Basic Concepts Of

Marketing Research
 Marketing Strategy & Plan
• Marketing Strategy
is a plan that enables an organization to
make the best use of its resources to meet
marketing objective
• Marketing Plan
is a formal document that specifies the
organizations’ resources, objectives,
strategy and implementation and control
efforts in marketing a specific product
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Business School
 Marketing Concept & Research
• Marketing Concept
is an organizational philosophy that emphasizes
determining customers’ needs first and then
coordinating all activities to satisfy those needs
• Marketing Research
is the set of techniques and principles for
systemically collecting, recording, analyzing and
interpreting data to aid marketing decision
makers
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 Basic Marketing Research
Principles
• Marketing Research has three principles or
guidelines for generating information useful
to managers:
– Attend to the timeliness and relevance of
research.
– Define research objectives carefully and
clearly.
– Do not conduct research to support decisions
already made
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Business School
Marketing research applications:
basic or applied research
• Basic research is conducted to generate
or create knowledge

• Applied Research is conducted to solve a

problem

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Marketing Research Process: Steps
• Justify the need for marketing research.
• Define the research objective.
• Identify data needs.
• Identify data sources.
• Choose an appropriate research design and data
collection method.
• Design the research instrument or form.
• Identify the sample.
• Collect data, including any relevant secondary data.
• Analyze and interpret the data.
• Present the research findings to decision makers 6
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 Types of Marketing Res.
• Qualitative Research
is the collection analysis, and interpretation of
data that cannot be meaningfully quantified,
that is, summarized in the form of numbers.
• Quantitative Research
is the collection of data that involves larger,
more representative respondent samples and
the numerical calculation of results.
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Business School
 (Types of Mktg. Res.)….contd.

• Descriptive Research
is essentially to describe something; it is
intended to generate data describing the
composition and characteristics of relevant
groups of units such as customers, sales
people and market areas.

Mkt Research/ RNS/ VIT 8

Business School
 (Types of Mktg. Res.)….contd.

• Exploratory Research
helps investigators gain some initial insights
and may pave the way for further research.
• Conclusive Research
helps investigators verify insights and select the
appropriate course of action.

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Business School
• Case Study Method:
The Case study method is an-depth examination
of a unit of interest. The unit can be a
customer, store, salesperson, firm, market
area, web-site and so on.
By virtue of its insight-generating potential, the
case study method is a useful form of
exploratory research.
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Research project Exploratory research Conclusive research
components

a) Research purpose General: to generate Specific: to verify insights

insights about a situation and aid in selecting a course
of action
b) Data needs Vague Clear
c) Data sources Ill defined Well defined

d) Data collection form Open-ended, rough Usually structured

e) Sample Relatively small; Relatively large; objectively

subjectively selected to selected to permit
maximize generalization of generalization of findings.
insights.
f) Data collection Flexible; no set Procedure Rigid: well laid-out
Procedure
g) Data analysis Informal; typically non- Formal; typically quantitative
quantitative
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h) Inferences/ More tentative than final More final than tentative
Observational Method:
• The observational method involves human
or mechanical observation of what people
actually do or what events take place during
a buying or consumption situation.

Longitudinal Studies
are repeated-measurement studies, that
collect data over several periods in time.

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 SCALES
• Nominal Scale, numbers are no more than labels
and are used solely to identify different categories of
responses
• Ordinal Scale is more powerful than a nominal
scale in that the numbers possess the property of
rank order.
• Interval Scale has all the properties of an ordinal
scale, and the differences between scale values can
be meaningfully interpreted
• RATIO SCALE possesses all the properties of an
interval scale, and the ratios of numbers on these
scales have meaningful interpretations.
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 SCALE
• FORCED-CHOICE SCALE does not give respondents
the option to express a neutral or middle ground.
• NONFORCED-CHOICE SCALE gives respondents
the option to express a neutral attitude.
• BALANCED SCALE has an equal number of
positive/favorable and negative/unfavorable response
choices.
• UNBALANCED SCALE has a larger number of
response choices on the side of the scale where the
overall attitude of the respondent sample is likely to
fall.
Mkt Research/ RNS/ VIT 14
Business School