MARKETING RESEARCH PROCESS AND DECISIONS
Marketing Research is the systematic design, collection, analysis, and reporting of data and findings relevant
to a specific marketing situation facing the company.
Marketing research gives marketers insights into customer motivations, purchase behavior, and satisfaction. It
can help to assess market potential and market share or measure of effectiveness of pricing product,
distribution, and promotion activities.
Some large companies have their own research departments that work with marketing managers on marketing
research projects.
Small companies can also hire the services of a marketing research firm or conduct research in creative and
affordable ways i.e.
Engaging students or professors to design and carry out projects.
Using the internet
Checking out rivals/competitors
Tapping into marketing partners expertise
Marketing research firms fall into three categories:-
1. Syndicated service research firms: These firms gather consumer and trade information which they sell
for a fee.
2. Custom marketing research firms: These firms are hired to carry out specific projects
3. Specialty - Line marketing research firms: These firms provide specialized research services.
The Marketing Research Process
Define the problem
Develop the research plan
Collect the information
Analyze the information
Present the findings
Make the decisions
STEP 1: DEFINE THE PROBLEM, THE DECISION ALTERNATIVES AND THE
RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
Marketing managers and Researchers must work closely together to define the problem and agree on research
objectives.
Marketing managers must be careful not to define the problem too broadly or too narrowly for the marketing
researcher. E.g. Find everything you can about safaricom users; this is too broad and can generate a lot of
unnecessary information.
Another example “Find out how many people in Tharaka Nithi county will be willing to withdraw 500/= at
cost of 27/=”. This is too narrow and will give limited information.
To help in designing research, management should first spell out the decisions it might face and then work
backward. i.e. should we increase the cost of withdrawal?, which group will be affected?, what price should we
charge?”
With this management and marketing researchers are ready to set specific research objectives.
NB: Not all research projects can be this specific. Some research is exploratory – its goals is to shed light on
the real nature of the problem and to suggest possible solutions or new ideas. Some research is descriptive- It
seeks to quantify demand, such as how many customers would withdraw 500/= at a cost of 27/=. Some
research is causal – Its purpose is to test a cause and effect relationship.
STEP 2: DEVELOP THE RESEARCH PLAN
The second stage of marketing research is where we develop the most efficient plan for gathering the needed
information and what that will cost.
To design a research plan, we need to make decisions about the data sources, research approaches, research
instrument, sampling plan and contact methods.
1. Data sources
The researcher can gather secondary data, primary data or both. The most preferable data is secondary data
because it is readily available and can be obtained at low cost. However, a researcher will need to collect
primary data in the following cases:-
When the needed data does not exist or are outdated
Inaccurate
Incomplete
Unreliable
2. Research Approaches
Marketers collect primary data in five main ways:
Observation: is a market research technique in which highly trained researchers
generally watch how people or consumers behave and interact in the market under
natural conditions. It is designed to give precisely detailed and actual information on
what consumers do as they interact in a given market niche.
Focus group: is a gathering of 6 to 10 people carefully selected by researchers based
on certain demographic, psychographic or other considerations and brought together
to discuss various topics of interest at length. Its advantages are; Cost-effective and
quickest.
Survey Research: Companies undertake surveys to assess people’s knowledge,
beliefs, preferences and satisfaction and to measure these magnitudes in the general
population.
Behavioral research: Customers leave traces of their purchasing behavior in store
scanning data, catalog purchase and customer databases, marketers can learn much by
analyzing these data. Actual purchase reflect consumers’ preferences and often are
more reliable than statements they offer to market researcher.
Experimental research: It is designed to capture cause and effect relationships by eliminating
competing explanations of the observed findings.
3. Research Instruments
Marketing researchers have a choice of three main research instruments in collecting primary data. These
are;
Questionnaires: is a research instrument that consists of a set of questions to collect
information from a respondent.
Qualitative research techniques: - Are relatively unstructured measurement
approaches that permit a range of possible response.
Qualitative measures approaches:
Word association: Ask subjects what words come to mind when they hear the
brand name.
Projective technique: Give people an incomplete stimulus and ask them to
complete it or give them an ambiguous stimulus and ask them to make sense
of it.
Visualization: Visualization requires people to create a collage from magazine
photos or drawing to depict their perception.
Brand personification: Ask subjects what kind of person they think of when
the brand is mentioned.
Laddering: A series of increasingly more specific “why” questions can reveal
consumer motivation and consumers’ deeper, more abstract goals.
Technological devices: means any computer, cellular phone, smartphone, digital
camera, video camera, audio recording device, or other electronic device that can
be used for creating, storing, or transmitting information in the form of electronic
data. Advance technological devices can even monitor movement of people
inclusive of eye movement to tell what products an individual would prefer.
4. Sampling Plan: is a detailed outline of which measurements will be taken at what times,
on which material, in what manner, and by whom.
Three decisions in sampling plan:
a) Sampling unit: Whom should we survey?
Once they have determined the sampling unit, marketers must develop a sampling
frame so everyone in the target population has an equal or known chance of being
sampled.
b) Sample size: How many people should we survey?
Large samples give more reliable results, but it is not necessary to sample the
entire target population to achieve reliable results.
c) Sampling procedures: How should we choose the respondents?
Probability sampling allows marketers to calculate confidence limits for sampling
error and makes the sample more representative.
5. Contact Methods: Now the marketing researcher must decide how to contact the
subjects: by mail, by telephone, in person, or online.
Ways to conduct questionnaire
i. Mail contacts: are mail-enabled objects that contain information about people who exist
outside your organization. Require simple and clearly worded questions.
ii. Telephone contacts: Telephone interviewing is a good method for gathering information
quickly, the interviewer is also able to clarify questions if respondents do not understand
them.
iii. Personal contacts: Personal interviewing is the most versatile method.
iv. Online contacts
Pros/Advantages of online research
o Online research is cheap/inexpensive
o Online research is fast
o People tend to be honest and thoughtful online
o Online research is versatile
Cons/Disadvantages of online research
o Samples can be small and skewed/biased
o Online panels and communities can suffer from excessive turnover. Members may be
bored, they should be kept interested and engaged
o Online market research can suffer from technological problems and inconsistencies.
STEP 3: COLLECT INFORMATION
The data collection phase of marketing research is generally the most expensive and the most
prone to error. Marketers may conduct surveys in homes, over the phone, via the internet, or at a
central interviewing location like a shopping mall. Major problems arise in surveys e.g. some
respondents will be away from home or otherwise inaccessible and must be contacted again or
replaced. Other respondents will refuse to cooperate. Still others will give biased or dishonest
answers. Finally, some interviewers will be biased or dishonest.
STEP 4: ANALYZE THE INFORMATION
In this step the process is to extract findings by tabulating the data and developing summary
measures. The researchers now compute averages and measures of dispersion for the major
variables and apply some advanced statistical technique and decision models in the hope of
discovering additional findings. They may test different hypothesis and theories, applying
sensitivity analysis to test assumptions and the strength of the conclusions.
STEP 5: PRESENT THE FINDINGS
Here the researcher presents findings relevant to the major marketing decisions facing
management. Researchers increasingly are being asked to play a more proactive, consulting role
in translating data and information into insights and recommendations. They are also considering
ways to present research findings in an understandable and compelling fashion as possible.
STEP 6: MAKE THE DECISION
The managers who commissioned the research need to weigh the evidence. If their confidence in
the finding is low, they may decide against the launch of the product/service and if their
confidence or the finding support their inclination they may launch the product/services.
REFERENCES:
Text Books Sources
Marketing Management by Philip Kotler and Kelvin Lane Keller
Principles of Marketing by Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong.
Electronic Sources
https://smallbusiness.chron.com/write-marketing-sampling-plan-46435.html accessed on 29th
January, 2021.
https://www.questionpro.com/blog/what-is-a-questionnaire/ accessed on 29th January, 2021.
https://www.thebalancesmb.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-market-observation-
4043445#:~:text=Observation%20is%20a%20market%20research,in%20a%20given%20market
%20niche accessed on 29th January, 2021
