Marketing
Primary Market Research
Primary market research involves collecting data directly from the source, such as through surveys, interviews, or observations, to gain insights into consumer preferences, behaviors, and market trends. This type of research is conducted by organizations to gather specific and tailored information that is relevant to their products, services, or target audience, helping them make informed business decisions.
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Index pages curate the most relevant extracts from our library of academic textbooks. They’ve been created using an in-house natural language model (NLM), each adding context and meaning to key research topics.
eBook - ePub- Sally Dibb, Lyndon Simkin(Authors)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
The first step in marketing research is to identify the problem to be examined, then secondly to hypothesize what might be the causes. In this way, the research brief can be more focused, saving on time and expense. For example, the problem may be a surprisingly sharp dip in sales. The marketers in question may hypothesize the cause to be the in-road of one particular competitor or a major flaw in their product. Either theme could then be examined through marketing research. The third stage is the collection of information that is analysed and interpreted in stage four of the marketing research process, before being summarized in a presentation or report in stage five.Marketing research tends to commence with an examination of already published material that is readily available: library reports, Web searches, previous marketing research reports. Such secondary information is not going to be bespoke to the current problem under examination, but coupled with the marketers’ experience and intuition, may provide an adequate basis for decision-making, saving the time and cost of primary data collection.Primary data collection is the fresh, customized collection of information pertinent to the problem being researched. Observation can be personal or mechanical, such as superstore managers watching queuing behaviour of their customers or video cameras in a burger bar monitoring customer behaviour. Surveys are the most common part of marketing research and along with observations constitute primary data collection. Surveys include mail or postal questionnaires, telephone interviewing, personal interviews and Internet surveying. In most marketing research situations, a mix of data collection tools is selected.Mail surveys are simple and mailing lists are increasingly cheaply and readily available. They lack interviewer bias and expenses. Costs are minimal – copying and postage. However, they are inflexible, cannot include probing or lengthy questions and lack the presence of an interviewer to explain questions or seek clarification of responses. Rates of response can be disappointing, with typical responses of 30% in consumer surveys and 1–2% in business-to-business surveys. Telephone surveys are very popular given the ownership rates of telephones, out-of-hours access and saving on face-to-face interviewer expenses. They are more costly, though, than postal questionnaires and lack the face-to-face interview advantages of personal interviewing and focus groups. Telephone interviewing is quick, can rapidly survey a large sample, is automated and provides very fast results. Teleselling has impeded the use of telephone interviewing, with many respondents suspecting a ‘hard sell’ and declining to partake in the survey.
eBook - ePubIntegrated Marketing Communication
Advertising and Promotion in a Digital World
- Jerome M. Juska(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
J.D. Powers Reports are a series of brand comparison reports that cover a variety of product categories. The reports include consumer ratings for features, designs, functions, and other important product attributes. In addition, the company conducts separate research studies that measure owner satisfaction, brand loyalty, and quality ratings.The Market Share Reporter is a reference publication organized according to several hundred industry classification categories. Its featured content is an estimation of the market shares by brands, which is an excellent resource for a competitive industry analysis. The numbers are most helpful in calculating advertising budgets and media strategies.The Green Book Market Share Directory is a complete listing of marketing research companies. It separates the information by geographic region, company size, and area of specialization, such as field research, focus groups, personal interviews, survey research, and statistical data analysis.Primary Research
Primary research is information, or data, that has been collected, analyzed, or written by an internal source. The process of producing this information is managed, controlled, and owned by your own company, and as a result, primary research is always considered proprietary. It is private and confidential. No one else has this information. Not your competitor. Not another organization. Only your company and its employees can utilize and apply the contents of this primary marketing research. That is the importance of this valuable research information, because it can provide a competitive advantage when planning strategic IMC programs.But, it comes with a price and takes a lot of time. The option is to purchase, or to find online, relevant information about an industry, market segment, brand performance, consumer preferences, and other essential data. This is considered to be secondary research, or information that other individuals, companies, trade associations, educational institutions, entrepreneurs, journalists, and government organizations have already completed. Yes, there might be a price involved, but it will be much less than the cost of doing it yourself. For example, a private research company is offering a comprehensive study of the cell phone market for $1750. Expensive for a single copy, but a bargain compared with a primary study of $50,000 or more, which takes three months.
eBook - ePubThe Handbook for Market Research for Life Sciences Companies
Finding the Answers You Need to Understand Your Market
- Jean-Francois Denault(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Productivity Press(Publisher)
Chapter 2 Primary ResearchPrimary data is information that is generated directly by the market researcher to answer his research question. For example, when he is doing interviews, online surveys, or making observations, he is gathering primary data.Generally, primary research is costlier to generate (both in terms of time and resources), but it is customized for the researcher’s needs. If he has correctly designed his tools, he should be able to solve his research problems. Also, the data he collects is proprietary, so it belongs to the organization exclusively, becoming a competitive advantage.This chapter is divided into two distinct sections. The first section deals specifically with the data collection framework (i.e., the questionnaire or discussion guide), while the second section deals with the information collection activities specifically, such as in-depth interviews, focus groups, surveys, observation, mystery shops, and Delphi groups, from an implementation perspective and provides examples and information on how these activities are used by life science organizations.2.1Importance of Preparing a Market Research Tool The preparation of your market research tools is an important part of the data collection process as it ensures the quality of the data collected by making sure thata.The data is collected in a consistent manner : To be able to compile data from different investigators, or from different time periods, it has to be collected in a consistent manner. The questions have to remain the same from one sample to the next. It is problematic to compile data if some respondents answered questions that were phrased differently.For example, a few years back, I was brought in to a project to analyze some primary data a client had collected, as he was unable to build consistent models. A web survey had been posted on two different websites that belonged to two different subsidiaries. Each subsidiary had designed a different autonomous web survey and had collected the data independently. After a careful review, I noticed some subtle yet significant differences between the questions in the two surveys. In an effort to “improve” demographic data, questions and answers were changed in one of the two surveys. The changes were significant enough that the online survey was not collecting the data the same way in the two locations. As such, it was impossible to merge the data from the two data sources, and the data was impossible to tabulate correctly until some of the data was recoded in one of the surveys.
eBook - ePubEntrepreneurial Marketing
How to Develop Customer Demand
- Edwin J. Nijssen(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Primary data collection involves new research that is focused on collecting data specifically and uniquely for your research question or questions. For instance, if you want to know more about the buying behaviour of prospective customers and no secondary data is available or it is too generic, you could schedule interviews with relevant customers to collect these insights. Returning to our respiratory example, you may interview 10 anaesthetists and 10 employees of intensive-care units to collect the data and find answers.Primary research requires basic knowledge of research methods and benefits from a framework or theoretical model of the phenomenon you want to study. In marketing, consumer behaviour, and strategy there are many models available that can be used as a framework. Identifying appropriate models, and using them to guide your research, will greatly increase the validity and reliability of the results. These models generally come with appropriate definitions and measures for the market constructs involved. In the academic literature there are, for instance, models of consumer behaviour, models of retailer and B2B buyer behaviour, customer journeys frameworks, models for comparing product alternatives (conjoint analysis), and frameworks for analysing competitive positions. A quick online search of the literature (e.g., using Google Scholar) will get you started. Just be sure to use the right key words (e.g., if you are unaware that the problem of creating enough charging stations for electrical cars refers to a phenomenon called ‘network effects’, you would not be able to find the most important articles and frameworks on the topic). Also be aware that many journals exist, and quality varies. An alternative is to ask a librarian for assistance. They are experts in locating high-quality information sources both off- and online.Two very important types of primary research for the entrepreneur are: (1) the problem interviews with customers from the entrepreneur’s alleged target segment, and (2) co-creation work with lead customers to develop the innovation, that is, product concept and prototype. The aim of problem interviews is to understand customers’ product use and buying behaviour, and the problems (sometimes called ‘pains’) these customers experience. It helps validate the entrepreneur’s hypotheses around customers’ potential problems, and the envisioned solution. These interviews work best with clear research questions and using, for example, a half-structured questionnaire.
eBook - ePubIntegrated Marketing Communication
Advertising and Promotion in a Digital World
- Jerome M. Juska(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
4 Brand Research and Consumer InsightsLearning Objectives
- To understand the purpose of marketing research
- To describe and apply secondary research methods
- To describe and apply primary research methods
- To identify consumer insights and purchasing patterns
Introduction
You only need to know five things about a potential buyer: who, what, where, why, when?This chapter provides you with the research methods needed to answer all these questions. This involves learning about the entire spectrum of marketing research, including consumer, product, and industry research. The chapter also explains the differences between primary and secondary research, as well as the interpretations of both quantitative and qualitative research findings. However, what is most important is how to use these different research methods to gather information and complete an analysis for IMC planning and program development, especially creative concepts and media selection.Why Do You Need Research?
It would be nice to begin by creating commercials, but that’s not how it works. Advertising is not just about having clever ideas and catchy slogans. It is about communicating with customers and potential buyers. And, we need to know all about them. A lot more. Where they live. What they do. How old they are. Why they like a product. Which brands they hate. All this important information is needed to develop creative strategies for advertising, and every other form of IMC. If we did not have it, our brand messages would be meaningless and our media selection would be wasteful and inefficient. Research gives marketers exactly what is needed to connect brands with individuals and IMC programs with target audiences.Here are just a few examples: an automotive company discovered that more females than males were buying a new car model, so they changed their advertising photos and increased visibility in female-oriented media. A dog food company was surprised to learn that many of their customers were older and purchased their pets as a companion, so once again the images and advertising media were changed. And finally, a restaurant chain was surprised to learn that Hispanic customers were their most loyal customers, and had a geographic concentration in California, Texas, Arizona, Florida, and yes, surprisingly, even a strong presence in Chicago.
- John Lidstone, Janice MacLennan(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
For many companies in healthcare-related industries a well-staffed internal marketing research department is a luxury that cannot be supported in an era of tight cost controls and corporate downsizing. As a result, product or department managers with little formal training in the research discipline are forced to outsource critical marketing studies.Furthermore, marketing research is rarely cheap or easy to obtain and, in fact, may constitute a significant investment in itself. It is essential, therefore, that it is used to support ‘critical’ decisions and that the information that is obtained is timely, useful and accurate.These are just some of the reasons why an appreciation of marketing research is necessary.The marketing research process
There are many components in the marketing research process, from basic problem definition to determining what kind of information you need to be gathered, how it should be gathered, and how it should be analysed.The basic steps in any research operation are:- formulating the research problem;
- determining the research design;
- determining the data collection method;
- designing the data collection form;
- designing the sample and collecting the data;
- analysing and interpreting the data;
- preparing the research report.
The kind of information that you need to gather might be quantitative or qualitative,- ● Qualitative research refers to research that cannot be analysed statistically. The primary use of this type of research is in the early stages of research to find, explore, develop and discover such things as: needs or opportunities; new product concepts; product positioning; advertising and communication concepts; questionnaires; attitude and behavioural effects. Generally it uses in-depth interviews, group discussions or focus groups.
- ● Quantitative research refers to research which endeavours to produce data in hard numbers. For example 10 per cent of doctors prescribe product x
- Bonita M. Kolb(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Review the findings : Instead of immediately starting to generate overall total responses to questions, scroll through all the responses. This will give you a broader view of the range of results.Look for future trends : After the overview, it is time to generate the totals. It is natural to look at the responses that ranked high, but keep an open mind, and eye, for the outlying responses. They can inform you of issues that could become more critical in the future.Use statistical analysis : Your survey program can generate much more than just total number of responses and percentages. Learn how to use and understand cross tabulations as they can show relationships between answers.Create visuals : Many people find it easier to understand numbers when they are in charts or graphs. They also provide a more dramatic effect if data is widely skewed in one direction.Determine action : If all that is done with survey results is to analyze and report the findings, the survey has been a waste of time and money. Instead action based on the findings should be recommended.Stillwagon 2014
QUESTION TO CONSIDER : What preconceived ideas might I bring when analyzing the data from a survey on why consumers purchase our product?Some research questions can be answered through the secondary research process. However, most research questions specific to the organization, such as why customers are purchasing one product rather than another, will require primary research. This is the process of going directly to research subjects for the answer to the question. Primary research can be divided into two different approaches to gather information, descriptive and exploratory.Descriptive research is used to answer factual questions, usually using a survey. These questions will focus on a description of consumers and quantify their behavior. Descriptive research asks factual questions that provide answers on who, what, where, and how. For example, a research question on who buys the product can be answered by writing survey questions that ask about age, gender, and income level. A research question on what they prefer to buy can be answered by writing survey questions that ask customers to rank different products that are available. In addition, where they buy can be answered with a question that distinguishes between website purchases, craft fairs, or different store locations.
