Transcript 5858ccb6c70ec

Marketing Research and
Information
Week 3
What is marketing research?
Marketing research is defined as the systematic
design, collection, analysis and reporting of data and
findings relevant to a specific marketing situation
facing the company.
Why market research?
• Marketers have many questions they would like
answers to:
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What doubts do consumers have about our products?
Does it pay to introduce new packaging?
Why are our sales declining?
Which regions/countries should we expand in?
How effective was our recent ad campaign?
The marketing research process
Figure 6.1 The marketing research process.
Step 1: Define the problem
• Define the problem
• Specify decision alternatives
• State research objectives
Step 2: Develop the
research plan
Data
sources
Research
approach
Research
instruments
Sampling
plan
Contact
methods
Research approaches
Observation
Ethnographic
Focus group
Survey
Behavioral data
Experimentation
The traditional marketing
research approach
The traditional marketing research approach
means that desk research comes first,
providing information for the qualitative
research, which in turn feeds into the
quantitative work.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQfvocbRV3E
Research instruments
 Questionnaires
 Qualitative measures
 Technological devices
Questionnaires do’s and don’ts
[KKBGH: 220]
• Ensure questions are free
of bias
• Make questions simple
• Make questions specific
• Avoid jargon
• Avoid sophisticated words
• Avoid ambiguous words
• Avoid negatives
• Avoid hypotheticals
• Avoid words that could be
misheard
• Use response bands
• Use mutually exclusive
categories
• Allow for ‘other’ in fixed
response questions
Question types –
dichotomous
In arranging this trip, did you contact Virgin
Atlantic?
 Yes  No
Question types –
multiple choice
With whom are you traveling on this trip?
 No one
 Spouse
 Spouse and children
 Children only
 Business associates/friends/relatives
 An organised tour group
Question types-Likert scale
Indicate your level of agreement with the following
statement: Small airlines generally give better service
than large ones.
 Strongly disagree
 Disagree
 Neither agree nor disagree
 Agree
 Strongly agree
Question types –semantic
differential
Virgin Atlantic
Large ………………………………...…….Small
Experienced………………….….Inexperienced
Modern……………………….… Old-fashioned
Question types – importance
scale
Airline food service is _____ to me.
 Extremely important
 Very important
 Somewhat important
 Not very important
 Not at all important
Question types – rating scale
Virgin Atlantic’s food service is _____.
 Excellent
 Very good
 Good
 Fair
 Poor
Question types – intending
to buy scale
How likely are you to purchase tickets on Virgin
Atlantic if in-flight Internet access were available?
 Definitely buy
 Probably buy
 Not sure
 Probably not buy
 Definitely not buy
Question types – completely
unstructured
What is your opinion of Virgin Atlantic?
Source: Getty Images
Question types – word
association
What is the first word that comes to your mind
when you hear the following?
Airline ________________________
British _____________________
Travel ________________________
Question types – sentence
completion
When I choose an airline, the most important
consideration in my decision is:
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
______________________________.
Question types – story
completion
‘I flew Virgin a few days ago. I noticed that the
exterior and interior of the plane had very bright
colors. This aroused in me the following thoughts
and feelings.’ Now complete the story.
___________________________________________
___________________________________________
___________________________________________
___________________________________________
___________________________________________
___________________
Qualitative measures
Word association
Projective techniques
Visualisation
Brand personification
Laddering
Qualitative measures
Word association: what comes to mind when you think of
Mercedes-Benz cars?
Projective techniques: completion tasks: bubble
exercises; comparisons to animals
Visualisation: drawings/collage depicting
perceptions of brands, experiences etc
Brand personification: if M-B came alive
as a person, what would …?
Laddering: asking ‘why?’ to get
deeper and deeper
Situation-projective technique
• respondents are shown drawings of situations
involving the brand (e.g. a woman driving a
Mercedes) and asked to describe:
– the situations
– their thoughts/feelings of the people involved
object-projective techniques (OPT)
• respondents are asked to describe the brand
in terms of:
– an animal
– a vegetable
– a country, etc.
Technological devices
Galvanometers
Tachistoscope
Eye cameras
Audiometers
GPS
Sampling plan
Sampling unit: Who is to be surveyed?
Sample size: How many people should be
surveyed?
Sampling procedure: How should the respondents
be chosen?
Types of samples
Table 6.2 Probability and non-probability samples
Contact methods
Mail questionnaire
Telephone
interview
Personal
interview
Online
interview
Pros and cons of
online research
Advantages
• Inexpensive
• Fast
• Accuracy of data,
even for sensitive
questions
• Versatility
Disadvantages
• Small samples
• Skewed samples
• Technological
problems
• Inconsistencies
Active contact
• Some market research is done with willing
consumers
• Top Gear:
– Viewers voted for their top driving song
– CD launched
What is qualitative research?
• Definition:
“techniques of data collection and analysis
that rely on non-numerical data”
(Cassell et. al., 2006: 162)
• Techniques focus on textual data or visual
images
– Sounds, pictures, videos, music, songs, poetry, etc.
Quantitative or Qualitative
(complementary not competitive)
• Quantitative research focus:
“the degree in which phenomena possess
certain properties, states and characters”;
• Qualitative research focus:
“the properties, the state and the character
(i.e., the nature of phenomena)”
(Labuschagne, 2003: 100)
Closer to real life …
• Focus groups can be to detached from real life
[artificial]
• Growth is observational research
– Accompanied shopping
– Sitting with internet shoppers
– Living with consumers
– Mystery shopping
Direct human observation
• How it is done:
– Researcher behaves as a normal customer, and
unobtrusively observes interactions
– Writes-up detailed field notes (including verbatim
comments
– Analyses and compares observations
Problems with direct human
observation
• A time-consuming technique
• Potential for mistakes in registering what is going on
• Does not accurately gauge customer’s perception of
the encounter (including situational factors)
• Research recall may be biased or limited
• Potential to observe covertly may be limited
• Danger of influence (“observer effect”)
Consumer-to-consumer conversations
• Examined stranger conversations within an extended service
experience
• Natural setting:
– observation of 65 rail journeys
– various routes (in UK)
– different times and days of week
• 300 pages of field notes
• Identified:
– 10 types of passenger behaviour
– various roles of C2C conversation:
• Operational and social
– conversation sequence patterns
Video observation
• The researcher:
– observes and inconspicuously films encounters
– or just views the film
• Film:
– captures body language and tone of voice
– allows a focus on the early stage of the encounter before it
is known to be a critical interaction
– can be viewed many times
– can be viewed by the whole research team (hence enables
discussion)
– can be used as input to customer interaction training
SAS study: observation research using
video cameras
• Based on 3,500 h of video data
• “By observing customers in real situations we get a
more objective impression of how they behave”
• Enabled a passenger definition of travel experience
• Revealed a huge variety of passengers activities – 40
problems identified
• Helped understand needs and expectations -50
minor improvements resulted
Video observation
• Everyday Lives:
– Films people doing everyday things
• Shopping, preparing food, brushing teeth
– Film analysed for new opportunities
Study references
• Gustafsson, A., Ekdahl, F. and Edvardsson, B.,
(1999), “Customer focused service
development in practice: A case study at
Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS)”, IJSIM, 10
(4): 344-358.
• Harris, K. and Baron, S. (2004), “Consumer-toConsumer Conversations in Service Settings”,
Journal of Service Research, 6 (3): 287-303.