Marketing Information & Marketing Research
Why information beats gut feeling, internal data, competitive intelligence and research, the marketing information system (internal records, intelligence, MDSS, research), types of research, qualitative vs quantitative methods, the 4-step research process, and why research fails.
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Marketing Research – Part I
Marketing information and the marketing information system.
00:02Introduction: marketing research00:45Learning outcomes03:44Why marketing information is needed04:41From local to national and global markets05:28From price to non-price competition07:51Costs and benefits of information09:11Marketing information system: internal data10:01Marketing intelligence10:43Marketing research11:41Try internal data and intelligence first14:23Competitor analysis16:38When to undertake marketing research19:44The marketing research processMarketing Research – Part II
Types of research and the research process.
00:59Exploratory research01:53Descriptive research02:47Causal research: cause and effect04:37Developing the research plan05:28Presenting the written plan to management06:35Start with secondary data08:58Primary data: observation10:59Survey research: the most widely used14:57Limitations of observation16:38Online methods: Google Forms17:46Experimental research: causal information19:20Contact methods: flexibility and other trade-offs26:20Interpreting and presenting findings26:53Same finding, two interpretations: the shoe market1Why marketing information matters
- Gut feeling is not enough. You need sound, reliable, objective data to reduce risk and raise the chance of success.
- Marketing research is collecting and analysing data about your target market, so you can make informed decisions through business intelligence.
Uses of marketing research: marketing plans, launching new products, exploring new markets, fine-tuning existing products, ad campaigns, pricing, choosing business locations.
"Firms have to manage by facts and evidence, not gut feel or opinion." How a firm handles marketing information is the difference between winning and losing. Business success needs a sustainable, cutting-edge knowledge base (knowledge management).
Three developments increase the need for information:
- From local → national → global markets
- From buyer needs → wants
- From price → non-price competition
Marketing information is any marketing-related data that is readily useful to decision makers in a given situation.
Benefits of marketing information
| Area | Benefits |
|---|---|
| Planning | Tap opportunities, build defences against threats, spot changing trends quickly, get market intelligence |
| Implementation | Deliver customer-oriented 4Ps, better campaigns (target audience, media choice), build customer relationships (relationships rest on customer knowledge) |
| Control | Raises the quality of all marketing decisions, which is the essence of effective control |
2Three types of marketing data
| Type | What it is | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Internal data | Information the company collects about customers and prospects during its own operations | Leads, segmentation data (location, gender, age, behaviour), web traffic, sales patterns, billing (spend, timing), support tickets, satisfaction. Increasingly held in shared databases: enterprise systems and CRM |
| Competitive intelligence | Information to understand competitors and market dynamics | Product info, market share and penetration, pricing strategy, positioning and messaging (including the search keywords they dominate), win/loss analysis. Sources: competitor websites, social media, press releases, industry newsletters, blogs, conferences |
| Marketing research | A systematic process for identifying opportunities and solving problems using customer insights from collected and analysed information | Surveys, focus groups, experiments |
Large databases combine demographics, in-store and online purchase history, search terms, page views and social posts. Data mining algorithms find patterns and recommend ways to increase sales, e.g. which behaviours predict a high lifetime value. This links to the Data Mining module!
3The marketing information system (MIS)
A marketing information system consists of people, equipment and procedures to gather, sort, analyse, evaluate and distribute needed, timely and accurate information to marketing decision makers.
It has four components (Kotler, 1998):
- Internal records system
- Marketing intelligence system
- Marketing research system
- Marketing decision support system (MDSS)
| Component | What it does |
|---|---|
| 1. Internal records | Basic data from daily operations. (a) The order-to-remittance cycle is the heart of the system: orders → documents → data. (b) Sales reporting system: up-to-date sales reports, automated in online systems. (c) Databases, data warehouses, data mining |
| 2. Marketing intelligence | Everyday information about developments in the environment. Managers scan in 4 ways: undirected viewing (general exposure, no purpose) · conditioned viewing (directed exposure, no active search) · informal search (limited, unstructured effort for specific information) · formal search (deliberate, planned methodology) |
| 3. Marketing research | Systematic design, collection, analysis and reporting of data on a specific marketing situation: a market survey, product preference test, regional sales forecast, advertising effectiveness study |
| 4. MDSS | A coordinated collection of data, systems, tools and techniques with software and hardware to interpret information and turn it into a basis for marketing action |
Suppliers of marketing research
| Type | What they do |
|---|---|
| Syndicated-service firms | Gather periodic consumer and trade data and sell it to many clients (e.g. Nielsen) |
| Custom research firms | Carry out specific projects for one client; the report belongs to the client |
| Specialty-line firms | Provide specialised services to other research firms, e.g. field service (interviewing) |
Common research subjects:
- environmental factors (economy, law, trends, technology, culture)
- customer attitudes, behaviours and perceptions
- product research (gaps, concept testing, market sizing, feature priorities, pricing, naming, positioning)
- marketing, advertising and promotion research (segmentation, messages, media, sponsorships, packaging)
- corporate research (reputation, brand building, M&A, partnerships)
Research is wise when a decision involves a significant change in direction. Projects range from a few hours in-house to over a year at a cost of hundreds of thousands.
4Types of marketing research
By objective
| Type | Purpose | Methods / example |
|---|---|---|
| Exploratory | Little is known: gain insights, clarify concepts, formulate the problem and hypotheses, eliminate impractical ideas | Secondary data, observation, expert consultation, feedback |
| Descriptive | Test hypotheses: describe who, what, how many. Measures frequencies and correlations | Who are the buyers? How is it consumed? What % use it? Demand forecast? |
| Causal | Establish cause and effect between variables | If we change the packaging, what happens to durability or sales? (experiments) |
| Predictive | Forecast market variables | Future sales, growth projections, test markets for a new product |
By type of data
🗣 Qualitative research
Feelings, attitudes, opinions, thoughts: the why behind behaviour. Small samples, depth and insight.
- Focus group: 6–12 people discuss a topic, led by a moderator
- Depth interview: extensive one-on-one, open-ended questions
- Photo-ethnography: photographing behaviours and emotions instead of asking
🔢 Quantitative research
Hard facts and statistics: how many, how often, what proportion. Large samples, statistical significance.
- Telephone surveys: a representative sample, closed-ended (yes/no) answers
- Personal interviews: at a central location or at home; open and closed questions
- Web surveys: emailed questionnaires to large groups, anytime and anywhere
- Hybrid: two or more methods combined
5The marketing research process
- Define the problem & research objectives
- Develop the research plan & collect data
- Analyse the information
- Present the findings
1. Define the problem and objectives
- Convert the management (decision) problem into a research problem.
- "A well-defined problem is half solved." Define it neither too narrowly nor too broadly.
- State the research objectives as research questions.
2. Develop the research plan and collect data
The plan covers five decisions:
| Decision | Options |
|---|---|
| A. Data source | Primary data: freshly gathered for this specific purpose. Secondary data: already exists, gathered for another purpose |
| B. Research approach | Observational, focus-group, survey, behavioural data, experimental |
| C. Research instrument | Questionnaire (structure, question types, wording) · psychological tools (laddering, depth interviews) · mechanical devices (eye trackers, meters) |
| D. Sampling plan | Sampling unit (who?) · sample size (how many?) · sampling procedure (how chosen?) |
| E. Contact method | Mail questionnaire, personal interview, arranged interview, online |
The lesson PDF's definitions are reversed. The correct ones are:
- Primary data is collected fresh for the current project (your own survey).
- Secondary data already exists, collected for another purpose (census reports, company records, published studies).
3. Analyse the information
Tabulate the data, build frequency distributions, compute averages and measures of dispersion for the major variables, and interpret the findings.
4. Present the findings
Present the information to the relevant decision makers so they can make the right decisions.
Interpret the findings carefully 26:20. Wrong interpretation leads to wrong decisions, so marketers must find the insight, the message in the findings, and present it convincingly to management.
A footwear company sends two salespeople to an African market to see whether there's demand for shoes. Both observe the same thing: nobody wears shoes there.
- The first reports: "Terrible market. No one wears shoes, so there's no potential."
- The second reports: "Wonderful market. No one wears shoes yet, so we can create the market and become the leader."
Identical data, opposite conclusions. Interpreting findings needs creativity and insight, not just statistics.
6Why marketing research fails
| Issue | Explanation |
|---|---|
| 1. Narrow conception of research | Managers treat it as fact-finding: "design a questionnaire, survey, report", without defining the problem or the decisions needed. When it's useless, they conclude research is useless |
| 2. Uneven calibre of researchers | Treated as a clerical activity, so it gets low pay and weak researchers, which brings poor results and reinforces the prejudice: a vicious circle |
| 3. Poor framing of the problem | New Coke: lots of taste research, but the real issue was how consumers felt about Coca-Cola as a brand, not taste in isolation |
| 4. Late and occasionally wrong findings | Managers want accurate, conclusive results tomorrow, but good research takes time and money |
| 5. Personality and presentation differences | Managers want concrete, simple, certain answers; reports seem abstract, complicated, tentative. Progressive firms put researchers in product teams |
Expect:
- Why marketing information matters (the three developments, plus the benefits)
- The three types of data
- MIS components (with the 4 scanning modes)
- Types of research (exploratory, descriptive, causal, predictive)
- Qualitative vs quantitative with methods
- The 4-step research process (and the 5 plan decisions)
- Barriers to research (New Coke)
- The debate "quantitative vs qualitative": the best answer is both, matched to the objective
7Quiz 07: model answer
From Week 08/Quiz 07.docx in the Marketing folder.
Question: Compare and contrast the different types of marketing research and their tools.
What the model answer covers:
- Descriptive research
- Exploratory research
- Predictive research
- Causal research
- Quantitative vs qualitative tools
8Quick revision sheet
| Concept | Remember it as |
|---|---|
| Why information | Facts, not gut feel; global, wants, non-price competition |
| Data types | Internal · competitive intelligence · marketing research |
| MIS | People + equipment + procedures; internal records · intelligence · research · MDSS |
| Intelligence scanning | Undirected · conditioned · informal search · formal search |
| Research suppliers | Syndicated · custom · specialty-line |
| Research types | Exploratory (insight) · descriptive (who/how many) · causal (cause-effect) · predictive (forecast) |
| Qualitative | Focus group (6–12), depth interview, photo-ethnography |
| Quantitative | Telephone, personal, web, hybrid surveys |
| Process | Define → plan & collect → analyse → present |
| Plan decisions | Data source · approach · instrument · sampling · contact |
| Primary vs secondary | New for this study vs already existing |
| Failures | Narrow view · weak researchers · poor framing (New Coke) · slow/late · style clash |
?Self-check quiz
10 questions on this week. Answer them all, then press Check my answers. Your best and latest scores are saved and shown on the subject page.