A decision making perspective of

Marketing Research
Sehrish Imdad Dogar
MBA, SZABIST
BBA (H), University of Sindh
Email i.d: dogarsehrish@gmail.com
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Sehrish
Week 1
What is Marketing?
It is the process of planning and executing the
conception, pricing, promotion, and
distribution of ideas, goods and services to
create exchanges that satisfy individual and
organizational objectives.

Stimulate exchange by right principle.
The marketing concept
Consumer
orientation
Systems
orientation
Goal
orientation
Consumer orientation: the identification of and focus on the people or
firms most likely to buy a product and the production of a good or service
that will meet their needs most effectively.

Goal orientation: a focus on the accomplishment of corporate goals; a
limit set on consumer orientation

Systems orientation: the creation of systems to
Monitor the external environment and deliver the
Marketing mix to the target market.

Feed back
Marketing research and decision
making
It plays two key roles

1. Provides data on the current marketing mix
and offers insight into necessary changes.

2. It is also a tool to exploring new opportunities
in the market place.
Marketing research defined:
customer

public
information
Identify and Define the
opportunities and
problems
link
information to address
these issues.
method for collecting info
Manages and implements
data collection process
Analyze the results
Communicate the findings.
marketer
Definition by
American Marketing Association
Marketing research is the planning, collection
and analysis of data relevant to marketing
decision making and the communication of
the results of this analysis to management.
Marketing research defined:
Origin of marketing research
Psychology and sociology
Theories about how consumers think and process
information have been drawn.
Microeconomics
From which utility theory and related concepts have
been taken.
Statistics
Analytical procedures have been borrowed
Experimental design
Concepts of testing and research design have been
taken.
Who does marketing research?
Marketing, Psychology and statistics are needed
as the academic background.

Due to recession and layoffs very little
permanent research employees are today in the
organizations.

They usually outsource (marketing research
firms, advertising agencies, consulting firms)
The manager-researcher relationship
Managers obligation
- specify the problems
- provide adequate background information
- access to company information gatekeepers

Researchers obligation
- develop creative research design
- provide answers to important business
questions
Manager-Researcher conflicts
Managements limited exposure to research.

Manager sees researcher as threat to personal
status.

Research has to consider corporate culture and
political situations.

Researchers isolation from managers.
Information gathered by marketing
research
Monitoring performance sales, margin, turnover,
returns, satisfaction.
Idea generation advertising copy, new product
concepts.
Industry evaluation growth rate, technological
change, likely entrants and exits
Customer analysis who are they? Why where and
how they buy? What they like and buy and intend to
buy, segmentation
Competitor analysis who are the, what they are
doing, strengths and weaknesses, what they are likely
to do
Potential estimation and sales forecasting territory
potential
Marketing mix evaluation
product concept tests, test markets
distribution sales by channel, level of support
price elasticity estimation, impact of promotions,
appropriate price?
Advertising what to say, who to say it to, when to
say it, where to say it
service level of satisfaction, voicing of complaints

Information gathered by marketing
research
The importance of marketing research
to management
Descriptive function: the gathering and
presentation of statements of facts. (sales trend)

Diagnostic function: the explanation of data and
actions (impact on sales with package design)

Predictive function: specification of how to use
descriptive and diagnostic research to predict the
results of a planned marketing decision.
The external environment
Successful companies
constantly scan the
environment.

The companies need to be
more adaptable, more
responsive to the change.

For example: Starbucks in
Saudi or Kodak.

The paramount importance of keeping
existing customers
Customer satisfaction leads to customer loyalty.

Repeated sales and referrals grow the market share.

Costs fall because firms spend less funds and energy
attempting to attract and repeated customer demands less
time from employees

Customer retention leads to higher job satisfaction and pride,
which leads to higher employee retention.

In turn old employees have long term acquired customer
knowledge that leads to increased productivity
Applied research versus basic research
Applied research: research aimed at solving a
specific, pragmatic problem better
understanding of the market place, determination of
why a strategy or tactic failed, or reduction of
uncertainty in management decision making.

Example:
Should McDonalds add Italian pasta dinners to its
menu?
Should Procter & Gamble add a high-priced home
teeth bleaching kit to its product line?

Applied research versus basic research
Basic or pure research: research aimed at expanding the
frontiers of knowledge rather than solving a specific
pragmatic problem.

Example:
Is executive success correlated with high need for
achievement?
Are members of highly cohesive work groups more
satisfied than members of less cohesive work groups?
Do consumers experience cognitive dissonance in low
involvement situations?





Class activity
Write a problem statement. Specify one example
for each pure and applied research.
The decision whether to conduct
marketing research or not
Resources are lacking
organization may lack funds or the
implementation of a decision requires funds.
The opportunity has passed
late maturity or decline stage of PLC.
The decision already has been made
Managers cannot agree on what they
need to make a decision (problem)
although preliminary/exploratory studies are
done but they do not agree upon one problem.



The decision whether to conduct
marketing research or not
Assuming that decision making
information already exists
for example: wall mart entered Pakistan on the
assumptions of the Indian Environment.
The cost of conducting research outweigh
the benefits
the manager has tremendous confidence on his
judgment.
willingness depends on quality, price and timing of
the decision.
Two major factors that influence are 1. profit
margins 2. market size

Is sufficient time
available before
a managerial
decision
must be made?
Is the infor-
mation already
on hand
inadequate
for making
the decision?
Is the decision
of considerable
strategic
or tactical
importance?
Does the value
of the research
information
exceed the cost
of conducting
research?
Conducting
marketing
Research
Do Not Conduct marketing Research
Time Constraints
Availability of Data
Nature of the Decision
Benefits
vs. Costs
Yes Yes Yes Yes
No No No No
Determining When to Conduct
marketing Research
The profound impact of internet on
marketing research
Rapid development, real time reporting

Dramatically reduced costs

Personalization (pause and resume, move to previous
response and correct)

Higher response rates (convenience, graphics, links to
incentive sites)

Ability to contact the hard to reach

Follow up studies can be done