Chapter Outline

A. Marketing Information and Customer Insights

B. Assessing Marketing Information Needs
C. Developing Marketing Information
D. Marketing Research

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(Armstrong, Kotler & Opresnik)
Marketing Information System

Copyright 2017 Pearson Education, Ltd

(Armstrong, Kotler & Opresnik)
 A. Marketing Information and
Customer Insights
A marketing information system (MIS) consists
of people and procedures for assessing
information needs developing the needed
information, and helping decision makers to
use the information to generate and validate
actionable customer and market insights.

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(Armstrong, Kotler & Opresnik)
 Marketing Information
• Customer needs and motives for buying are
difficult to determine.
• Required by companies to obtain customer
and market insights
• Generated in great quantities with the help of
information technology and online sources

4-5
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 Today’s “Big Data”

Big data refers to the huge and complex data

sets generated by today’s sophisticated
information generation, collection, storage, and
analysis technologies.

4-6
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 Marketing Information and
Customer Insights
Customer insights
• Fresh and deep insights into customer needs
and wants
• Important but difficult to obtain

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(Armstrong, Kotler & Opresnik)
 Customer Insights

Key customer insights

have helped make
social scrapbooking
site, Pinterest, wildly
successful with its 70
million users.

4-8
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 B. Assessing Marketing
Information Needs
• A good marketing information system
balances the information users would like to
have against what they really need and what is
feasible to offer.
• By itself, information has no worth; its value
comes from its use.

Copyright 2017 Pearson Education, Ltd

(Armstrong, Kotler & Opresnik)
 C. Developing Marketing
Information

Internal Competitive Marketing

Databases marketing research
intelligence

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(Armstrong, Kotler & Opresnik)
 1. Internal Data

• Internal databases are electronic collections of

consumer and market information obtained
from data sources within the company
network.
• Information in the database can come from
many sources. operations reports, sales force
reports, etc.

Copyright 2017 Pearson Education, Ltd

(Armstrong, Kotler & Opresnik)
 2. Competitive Marketing Intelligence

• Competitive marketing intelligence is the

systematic collection and analysis of publicly
available information about consumers,
competitors and developments in the
marketplace.

Copyright 2017 Pearson Education, Ltd

(Armstrong, Kotler & Opresnik)
 D. Marketing Research

The systematic design, collection, analysis, and

reporting of data relevant to a specific
marketing situation facing an organization.

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(Armstrong, Kotler & Opresnik)
The Marketing Research Process

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(Armstrong, Kotler & Opresnik)
 Defining the Problem and
Research Objectives
Research to help identify problems which are
not necessarily apparent on the surface and
yet exist or are likely to arise in the future.

Copyright 2017 Pearson Education, Ltd

(Armstrong, Kotler & Opresnik)
 1.Defining the Problem and
Research Objectives

Exploratory research

• To gather preliminary information that will help

define the problem and suggest hypotheses.

Descriptive research

• To describe things, such as the market potential for

a product, assumes researcher has prior
knowledge.
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(Armstrong, Kotler & Opresnik)
 Defining the Problem and
Research Objectives

Causal research
• To test hypotheses about cause-and-effect
relationships.
• Need a dependent variable and independent
variable(s) in order to set-up research project

Copyright 2017 Pearson Education, Ltd

(Armstrong, Kotler & Opresnik)
 2. Developing the Research Plan

• The research plan outlines sources of

existing data and spells out the specific
research approaches, contact methods,
sampling plans and instruments that
researchers will use to gather new data.
• Research objectives must be translated into
specific information needs.
• The research plan should be presented in a
written proposal.
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Developing the Research Plan

Secondary data
• Information that already exists somewhere,
having been collected for another purpose

Primary data
• Information collected for the specific
purpose at hand

Copyright 2017 Pearson Education, Ltd

(Armstrong, Kotler & Opresnik)
 Secondary Data

Advantages Disadvantages

Low cost Potentially

Irrelevant
Obtained quickly
Inaccurate
Cannot collect
otherwise Dated

Biased
4 - 20
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 Gathering Secondary Data

Researchers must make certain that data is:

• Relevant (fits the research project’s needs)
• Accurate (reliably collected and reported)
• Current (up-to-date enough for current
decisions)
• Impartial (objectively collected and reported)

Copyright 2017 Pearson Education, Ltd

(Armstrong, Kotler & Opresnik)
Primary Data Collection

Copyright 2017 Pearson Education, Ltd

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 Online Marketing Research
• Data is collected through
• Internet surveys
• Online focus groups
• Web-based experiments
• Tracking consumers’ online behavior

4 - 23
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 3.Implementing the Research Plan

• The researcher then puts the marketing

research plan into action. This involves
collecting, processing and analyzing the
information.

Copyright 2017 Pearson Education, Ltd

(Armstrong, Kotler & Opresnik)
4.Interpreting and Reporting Findings

The researcher must now interpret the findings,

draw conclusions and report them to
management.

Copyright 2017 Pearson Education, Ltd

(Armstrong, Kotler & Opresnik)