The Marketing Research Process Mark Rosenbaum,Ph.D.

University of Hawaii

The Marketing Research Process: 11 Steps

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Step One:

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Step Two: Step Three: Step Four: Step Five:

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Step Six:

Establishing the Need for Marketing Research Defining the Problem Establishing Research Objectives Determining Research Design Identifying Information Types and Sources Determining Methods of Accessing Data

The Marketing Research Process: 11 Steps cont…

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Step Seven: Step Eight: Step Nine: Step Ten: Step Eleven:

Designing Data Collection Forms Determining Sample Plan and Size Collecting Data Analyzing Data Preparing and Presenting the Final Research Report

The Marketing Research Process Step One: Establish the Need for Marketing Research

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When Marketing Research is not needed

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The information is already available

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Decisions need to be made now You can’t afford research Costs outweigh the value of the research

The Marketing Research Process Step Two: Define the Problem

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The most important step in the marketing research process is defining the problem. What is your team’s problem?

The Marketing Research Process Step Three: Establish Research Objectives

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What information is needed in order to solve the problem?

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Primary

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Secondary Both

The Marketing Research Process Step Four: Determine Research Design

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Exploratory Research:

collecting information in an unstructured and informal manner

Descriptive Research:

refers to a set of methods and procedures describing marketing variables

Causal Research (experiments and other approaches):

allows isolation of causes and effects via use of experiment or surveys.

The Marketing Research Process Step Five: Identify Information Types and Sources

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Secondary Data:

information that has been collected for some other purpose other than the research at hand

Primary Data:

information that has been gathered specifically for the research objectives at hand

Sites that you should use

• School or University of Hawaii Library – http://www.hawaii.edu/emailref/business/mktg.htm#jo urnals – Lexis-Nexis: Must show industry data • Demographic Info: – http://www.census.gov/ – More specific: http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/SAFFFacts?_sse=o n – http://www.census.gov/census2000/states/hi.html

Other sites

• Claritas – http://www.clusterbigip1.claritas.com/claritas/Defa ult.jsp

– You are your zip code • Reference USA – Only available at University of Hawaii at Manoa • The goal: – Present facts and figures in your marketing plans.

The Marketing Research Process Step Six: Determine Methods of Accessing Data

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Secondary Data:

accessing data through sources such as the Internet and library

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Primary Data:

collecting data through methods such as telephone, mail, online, and face-to-face (quantitative) and observation studies and focus groups (qualitative)

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Both are excellent! Use both in your projects!

The Marketing Research Process Step Seven: Design Data Collection Forms

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The design of the data collection form that is used to ask or observe and record information in marketing research projects is critical to the success of the project. It is easy to write a set of questions but very difficult to construct a questionnaire.

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Questionnaires Observation Studies

The Marketing Research Process Step Eight: Determine Sample Plan and Size

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Sample plan:

refers to the process used to select units from the population to be included in the sample

Sample size:

refers to determining how many elements of the population should be included in the sample

The Marketing Research Process Step Nine: Collect Data

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Data collection is very important because, regardless of the data analysis methods used, data analysis cannot “fix” bad data. 12 Nonsampling errors may occur during data collection. These are related to poor design and/or execution of the data gathering.

Sampling errors may occur based purely on chance Trying to make a decision on a population from a sample

The Marketing Research Process Step Ten: Analyze Data

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Data analysis:

involves entering data into computer files, inspecting data for errors, and running tabulations and various statistical tests

Data cleaning:

process by which raw data are checked to verify that the data have been correctly input from the data collection form to the computer software program

The Marketing Research Process Step Eleven: Prepare and Present the Final Research Report

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The last step is one of the most important phases of marketing research.

Its importance cannot be overstated because it is the report, or its presentation, that properly communicates the results to the client.

Interpreting the Data

• Provide Frequencies and Descriptives for each variable.

– Provide Frequencies for all – Provide mean & standard deviation for interval and ratio variables

Crosstabulation

• Is there a significant difference between an independent variable (nominal/ordinal) and the response to a dependent variable (nom/ord)?

• What were asking is “are the proportions the same?” • The dependent variable is your variable of interest.

It looks like this….

Dependent Variable Independent Variable

The results

Hawaii an Pineapples No Yes Total

Hawaiian Pineapples * country of origin Crosstabulation

Count Count Count

Chi-Square Tests

% within country of origin % within country of origin % within country of origin USA/Canada 328 62.6% 196 37.4% 524 100.0% country of origin Japan 316 China/South Korea 74 92.7% 25 7.3% 341 69.8% 32 30.2% 106 100.0% 100.0% All other 48 63.2% 28 36.8% 76 100.0% Total 766 73.2% 281 26.8% 1047 100.0%

Chi-Square Te sts

Pearson Chi-S quare Lik elihood Ratio Linear-by-Linear As soc iation N of V alid Cases Value 100.357

116.519

7.870

1047 a df 3 3 1 As ymp. Sig.

(2-sided) a. 0 c ells (.0% ) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 20. 40.

.000

.000

.005

For additional statistics

• If you have a dependent variable that is interval or ratio, you must perform an analysis of variance. • Dependent variable is nominal or ordinal.