Chapter 5: Marketing Information Systems and Research

Marketing Information and Customer Insights

1. To create value for customers & build meaningful relationships with them,
marketers must gain fresh, deep insights into what customers need and want.
2. Most marketing managers are overloaded with data and often overwhelmed
by it, yet complain they lack enough information of the right kind.
3. The real value of marketing research and marketing information lies in how it
is usedin the customer insights that it provides.
4. Many companies are now restructuring and renaming their marketing
research and information functions.
The Marketing Information System
5. A marketing information system (MIS) consists of people, equipment, and
procedures to gather, sort, analyze, evaluate, and distribute needed, timely,
and accurate information to marketing decision makers.
6.

Assessing Information Needs

7. A good marketing information system balances information managers want
against
that which they need & is feasible to obtain.
8. Some managers ask for whatever data they can get without thinking carefully
about cost or usefulness.
Obtaining Data
9. The costs of obtaining, processing, storing, and delivering information can
add up quickly.
10.Sometimes additional information contributes little to improving a managers
decision.
Developing Information Internal Data
11.Internal data are accessed more quickly & cheaply than other sources, but
presents some problems.
a. it may be incomplete or in the wrong form for marketing
b. data also age quickly; keeping the database current requires a major
effort
12.Increasingly, companies are creating data warehouses to house customer
data in an accessible location.
13.Managers can use information gathered from these and other sources to
evaluate performance and detect problems and opportunities.
Developing Information Guest History Information
14. Guest information is vital to:
a. improving service
b. creating effective advertising & sales promotion programs
c. developing new products
d. improving existing products
e. developing marketing and sales plans
f. development & use of an effective revenue management program
15.An amazing amount of guest information is available from internal records,
which requires interfacing with other departments, such as reservations and
accounting.
Guest Information Management Acquisition

16.A system for obtaining guest information may include any or all of these
techniques:
a. Personal observations
b. Guest comment cards
c. Listening to and speaking with guests
d. Automated systems
e. Mystery shoppers
f. Company records
g. Point-of-Sale information
Marketing Intelligence
17.Marketing intelligence includes everyday data about developments that helps
managers prepare and adjust marketing plans and short-run tactics.
18.Hotel owners and managers are essential parts of a marketing intelligence
system.
19.Members of management should be encouraged to join community and
professional organizations, where they are likely to obtain essential marketing
information
20.Competitive intelligence is available from trade magazine articles,
competitors reports, speeches, press releases, brochures, and
advertisements.
Marketing Research
21.Casual marketing intelligence cannot answer some questions, and managers
sometimes need to commission formal marketing research.
22.

23.The ten most common activities in which marketing researchers engage are:
a. measurement of market potentials
b. market-share analysis
c. determination of market characteristics
d. sales analysis
e. studies of business trends
f. short-range forecasting

g.
h.
i.
j.

competitive product studies

long-range forecasting
marketing information systems studies
testing of existing products

Defining the Problem and Research Objectives

24.Managers must work closely with researchers to define the problem &
research objectives.
25.If they know little about marketing research, managers may accept the wrong
information, draw wrong conclusions, or request more data than they need.
26.A marketing research project can have one of three types of objectives:
a. exploratory research, to gather preliminary information that will help
define the problem and suggest hypotheses
b. descriptive research, to describe size & composition of
the market
c. causal research, to test hypotheses about cause-and-effect
relationships
Developing the Research Plan
27.To meet a managers information needs, researchers can gather secondary
data, primary data, or both.
28.Primary data consist of information collected for the specific purpose at hand.
29.Secondary data consist of information already in existence somewhere,
having been collected for another purpose.
30.Researchers usually start by gathering secondary data, usually obtained more
quickly and at a lower cost than primary data.
31.Three basic research approaches are observations, surveys, and experiments.
32.Observational research is gathering of primary data by observing relevant
people, actions, and situations.
33.Survey research, best suited to gathering descriptive information, can be
structured or unstructured.
34.Experimental research is designed to capture cause-and-effect relationships
by eliminating competing explanations of the observed findings.

35.Focus groups are usually conducted by inviting 6-10 people to gather with a
trained moderator to talk about a product, service, or organization.
36.In-depth surveys, another form of qualitative personal interviewing, can be
used when it is
difficult to put together a focus group.
37.Qualitative research is useful to gain insight into definitions and concepts as
well as insight into survey results.
38.Marketing researchers usually draw conclusions about large consumer groups
by taking a sample.
39.Questionnaires often omit questions that should be answered and include
questions that cannot, will not, or need not be answered.
40.Researchers in the hospitality industry must be very careful in developing
questions and selecting the sample not to offend respondents unwittingly.
41.A written plan ensures the marketing manager and researchers have
considered all important aspects of the research and agree on why & how it
will be done.
Implementing the Research Plan
42.The plan is put into action by collecting, processing, and analyzing the
information.
Interpreting and Reporting the Findings
43.Interpretation is an important phase of the marketing process, as the best
research is meaningless if a manager blindly accepts wrong explanations.
44.Marketing information has no value until managers use it to make better
decisions.
International Marketing Research
45.International marketing researchers often face more and different problems
than domestic researchers with homogeneous markets within a single
country.
46.Markets in many different countries often vary dramatically in levels of
economic development, cultures and customs, and buying patterns.
47.Buying roles & consumer decision processes vary from country to country,
complicating research.