Chapter – 4 : Managing Marketing Information

to Gain Customer Insights:

Marketing Information and Customer Insights:
• Marketing information by itself has little value. Value is in customer
insights gained from the information and how these insights are
used to make better marketing decision.

• In today’s hypercompetitive world, “race for competitive advantage

is really a race for customer and market insights” from good
marketing information.

• Customer Insights: Fresh understandings of customers and

marketplace derived from marketing information that become basis
for creating customer value and relationships. Marketing research
is a conscious approach for gaining insights into mind of customer-
decision making choices.

• What, when, how, where and why?

Principles of Marketing 1
By Prof: Zafarullah Siddiqui
Marketing Information System (MIS):
• People and procedures for assessing information needs,
developing needed information, and helping decision makers
to use information to generate and validate actionable
customer and market insights.
• Assessing Marketing Information Needs: The marketing
information system begins and ends with users with
assessing their information needs and then delivering
information that meets those needs.
• Wal-Mart’s Retail Link system gives suppliers access to
information on customer buying patterns and inventory
levels.
• A good marketing information system balances information
users what they really need and what is feasible to offer.
• MIS must monitor marketing environment in order to provide
decision makers with information they should have to better
understand customers and make marketing decisions.

Principles of Marketing 2
By Prof: Zafarullah Siddiqui
Developing Marketing Information:
• The problem isn’t finding information. World is full of
information from variety of sources.
• Real challenge is to find right information from inside
and outside sources and to turn it into customer
insights.
• Internal databases: Electronic collections of consumer
and market information obtained from data sources
within company network.
• Pizza Hut’s database contains detailed customer data
on 40 million U.S. households, gleaned from phone
orders, online orders, and point-of-sale transactions at
its more than 7,500 restaurants.
• Pizza Hut can slice and dice data by favorite toppings,
what you ordered last, and whether you buy a salad
with your cheese and pepperoni pizza. It then uses all
this data to enhance customer relationships.

Principles of Marketing 3
By Prof: Zafarullah Siddiqui
Marketing Intelligence:
• Systematic collection and analysis of available information about
consumers, competitors, and developments in marketing
environment.
• Good marketing intelligence can help marketers to gain insights
into how consumers talk about and connect with their brands.
• The Company can also obtain important intelligence from suppliers,
resellers, and key customers. Or it can get information by observing
competitors and monitoring their published information. It can buy
and analyze competitors’ products, monitor their sales, check for
new patents, and examine various types of physical evidence i.e.
one company regularly checks out competitors’ parking lots full lots
might indicate plenty of work and prosperity, half-full lots might
suggest hard times.
• Some companies have even see their competitors’ garbage, which
is legally considered abandoned property once it leaves premises.
• Competitors often reveal intelligence through their annual reports,
business publications, trade show exhibits, press releases,
advertisements, and Web pages an invaluable source of
competitive intelligence.

Principles of Marketing 4
By Prof: Zafarullah Siddiqui
 Marketing Research:
• Marketing intelligence involves actively scanning general marketing
environment.
• Marketing research involves more focused studies to gain customer
insights relating to specific marketing decisions.
• Marketing Research: Systematic design, collection, analysis, and
reporting of data relevant to a specific marketing situation facing an
organization.
• Marketing Research Process:
i) Defining the problem and research objectives, assigning budget.
ii) Developing research plan for collecting information.
iii) Implementing research plan collecting and analyzing data.
iv) Interpreting and reporting findings.
• Exploratory Research: Marketing research to gather preliminary
information that will help define problems and suggest hypotheses.
• Descriptive Research: Marketing research to better describe marketing
problems, situations, or markets, such as market potential for a product or
demographics and attitudes of consumers.

Principles of Marketing 5
By Prof: Zafarullah Siddiqui
 Causal Research:
• Marketing research to test hypotheses about cause-and
effect relationships.
• Research objectives must be translated into specific
information needs. Tapal Tea (Private) Limited in
Pakistan decides to conduct research on how consumers
would react to a hard-pack version of their Tapal
Danedar brand.
• Secondary data: Information that already exists
somewhere, having been collected for another purpose.
• Primary data: Information collected for specific purpose
at hand.
• Commercial online databases: Computerized
collections of information available from online
commercial sources or via Internet.

Principles of Marketing 6
By Prof: Zafarullah Siddiqui
 Primary Data Collection:
• Observational Research: Gathering primary data by observing
relevant people, actions, and situations.
• Planning Primary Data Collection:
i) Research Approaches: Observation, survey, experiment.
ii) Contact Methods: Mail, telephone, personal, online.
iii) Sampling Plan: Sampling unit, sample size, sampling procedure.
iv) Research Instruments: Questionnaire, Mechanical instruments.
v) Ethnographic research:

• Ethnographic Research: Observational research that involves

sending trained observers to watch and interact with consumers in
their “natural habitat.”
• Survey Research: Gathering primary data by asking people
questions about their knowledge, attitudes, preferences, and
buying behavior.
• Experimental Research: Gathering primary data by selecting
matched groups of subjects, giving them different treatments,
controlling related factors, and checking for differences in group
responses.

Principles of Marketing 7
By Prof: Zafarullah Siddiqui
Strengths and Weaknesses of Contact Methods

Mail Telephone Personal Online

Flexibility Poor Good Excellent Good
Quantity of data that Good Fair Excellent Good
can be collected
Control of interviewer Excellent Fair Poor Fair
effects
Control of sample Fair Excellent Good Excellent
Speed of data Poor Excellent Good Excellent
collection
Response rate Poor Poor Good Good
Cost Good Fair Poor Excellent

Principles of Marketing 8
By Prof: Zafarullah Siddiqui
Focus Group Interviewing:

• Personal interviewing inviting six to ten people to gather

for a few hours with a trained interviewer to talk about a
product, service, or organization. Interviewer “focuses”
group discussion on important issues.
• Online Marketing Research: Collecting primary data
online through Internet surveys, online focus groups,
Web-based experiments, or tracking consumers’ online
behavior.
• Online focus groups: Gathering a small group of
people online with a trained moderator to chat about a
product, service, or organization and gain qualitative
insights about consumer attitudes and behavior.
• Sampling Plan: A segment of the population selected
for marketing research to represent population as a
whole.

Principles of Marketing 9
By Prof: Zafarullah Siddiqui
Type of Samples:

Probability sample:
Simple random Every member of the population has a known and equal
sample chance of selection.
Stratified random The population is divided into mutually exclusive groups
sample (such as age groups), and random samples are drawn
from each group.
Cluster (area) The population is divided into mutually exclusive groups
sample (such as blocks), and researcher draws a sample of
groups to interview.
Non-probability Sample:
Convenience Researcher selects easiest population members from
sample which to obtain information.
Judgment sample Researcher uses his or her judgment to select population
members who are good prospects for accurate
information.
Quota sample Researcher finds and interviews a prescribed number of
people in each of several categories.
Principles of Marketing 10
By Prof: Zafarullah Siddiqui
Instruments:
• Questionnaires: The questionnaire is by far most
common instrument, whether administered in person, by
phone, or online. Questionnaires are very flexible there
are many ways to ask questions.
• Closed-end questions include all possible answers, and
subjects make choices among them.
• Open-end questions allow respondents to answer in their
own words.
• Open-end questions are especially useful in exploratory
research, when researcher is trying to find out what
people think but not measuring how many people think in
a certain way.
• Closed-end questions, on the other hand, provide
answers that are easier to interpret and tabulate.

Principles of Marketing 11
By Prof: Zafarullah Siddiqui
Customer Relationship Management (CRM):

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) refers to capturing and

using customer data from all sources to manage customer
interactions and build customer relationships.

• Customer Relationship Management: Managing detailed

information about individual customers and carefully managing
customer “touch points” in order to maximize customer loyalty.

• International Marketing Research:

• International marketing researchers follow same steps as domestic
researchers.
• Cultural differences from country to country.
• Translating a questionnaire from one language to another.
• Consumers in different countries also very in their attitudes forward
marketing research.

Principles of Marketing 12
By Prof: Zafarullah Siddiqui