I.

Understand the nature and scope of marketing research and its role in designing and implementing successful marketing programs. "Marketing research is the systematic and objective search for, and analysis of, information relevant to the identification and solution of any problem in the field of marketing." Marketing research seeks to set about its task in a systematic and objective fashion. This means that a detailed and carefully designed research plan is developed in which each stage of the research is specified. Such a research plan is only considered adequate if it specifies: the research problem in concise and precise terms, the information necessary to address the problem, the methods to be employed in gathering the information and the analytical techniques to be used to interpret it. The emphasis in marketing is on the identification and satisfaction of customer needs. In order to determine customer needs and to important marketing strategies and programs aimed at satisfying those needs, marketing managers need information. They need information about customers, completions and other forces in the marketplace. As firms have become national and international in scope, the need for information on larger and more distant markets has increased. As consumers have become more affluent and sophisticated, marketing managers needs better information on how they will respond to products and other marketing offerings. As competition has become more instance, managers need information on the effectiveness of their marketing tools. As the environment changes more rapidly, marketing managers need more timely information. The task of marketing research is to assess the information needs and provide management with relevant, accurate, reliable, valid, current and actionable information. Todays competitive marketing environment and the ever-increasing costs attributed to poor decision making require marketing research to provide sound information. Sound decisions are not based on gut feeling, intuition, or even pure judgment. The nature and role of marketing research can be better understood in light of the basic marketing program depicted.

Our primary focus is on the role of marketing research in marketing decisions.

A.

Identifying Marketing Opportunities and Constraints

Identifying marketing opportunities and constraints is a logical starting point for developing marketing strategies.

1.

Embracing the Marketing Concept

Conducting marketing research to understand customers is becoming widespread as an increasing number of firms embrace the marketing concept (the philosophy of customer

orientation urging firms to uncover customer needs first and then coordinate all their activities to satisfy those needs). 2. Understanding the Competitive Environment

Marketing research is vital to maintaining and improving a company's overall competitiveness. Unless managers understand the external environment, they cannot intelligently plan for the future. Many organizations continually collect and evaluate environmental information to identify future market opportunities and threats.

B.

Developing and Implementing Marketing

To benefit fully from the opportunities uncovered in the marketplace, a firm must develop an effective marketing strategy with an effective marketing mix: the nature of its product ways to promote the product the price charged to potential customers the means used to make the product available to them

Good marketing research will identify whether the marketing mix is effective enough to maximize the benefits to the firm from available opportunities (sales, profits, customer satisfaction, and value.

Some of the most successful new-product introductions have been preceded by extensive marketing research that helped develop one or more elements of their marketing mixes.

C.

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Marketing Plans

Getting feedback from the marketplace and taking corrective action for elements of products or services that need fixing is often referred to as controlling or the control function. Controlling is an important component of the planning and decision-making process and another area in which marketing research provides solutions.

II. Discuss the marketing research industry and the type of research suppliers, including internal, external, full-service, and limited service suppliers. The market research industry consists of suppliers who provide marketing research service. Marketing research suppliers and service provide most of the information needed for marketing decisions. Most of the big suppliers have several subsidiaries and decision that encompass various areas of marketing research. Nevertheless, it is useful to classify marketing research suppliers services. Broadly, research suppliers can be classified as internal or external.
Research Suppliers

Internal

External

Full Service

Limited - Service

Syndicated Service Internet Service

Customize d Service

Field Service

Other Service

Focus Group & Qualitativ e Service

Technical & Analytical Service

External suppliers Outside marketing research companies hired to supply marketing research services.

The bases for the estimates in Tables 1.2 to 1.4 emerge from external marketing research suppliers or agencies. External suppliers are outside firms hired to supply marketing research data. These external suppliers collectively comprise the marketing research industry. These suppliers range from small (one or a few persons) operations to very large global corporations. We now examine the nature of services that may be supplied by external suppliers. As illustrated in Figure 1.4, external suppliers can be classified as full-service or limited-service suppliers.

Full-service suppliers offer the entire range of marketing research services, for example defining a problem, developing a research design, conducting focus group interviews, designing questionnaires, sampling, collecting, analysing and interpreting data, and presenting reports. They may also address the marketing implications of the information they present, i.e. have the management skills to interpret and communicate at the highest levels, the impact of their research findings. They may also manage customer database analyses being able to integrate the management and analyses databases with the management and analyses of conventional marketing research techniques. The services provided by these suppliers can be further broken down into syndicated services, standardised services and customised services (see Figure 1.4).

Full-service suppliers Companies that offer the full range of marketing research activities. Syndicated services collect information that they provide to subscribers. Surveys, diary panels, scanners and audits are the main means by which these data are collected. Syndicated services Companies that collect and sell common pools of data designed to serve information needs shared by a number of clients. Standardised services are research studies conducted for different clients but in a standard way. For example, procedures for measuring advertising effectiveness have been standardised so that the results can be compared across studies and evaluative norms can be established. Standardised services Companies that use standardised procedures to provide marketing research to various clients. Customised services offer a variety of marketing research services specifically designed to suit a clients particular needs. Each marketing research project is treated uniquely. Customised services Companies that tailor research procedures to best meet the needs of each client. Internet services offer a combination or variety of secondary data and intelligence gathering, survey or qualitative interviewing, and the analysis and publication of research findings, all through the Internet. Internet services

Companies which specialise in the use of the Internet to collect, analyse and distribute marketing research information. Limited-service suppliers specialise in one or a few phases of a marketing research project. Services offered by such suppliers are classified as field services, coding and data entry, analytical services, data analysis, and branded products. Limited-service suppliers Companies that specialise in one or a few phases of a marketing research project. Field services collect data through mail, personal interviews or telephone interviews, and firms that specialise in interviewing are called field service organisations. These organisations may range from small proprietary organisations that operate locally to large multinationals. Some organisations maintain extensive interviewing facilities across the country for interviewing shoppers. Many offer qualitative data collection services such as focus group interviewing (discussed in detail in Chapter 7). Field services Companies whose primary service offering is their expertise in collecting data for research projects. Coding and data entry services include editing completed questionnaires, developing a coding scheme, and transcribing the data on to diskettes or magnetic tapes for input into a computer. Coding and data entry services Companies whose primary service offering is their expertise in converting completed surveys or interviews into a usable database for conducting statistical analysis. Analytical services include designing and pretesting questionnaires, determining the best means of collecting data, and designing sampling plans, as well as other aspects of the research design. Some complex marketing research projects require knowledge of sophisticated procedures, including specialised experimental designs (discussed in Chapter 10) and analytical techniques such as conjoint analysis and multidimensional scaling (discussed in Chapter 24). This kind of expertise can be obtained from firms and consultants specialising in analytical services. Analytical services Companies that provide guidance in the development of research design. Data analysis services are offered by firms, also known as tab houses that specialise in computer analysis of quantitative data such as those obtained in large surveys. Initially, most data analysis firms supplied only tabulations (frequency counts) and cross-tabulations (frequency counts that

describe two or more variables simultaneously). Now, many firms offer sophisticated data analysis using advanced statistical techniques. With the proliferation of microcomputers and software, many firms now have the capability to analyse their own data, but data analysis firms are still in demand. Data analysis services Firms whose primary service is to conduct statistical analysis of quantitative data. Branded marketing research products and services are specialised data collection and analysis procedures developed to address specific types of marketing research problems. These procedures may be patented, given brand names, and marketed like any other branded product. Microscope by Retail Marketing (In-Store) Services is an example of a branded product. It is a test marketing package for new product development that supplies cost-effective measurements of new product performance.