ch 4: market research

What kind of research is appropriate in a given circumstance? These 4 factors help make that determination:

1. Benefit vs. cost 2. Time until decision needs to be made 3. Nature of the decision 4. Availability of data

What are the 3 main disadvantages of secondary research?

1. It will not fit the research problem exactly 2. It is not current 3. Without a clear understanding of the methodology used to collect and interpret the secondary data, one should be skeptical about its validity

What are the 2 software packages that dominate desktop statistical analysis?

IBM SPSS and SAS

What are 5 examples of internal information sources?

1. customer orders 2. customer payments 3. marketing plans 4. salesperson information systems 5. customer inquiries

What are the 4 reasons for conducting exploratory research?

1. Clarifying the research problem 2. Developing hypothesis for testing in descriptive or causal research 3. Gaining additional insight to help in survey development or to identify other research variables for study 4. Answering the research question

What are the 3 major challenges researchers face as they collect data around the world?

1. Data accessibility 2. Data dependability 3. Data comparability

What are the 3 main challenges of the data collection stage?

1. Data collection is often the costliest part of market research 2. The greatest potential for error exists as data is collected 3. People collecting the survey can be biased or make mistakes

What are the 3 categories of online research tools?

1. Databases 2. Focus groups 3. Sampling

What are the 6 steps in the market research process?

1. Define the research problem 2. Establish research design 3. Search secondary sources 4. Collect the data 5. Analyze the data 6. Report the findings

What are the 2 reasons demographics are extremely useful in marketing?

1. Demographics help define a market 2. Studying demographics helps identify new opportunities

What are the 3 reasons it is so hard to compare secondary data from foreign markets?

1. Developing countries often lack historical data, so it's hard to assess long-term economic/business trends. 2. Available are outdated so they are ineffective for making decisions in the current economic environment. 3. Terms used in reporting are inconsistent, so it's hard to interpret the data.

What are the 2 main advantages of secondary research?

1. Fast 2. Inexpensive

Good market research...(3 things)

1. Follows a well-defined set of activities and does not happen by accident 2. Enhances the validity of the information 3. Is impartial and objective

What are 3 common places to get secondary research?

1. Government sources 2. Market research organizations 3. The internet

What are the 4 things that data collected and analyzed in a CRM system enable companies to do?

1. Identify the frequency and size of customer orders 2. Determine the actual cost of a customer order 3. Rank customers based on established criteria like profitability 4. Calculate the efficiency of the company's production and distribution system

What are the 4 uses of descriptive research?

1. Identifying the characteristics of the target market 2. Assessing competitors' actions in the marketplace 3. Determining how customers use the product 4. Discovering differences across demographic characteristics with respect to the use of the product or that of the competitors

What are the 2 steps of defining the research problem?

1. Management, working with researchers and marketing decision makers, defines the management research deliverable 2. Define the research problem

From the questions used in focus groups to long questionnaires, it is important to consider what 3 things?

1. Structure 2. Wording 3. Response choices

What are 3 challenges for marketers in collecting primary data?

1. Unwillingness to respond 2. Unreliable sampling procedures 3. Inaccurate language translation and insufficient comprehension

A company needs to consider these three factors in creating an MIS:

1. What information should the system collect? 2. What are the information needs of each decision maker? 3. How does the system maintain the privacy and confidentiality of sensitive information?

A sales information system includes what 3 things?

1. formal systems for collecting data 2. interpretation of data 3. distribution of data

What are 5 research design activities?

1. type of research 2. nature of data 3. nature of data collection 4. information content 5. sampling plan

What are 2 advantages and 2 disadvantages of online focus groups?

Advantages: 1. It is more convenient 2. It is more cost-efficient Disadvantages: 1. Participants are limited to those with access to a computer 2. It is impossible to verify who is actually responding to the questions vs. clicking through

Indicators such as the _____ measure the health of an economy and are helpful in spotting trends. For example, if the _____ goes up, it is generally viewed as a sign that the economy is doing well.

Gross National Product (GNP)

Not tracking and responding to _____ changes is a management failure because the data are easy to obtain, and major changes occur slowly.

Demographic

True or false: focus groups are generalizable to a population of interest; they can be considered a representative sample.

FALSE!

The most widely used qualitative research technique is _____.

Focus groups

_____ is data stored on a server that is accessed remotely over the internet or some other telecommunications network.

Online database

One of the most basic decisions when creating questions is whether to use _____ or _____ question formats.

Open-ended or close-ended

When writing the research report, where should the executive summary be found?

Prefatory information

As the most commonly used primary research technique, the _____ allows a lot of variability in its design and structure.

Survey questionnaire

_____ is one of the best internal information sources but is very often is the study of overlooked and underutilized as an information source.

The sales force

Which is a bigger problem for marketing managers: having too little or too much data?

Too much

When writing the research report, where should recommendations be found?

conclusions

When writing the research report, where should research objectives be found?

introduction

When writing the research report, where should data collection be found?

methodology