Research Process
What is marketing research? 1
The systematic and objective process of generating information to aid marketing decisions.
Achieves that by:
Specifying the information required to address market (& social) issues.
Designing the method for collecting the required information.
Managing and implementing the data collection process.
Analysing the data collected and making sense of the results.
Communicating the findings and their implications (e.g. help inform marketing decisions) to management.
Importance of research in marketing? 2
Identifying opportunities and threats.
Understand how consumers (customers) behave and “why”?
Common uses:
testing new product ideas, testing advertisements, customer satisfaction studies, brand impact,
pricing/promotion effectiveness etc.
Common (marketing) research studies? 3
Benefit & Lifestyle Studies
Market segmentation decisions Target market characteristics Consumer behaviour studies
Customer analysis Competitor Analysis
Opportunity assessment studies External environment analysis Brand development
Customer Satisfaction studies Product portfolio decisions Service quality studies
Product development decisions Cycle time research
Distribution strategy Pricing strategy
Classification of Research? 4 1. Basic (pure) research – academia
Learn more about a certain concept (e.g. consumer motivation) Not necessarily aimed at solving a particular problem.
Verify the validity of a given theory (e.g. does it apply to multiple contexts?) 2. Applied (engaged) research – practice
Conducted when a decision must be made about a specific real-life problem (e.g. for a specific firm).
Aimed to understand and answer questions about a specific problem.
Undertaken to make decisions about particular courses of action or policies (e.g. creating a new marketing campaign for Brand X).
4 Frameworks Approach? 5
Concluding comments marketing research? 6
At the marketing management level, helps to fine-tune marketing mix decisions.
Helps to minimise risk and reduce uncertainty when making decisions.
Business & consumer environments are not static but dynamic (and real-time).
The Conceptual Framework
What is the conceptual framework (and research question)? 7
Concerns the research statement/question (or hypothesis) developed by the researcher for the research project
Highlights the focus, context and scope of the research topic/project.
Instead of a research statement, it could be a hypothesis (only for quantitative)
Examples
Research Question/Statement
The research project is a case study of the organisational culture of 3 major banks in Australia: Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank and Westpac.
What is the aim and objectives? 8
The aim of the research is simply the research statement or question restated as an aim.
Example
The aim of the research is to compare the organisational culture of the 3 major Australian banks
The objectives of the research emerge from the aim of the research.
The objectives of the research are the steps, or the actions, the researcher takes in order to accomplish the aim of the research
Issues & challenges surrounding the conceptual framework? 9 Conceptualising a research issue/problem is not always clear-cut.
Too vague, too broad, uncertain details, etc.
Example of issue:
“We have doubled our advertising expenditures but our sales did not improve, we want to know why?”
What is the iceberg principle? 10
