BUS-M 300 1nd Edition Lecture 5 Outline of Last Lecture I. Why Segment Markets?II. Steps in Segmenting and Targeting MarketsA. Step One: Group Potential Buyers into Segments B. Step Two: Group Products to Be Sold into Categories C. Step Three: Develop a Market-Product Grid and Estimate the Size of MarketsD. Step Four: Select Target Markets E. Step Five: Take Marketing Actions to Reach Target Markets III. Positioning the Product Outline of Current Lecture I. What is Marketing Research? II. The Five step Marketing Research Approach A. Define the ProblemB. Develop the Research PlanC. Collect Relevant InformationD. Develop FindingsE. Take Marketing Actions III. Research Types A. Exploratory B. Descriptive C. Casual Current LectureI. What is Marketing Research? - Process of defining a marketing problem and opportunity- Systematically collecting and analyzing information and recommending actions- Marketing research is done because o Sellers want customers to buy their products or serviceso Learning what customer wants makes it easier to sell them products o Helps sellers know how to attractively present product or service II. The Five step Marketing Research Approach A. Define the Problem- Set research objectives - Identify possible marketing actions - Research should be specific - Don’t confuse symptoms with real problem—falling sales are symptom- Examples: awareness, preference, competitive strengths B. Develop the Research Plan- Specify constraints - Identify data needed for marketing actions- Determine how to collect data- Research design specifies what information will be collected and what type of study or research type would be best used C. Collect Relevant Information- Obtain secondary data—information already collected prior to theprojecto Internal: company records, budgets, actual sales records, customer communication records o External: government data sources, annual reportso Benefits: low cost, less effort, less timeo Limitations: no control over data collection, may be outdated, may not meet data requirements - Obtain primary data—information newly collected for the specific purpose of the study/project o Observational datao Questionnaire datao Experiments o Benefits: more control over data, more current, more applicableo Limitations: high cost, inconvenient and time intense, less accurate D. Develop Findings- Analyze the data- Present the findings- Research plays a key role in long term planning- Make sense of data E. Take Marketing Actions- Make action recommendations - Implement action recommendations- Evaluate results III. Research Types A. Exploratory- Not designed to provide conclusions - Investigate or explore possible problems or opportunities - Often word based in nature and can take a variety of forms - Gives in depth information and leads to future research B. Descriptive- Uses data to describe, show or summarize data about something specific- Can be used to draw conclusions only about the exact persons in the study- Often quantitative (measurement/numbers based) and takes manyforms - Three forms of descriptive research—personal observation, unobtrusive measures, mechanical observation- Example: survey asked of a group of students between two different chip typesC. Casual - Experiment based and used to determine an actual cause and effect relationship- Techniques for trying to understand cause-effect relationships: experiments—test in a controlled environment and field studies—test in the “real world”- Example: observing the effects of advertisement on brain