails answering the question (ex. open question vs. multiple choice question)
- Context (hygiene habits in restaurant survey)
- Purpose of the research – is it legitimate?
- Delicate information (ex. personal care related questions)

STEP 5: Decide the structure of the questionnaire

- Non-structured questions – open questions participants respond with their own words
o Exploratory research
o Researcher can easily introduce bias when encoding answers

- Structured questions – they give consumers alternative answers

o Multiple choice
o Yes / no
o Scales
Types of market research questions:
Open-ended questions
- Pose a problem or questions and asks the respondent to answer in his/her words
- Used at the beginning of a questionnaire

Close-ended questions
- They impose the form and a limited number of possible answers on the respondent
o Multiple choice questions with a single answer
o Checklist question – multiple answers to a single question
o Frequency-determination questions – how frequently do you watch…
o Dichotomous-alternative questions – yes/no, true/false, agree/disagree…

STEP 6: Choose the wording

- Respondents must understand the question in a clear and fast way
- Consumers might decide not to respond to some ambiguous questions
- Consumers could also respond the wrong way which would lead to error

Guidelines to write the right

questions:

STEP 7: Arrange the order of the questions

- Initial questions – obtain trust and cooperation from respondents; interesting / simple
questions
- Difficult questions – usually go at the end, after you’ve built empathy & interest to
participate
- Rule of thumb – general questions must go before specific to avoid specific biasing
general
- Always apply a logic sequence of wording

STEP 8: Choose the format of the questionnaire

- The distribution of the questions may have an impact on the respondents’ answers
- Divide the questionnaire in building blocks which are logically connected

STEP 9: The “looks”

- Professional, letter size, numbering questions, instructions to the questions…

STEP 10: Pilot test

- Test your questionnaire to identify potential problems (20 – 30 respondents)
- The pilot sample should come from the same population you want to study
- The test may identify the ambiguity in the instructions and help clarify the wording
UNIT 6 – SAMPLING AND FIELDWORK

The population of interest is usually too large to attempt to survey all of its members, so you
should select a representative sample to participate in research
To define the target population we should rely on logic and judgement, and it should be
connected with the market research objectives of the study

The population is the entire group being studied, a sample is a part of it being surveyed
Sampling is the process of choosing that you ultimately use to obtain your research data

By surveying a sample of the group, you can make a generalization about the entire group

Sampling design can be divided into 2 main categories:

- In probability sampling, every person in the target population has the same chance of
being selected for the sample
- In non-probability sampling, some individuals in the group will be more likely to be
selected than others

Pick a name out of the hat

- A simple random sample of X pieces of data from a population is collected in such a
manner so that every unit has an equal chance of being selected + included in the sample

Convenience sampling – nonprobability method

- Used in qualitative research
- Data is chosen based on convenience
- If you want to find out if people shop in a certain shopping mall, your sample is going to
be extremely biased if you stand outside of that mall and survey people as they walk in

Voluntary response sampling – nonprobability method

- A sample which includes only willing participants

Judgement sampling – nonprobability method

- It is an extension of convenience sampling
- The sample is selected upon judgement
- When using this method, the researcher must be confident that the chosen sample is truly
representative of the entire population