Marketing Research

1. Marketing Research Ch. 28 ME

2. Section 28.1 Marketing Information Systems

3. Defining Marketing Research • Marketing Research – involves the process and methods used to gather information, analyze it, and report findings related to marketing goods and services • Is often used by companies to: • Determine customers’ attitudes and preferences • Test product features • Determine market size and growth potential • Learn about competitive products • Determine buying cycles • Understand how the company is perceived by the public

4. Why is Marketing Research Important? • Helps businesses increase sales and profits • Answers questions about: • What products to produce • At what price to sell the products • How the products will be promoted • Solve market problems and gauge the potential of new ideas • Helps a company keep track of what is happening with its current markets

5. Marketing Information Systems • Marketing Information Systems – is a set of procedures and methods that regularly generates, stores, analyzes, and distributes information for the use in making marketing and other business decisions • Rely heavily on: • Data about current customers • Overall product sales reports • Inventory levels

6. Database Marketing • Database Marketing (CRM) – is a process of designing, creating, and managing customer lists • Developed from customer touch points such as face to face sales, direct-mail responses, telephone or e-mail purchases, service requests, or Web site visits

7. Section 28.2 Types, Trends, and Limitations of Marketing Research

8. Types of Marketing Research • Quantitative Research – answers questions that start with “How many” or “how much” • Gathers information from large numbers of people • Relies heavily on the surveys or questionnaires to obtain information • Qualitative Research – focuses on smaller numbers of people (usually fewer than 100) and tries to answer questions about “why” or “how” • Relies heavily on in-depth interviews

9. Types of Marketing Research Attitude Research – is designed to obtain information on how people feel about certain products, services, companies, or ideas Market Intelligence – is concerned with the size and location of a market, the competition, and the segmentation with the market for a particular product or service

10. Forecasting Sales Forecasting – is an attempt to estimate the future slaes of an existing product Economic Forecasting– is an attempt to predict the future economic conditions of a city, a region, a country, or other part of the world

11. Media Research • Media Research – focuses on issues of media effectiveness, selection, frequency, and ratings • Media Advertising Measurers • Audience – is the number of homes or people exposed to a particular advertising medium • Frequency – is the number of times a viewer in the audience sees or hears an ad • Reach – is the percentage of the target audience that will see or hear an ad at least once

12. Product Research • Product Research – centers on evaluating product design, package design, product usage, and consumer acceptance of new and exiting products • Also conducted to collect information on competitive products • Concept testing is used in the early stages of product development