The concept of research – The concept of marketing research is better illustrated with this simple example: A woman cooking a pot of stew for the family wants to know whether the stew is well cooked and tastes good. For her to know this, she takes a sip from the ladle.
The sip prompts her to add some more seasoning or salt. This woman samples the quality of the stew by tasting it. She does not cat the whole pot of stew but takes the sip sufficient to form an opinion about the stew content and taste.
Another simple example to illustrate the concept of research is: a student sitting in front of the television feeling bored uses the remote control to check what the other stations are showing or have to offer.
He watches a fragment of a movie for two minutes but does not like it, and he decides definitely not to watch the movie.
He switches on to another channel and watches for a few minutes, and he continues until he gets to where he stays tuned. The student evaluates the appeal of the movie by watching a small part of it.
These few illustrations tell us that people are constantly doing research. This becomes necessary because we take a thousands of decisions every day. To take decisions information is needed. Some decisions are very quickly and sometimes taken unconsciously.
For example, when your tea or coffee is too hot (information from the tongue) you stop drinking it. Or when you want to dress to go out in the morning, you may base your decision on the weather, (by checking outside) and on what you have to do (by checking your diary).
While taking most decisions, people are not aware that they are processing information (thereby doing research) and what they base their decisions on. These examples explain to us that in the process, people are often content with very little information.
In the same way, a company or government wants to gather information about something in order to take a decision. These are all following the basic process of research.
Marketing research, therefore is the systematic process of identifying a problem, collection of data, analyzing the data, interpreting the data and presenting it for decision making.
The Role of Marketing Research
The need for information which is explained above, crops up in all sorts of situations. This is the driving force behind marketing research.
This means that the need for marketing research is linked strongly to the need for knowledge which, in other words, is the need to have certain information at one’s disposal.
Marketing research is required in different key areas of marketing such as:
- Strategic Understanding
- Idea Development
- Product Mix Evaluation
- Market & Consumer Monitoring
- Strategic understanding has four different interrelated ways in which market research can help display its roles.
Consumer Understanding: In consumer understanding, exploratory qualitative research can help to build some hypotheses about market structure, consumer drivers and emerging trends.
It could also use habit and attitude studies to record detailed information about what consumers do, how they use products, their thoughts and opinion on specific issues, brand awareness and penetration and image issues. Other roles could be seen in the use of segmentation studies, direct consumer contacts and trend analysis.
Product Understanding
The roles here are the application of techniques such as product test analysis and preference mapping to establish the correlation between specific product attributes and overall consumer preferences. Also, a technique such as product benchmarking which involves the testing of one’s own product against those of competitors will help in providing better understanding of the product as it relates to the consumers.
Brand Understanding
Strategic understanding role of marketing research has a strong hold on brands. The use of Brand image and brand equity studies involves in-depth analysis of a brand’s image and association in the minds of consumers. Brand mapping also can provide information obtained about brand image using perceptual mapping.
Customer Understanding
The roles here is the use of techniques such as satisfaction surveys to determine customers’ and retailers’ needs and their attitude towards brands, products and service levels. Shopper research can also be used as it involves analysis of consumers shopping behaviour and attitude.
The Importance of Marketing Research
A company that uses marketing will first of all determine what the consumer wants with the use of market research. On the basis of having an understanding and the knowledge of what they want you can now decide what the factory should produce, what the price of the product should be, through which outlets it should be sold and even what the advertising should communicate to the consumers. Marketing research helps in the:
i. Provision of information for market analysis.
ii. Provision of a platform for understanding the consumers.
iii. Continuous monitoring of marketing activities.
iv. Understanding of trends in the market and using them for taking marketing decision.
v. Marketing research has become a pillar for eliciting innovation of new products.
vi. It is used as a check on competitors.
Marketing Research and Information System
Marketing research is a feeder to Marketing Information System (MIS). Marketing research collects the data from consumers, customers, trade and competition, and pass on the information into the data bank. The data automatically becomes a working resource for the Marketing Information System (MIS) which gets inputs from external and internal sources.
Marketing research provides the external inputs. It gets inputs (data) from the internal sources which are the sales figures such as sales volume and values, financial figures, production data and consumers’ complaint data. Marketing research tends to obtain information when a problem is identified. On the other hand, MIS collects its data on a continuous basis – on daily basis as the business goes on. The MIS relies heavily on the use of computer systems.
Marketing Information Systems in modern organisations are operational with a central data bank. All the area offices, field staff and the head office have access to such data bank. The MIS operations are very interactive as they allow the employees to communicate directly with the system. It is an essential marketing decision support system.
Marketing Research Instruments
Marketing Research instruments are simply those tools which are used to obtain data from respondents when conducting a research. The instruments vary from one form of marketing research to the other. The instrument used at any research is a function of the type of research conducted.
For example, the instrument required to conduct a qualitative study such as a Focus Group Discussion could be story telling or completion of cartoons or pictures whereas a quantitative research such as a survey would require a simple questionnaire as its tool to obtain information from the respondents.
Common research instruments: The following are the common marketing research instruments:
Questionnaire: This is a set of questions designed for use in collecting primary data from respondents. The major types of questionnaires are the structured and unstructured questionnaires.
The structured or close-ended questionnaires have all the responses outlined and they are pre-coded with numbers. The unstructured questionnaires on the other hand have the questions in open-ended formats. In this case the respondents are free to answer the questions without restrictions.
Psychological Tools: These are tools that are used by marketing researchers to obtain respondents’ deeper feelings and emotion about a product or brand. In-depth interviews, cartoons, storytelling, word associations and sentence completion are some of the techniques that are commonly used.
Marketing Research Procedure
The process of marketing research usually commences when some desk research has been done. Usually when it is realised that some more information is necessary to take decision, a marketing research is commissioned. The following are the steps in conducting marketing research:
Report Writing, Presentation and Implementation
Writing reports of marketing research requires the skill of distilling technical data and interpreting it for very clear understanding by any reader of the report.
This is the final step in the marketing research process. The report can be presented in words, figures, charts, diagrams, pictures and videos. The report usually has the following:
Box 3.1 Steps in Report Writing
Step 1 Executive summary
Step 2 The Background information of the research
Step 3 The objectives of the research
Step 4 The methodology applied in the research
Step 5 The duration
Step 6 Location: where it was donc
Step 7 Findings from the research
Step 8 Conclusions and
Step 9 Recommendations
The procedures for conducting a marketing research project are further simplified below
1. Define and establish the problem
2. Determine the objectives and information needs
3. Designing the research
4. Collection of data
5. Process and analysis the data
6. Prepare and present report to management for use.
Implementation of marketing research outcome largely depends on the recommendations. The availability of resources is also another key factor that determines the implementation of marketing research results. What some organisation would do is to implement in phases as the business goes on.
Target market (consumer and buyer) behaviour studies
Motives: Selling and Buying
The essence of selling is the identification of prospective customers and converting them into buyers. The function of selling has a wide coverage to achieve the objectives of full exchange. Selling gives the salesperson the opportunity of following up a transaction beyond the point of buying to ensure that full satisfaction has been achieved by the buyer.
A modern salesperson contacts and engages in many different things. He automatically gathers market information such as competitors’ activities, customer data, new product market entry and market expansion.
The information is used for marketing intelligence. Another function of the salesperson is to ensure that there is delivery of the product to the buyer. The salesperson also provides customers with product information and some technical or specialist advice.
Buying on the other hand is that part of exchange process in which the product is obtained in exchange for money at an agreed price. Buyer may or may not be the consumer of the product but the important thing in buying is that it is carried out to satisfy a need or needs.
Needs satisfaction is naturally to solve a problem recognised by the consumer. The decision to buy a product passes through some processes in the mind of the buyer. The decision entails choosing between two or more alternative actions. The buying decision process is based on the knowledge which the consumer has. The process is simply illustrated below
Problem Recognition = Search for alternatives = Evaluation of alternatives = Purchase = Evaluation of Choice.
Factors influencing buying behaviour
Buying behaviour is influenced by some factors such as:
Price
This is a key influencer of what consumers will buy at the market place. It is stronger in the lower socio-economic classes due to the low disposable income with this group of people.
Situation at Time of Purchase
When a buyer in the shop is faced with challenges in the shop such as products out-of-stock, brand promotion by competitors, change in price and innovation by competitor, there is the likelihood that the buyer’s favourite brand may not be bought.
Culture
This is a combination of values, norms, beliefs, attitude, symbols and artefacts used to shape behaviour in society running down generations. The heritage comes down to generation to influence the buying habit.
For example, some buyers may buy a brand because of the buyers’ national heritage or family heritage. Female consumers are more influenced by values and learning received from their mothers than the male consumers.
Reference Group
It is the group that the buyer interacts with directly or indirectly in the society and they automatically influence thought, feelings, opinion, association and beliefs.