Marketing Research Kit For Dummies E-Book

Michael Hyman

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 563

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

The tools you need to identify, obtain, record, and analyze data Sure, access to data is faster and easier to obtain than ever before, but how do you cut through the clutter of information to find what's most useful and organize it to suit your purposes? Marketing Research Kit For Dummies supplies a brimming box of tools that help you mine mountains of data, find the sources you need, and focus your marketing plan. Whether you're an entrepreneur, a small business owner, or a marketer in a large organization, this powerful resource and companion CD provide you with hands-on tools you need to identify, obtain, record, and analyze secondary, data-electronic and print-for developing or revising a marketing plan, launching a new product or service, or implementing long-term strategic planning. It also offers clear, in-depth instructions and customizable forms for conducting your own primary research. * Includes complete instructions for writing a research plan, conducting depth interviews, and focus groups * Fully explains the process of sampling, analyzing data, and reporting results * Features tips on developing questionnaires for face-to-face, Internet, and postal surveys * Helps you keep an eye on your competition and analyze their results When money is tight and everything is on the line, you need to make sure you've done your homework. You need Marketing Research Kit For Dummies. Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

Leseprobe

Marketing Research Kit For Dummies®

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

Conventions Used in This Book

What You’re Not to Read

Foolish Assumptions

How This Book Is Organized

Part I: Marketing Research: Learn It, Live It, Love It

Part II: Surveys: A Great Way to Research

Part III: More Methods to Meet Your Needs

Part IV: Collecting, Analyzing, and Reporting Your Data

Part V: The Part of Tens

Icons Used in This Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I: Marketing Research: Learn It, Live It, Love It

Chapter 1: Seeing What Marketing Research Can Do for You

What Is Marketing Research?

Comparing Marketing Research to Marketing Information Systems

Using Research for Problem Identification and Problem Solving

Looking at problem-identification research

Becoming familiar with problem-solving research

The Most Appropriate Research at Each Stage of the Product Life Cycle

Making the Big Decision to Do (Or Not to Do) Marketing Research

When you should do marketing research

When you shouldn’t do marketing research

Chapter 2: Following the Stages of the Marketing Research Process

Working Your Way through the Stages of Research

Stage 1: Identifying the problem

Stage 2: Designing the study

Stage 3: Selecting a sample

Stage 4: Gathering the data

Stage 5: Analyzing the results

Stage 6: Communicating the findings and their implications

Anticipating Outcomes

Chapter 3: Surveying the Types of Research You May Do

Recognizing the Difference between Basic and Applied Research

Basic: The research you probably don’t care about

Applied: The research you want to do

Exploratory, Descriptive, and Causal Research: Picking Your Approach

Getting started: Exploratory research

Describing your market environment: Descriptive research

Identifying relationships: Causal research

Comparing Longitudinal Research and Cross-Sectional Research

Chapter 4: Believing In Marketing Research Ethics

A Solid, To-the-Point Ethics Checklist

Keeping in Mind a Researcher’s Obligation to Respondents

Obtaining informed consent

Avoiding deception

Respecting respondent privacy

Avoiding Abuse of Research Clients

Making sure proprietary stuff stays proprietary

Conducting unnecessary research

Performing wrong or irrelevant research

Ignoring errors in ongoing studies

Using unwarranted shortcuts

Recognizing Clients’ Obligations to Researchers

Remembering Clients’ Obligations to Respondents

Recalling that Respondents Have Obligations, Too!

Chapter 5: Working with Independent Marketing Researchers

Making the Choice to Solicit Outside Expertise

Sources of Inexpensive Research Help

College and university students

College and university research centers

College and university faculty

Small local firms

Qualities to Look for in a Researcher

Helpful throughout the process

Proper communication and analytical skills

A focus on partnership

High professional standards

Part II: Surveys: A Great Way to Research

Chapter 6: Different Types of Surveys You May Use

Conducting Face-to-Face Interviews

Examining the general face-to-face setup

Performing intercept interviews

Conducting Telephone Surveys

Reviewing the contemporary methods for conducting phone interviews

Reviewing the pros and cons

Noting the problems with telephone directories

Categorizing Self-Administered, Paper-and-Pencil Surveys

Mail surveys

Administered surveys

Publication inserts and fax surveys

Opting for Self-Administered, Electronic Surveys

Browser-based surveys

E-mail-based surveys

Interactive kiosks

Internet samples

Logging Behaviors with Diary Panels

Strengths and weaknesses of diary panels

Questions answerable with diary panel data

A sample diary page

Factors to Consider When Choosing a Data-Collection Method

Understanding the Problems with Commercial Lists

Chapter 7: Recognizing Errors in Survey Research

Respondent-Centric Survey Errors: Reviewing the Components

Random sampling error

Systematic error

Understanding why respondents provide inaccurate information

Tackling Nonresponse Error

Understanding the reasons people become nonrespondents

Encouraging respondent cooperation

Minimizing error by boosting your response rates

Managing Administrative Error

Interviewer cheating

Data processing errors

Looking at Reliability, Validity, Generalizability, and Sensitivity

Recognizing the difference between reliability and validity

Determining reliability and validity

Minimizing variation in responses

Testing for reliability and validity

Valuing study generalizability

Valuing measurement sensitivity

Chapter 8: Asking People about Their Attitudes

What’s an Attitude?

Recognizing and Using the Three Attitude Components

Reviewing the Classic Hierarchy-of-Effects Model

Developing Sound Attitude Measures

Understanding the importance of theory in measuring attitudes

Identifying your conceptual and operational definitions

Becoming Familiar with the Attitude Measurement Process

Strongly Recommended: The Popular Likert Scale

Constructing Likert scales

Structuring Likert-type scales

Semantic Differential (SD) Scales

Reviewing the limitations of SD scales

Limitations of profile analysis

Chapter 9: Writing Good Questions

Comparing Open-Ended and Close-Ended Questions

Looking at open-ended questions

Explaining close-ended questions

Writing Good Questions

Only write questions that address your research problem

Write clear and precise questions

Include only mutually exclusive and exhaustive responses

Use natural and familiar language

Avoid leading questions

Ask one question at a time

Soften the impact of potentially objectionable questions

Generating Reliable and Valid Answers

Consider memory effects

Don’t ask respondents to make unnecessary calculations

Steer clear of impossibly specific questions

Control for order bias

Always provide equal comparisons

State both sides of an attitude scale in question stems (lead lines)

Ask questions as complete sentences

Distinguish undecided responses from neutral ones

Formatting a Purchase Intent Scale

Designing Effective Graphic Rating Scales

Working with Comparative Scales

Ranking scales

Paired-comparison scales

Constant-sum scales

Q-sort

Dollar-metric scale

Chapter 10: Designing Good Questionnaires

What’s in a Good Questionnaire?

Finding qualified respondents with screeners and filter questions

Familiarizing yourself with skip patterns

Organizing your questions

Providing clear instructions

Creating an effective layout

Formatting consistently to guide respondents through your questionnaire

Choosing simple answer formats

Reviewing Guidelines for Cover Letters

Using Browser-Based Questionnaires

Understanding the advantages of browser-based questionnaires

Visualizing browser-based questionnaires

Reviewing some common on-screen display options

Creating an Internet survey

Pretesting: Ensuring Your Questionnaire Is a Good One

Chapter 11: Deciding on a Sample Type

Introducing Basic Sampling Terms

Getting Familiar with Nonprobability and Probability Samples

Examining the different types of nonprobability samples

Describing the different types of probability samples

Balancing probability samples

Selecting a Sample: The Eight Steps

Choosing either a probability or nonprobability sample

Defining your target population

Selecting your sample frame

Identifying sample units

Planning the procedure for selecting sample units

Collecting Samples for Online Research

Chapter 12: Selecting a Sample Size

Examining the Relationship between Sample Size and Random Sampling Error

Practical Criteria for Determining the Size of a Probability Sample

Approaches for Determining Sample Size

Using Sample Size Formulas and Calculators

Part III: More Methods to Meet Your Needs

Chapter 13: Secondary Data: What Is It and How Do You Use It?

Understanding Uses for Secondary Data

Using secondary data for fact-finding

Regression-type model building

Recognizing Internal Secondary Data

Looking at the advantages

Noticing the disadvantages

Improving Efficiency with External Secondary Data

Examining sources

Noting the advantages

Staying mindful of the disadvantages

Evaluating External Secondary Data

Asking the right questions

Assessing Web sites

Being leery of non-U.S. secondary data

Taking care with percentages and index numbers

Chapter 14: Using In-Depth Interviews and Focus Groups

Seeing How Qualitative Methods Can Help You

Conducting In-Depth Interviews

Describing two types of in-depth interviews

Seeing how in-depth interviews should be conducted

Carrying Out Focus Group Interviews

Characterizing focus group interviews

Reviewing the advantages of focus groups over in-depth interviews

Knowing what to include in a recruitment screener

Acting as a focus group moderator

Planning and executing your focus group

Classifying online focus groups

Chapter 15: Projective Techniques and Obser vational Methods

Putting Projective Techniques to Work

Exploring the thematic apperception test

Using word association

Understanding attitudes with sentence completion

Assessing participants’ ideas with third-person role-playing

Scrutinizing Behavior with Observational Methods

Classifying observation research

Weighing the pros and cons of observation

Explaining the types of observation

Chapter 16: Conducting Experiments and Test Marketing

Discovering a Proper Approach to Experiment Basics

Establishing causal relationships

Understanding design fundamentals

Controlling for extraneous variation

Understanding the differences between laboratory and field experiments

Examining internal validity and its threats

Simple Experiments for You to Consider

Entrepreneur examples

Professional examples

Retailer examples

Restaurateur examples

Getting a Handle on Test Marketing

Traditional test markets

Simulated test markets

Controlled test markets

Virtual test markets

Part IV: Collecting, Analyzing, and Reporting Your Data

Chapter 17: Collecting and Preparing Your Data

Determining Who Conducts Fieldwork

Using professional fieldworkers

Monitoring in-house fieldwork

Taking Care of Data Preparation and Entry

Knowing the basic terms

Beginning with pre-entry preparation

Coding your responses

Creating and cleaning data files

Controlling missing responses

Chapter 18: Tools for Analyzing Your Data

Working with Descriptive Analysis

Summarizing data with tabulation

Measuring central tendency

Increasing understanding with measures of dispersion

Computing deviation scores

Making Your Data More Useable

Converting with data transformation

Knowing when to recode your data

Considering More Than One Variable: Cross-Tabulation and Banner Tables

Examining the basics of cross-tabulation

Interpreting cross-tabulation tables

Running a chi-square (X2) test on a cross-tabulation table

Exploring the effect of moderator variables

Avoiding banner tables

Becoming Familiar with Correlation

Understanding the difference betweencorrelation and causation

Associating between measures with the correlation coefficient (rxy)

Setting up a correlation matrix

Chapter 19: Creating Effective Research Reports

Understanding the Objectives of a Research Report

Crafting Your Research Report

Introducing your research with the prefatory parts

Using the main body to explain your research

Presenting supplemental information in appendixes

Exploring the Writing Process

Steps to a winning report

Do’s and don’ts of report writing

Preparing Your Presentation

Charts and Graphs: Depicting Your Data

Cutting your info into slices: Pie charts

Showing changes in variables with bar charts

Comparing relationships over time: Multi-line graphs

Plotting many data points with scatterplots

Applying area graphs when bar charts aren’t enough

Depicting data with box and whisker plots

Part V: The Part of Tens

Chapter 20: Ten Useful Research Tips for Business Operators

Look to University Help First

Take a Statistics or Research Class

View Research as an Ongoing Process

Avoid Research Method Myopia

Start Researching Only After You Know What You Want to Know

Don’t Ignore Opportunity Costs

Pretest Everything

Study Your Customers Thoroughly

Make Incentives a Part of Your Research

Share Research Results with Employees

Chapter 21: Ten Statistical Methods that You (or Your Research Consultant) May Use

Independent Samples T-Test

Paired Samples T-Test

One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)

Linear Multiple Regression (LMR)

Conjoint Analysis

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Multidimensional Scaling (MDS)

Cluster Analysis

Discriminant Analysis

Logistic Regression

Appendix: About the DVD

Cost-and-benefit analysis for marketing research

Marketing research ethics

Sample telephone screener questionnaire

Sample telephone questionnaires

Sample self-administered questionnaires

Focus groups

Data analysis

Sample research reports

Miscellaneous resources

Chapter figure documents

Marketing Research Kit For Dummies®

by Michael R. Hyman, PhD and Jeremy J. Sierra, PhD

Marketing Research Kit For Dummies®

Published byWiley Publishing, Inc.111 River St.Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

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About the Authors

Michael R. Hyman, PhD, is the Stan Fulton Chair of Marketing at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Maryland and his master’s and doctoral degrees at Purdue University. Back in the day, he fancied himself a Texan — he was a faculty member at the University of Houston and then later at the University of North Texas — but he has since become a loyal green-chile-eating, motorcycle-riding, non-tie-wearing New Mexican.

Mike has taught marketing research at the undergraduate, masters, and doctoral levels for more years than he cares to admit (30 and counting). Although they occasionally suggest that his exams are overly challenging, students never complain that his research courses are poorly structured or lack sufficient rigor.

Roughly 20 years ago, Mike toyed with the idea of leaving academia for full-time consulting. For almost three years, he consulted extensively with major hospitality industry clients. After straddling the university-consulting fence during this period, he decided — with the help of several perpetually annoying colleagues — that he was best suited to university life. Although he still accepts the occasional consulting gig, he has never regretted that decision. Nonetheless, he learned more about “real world” marketing research during those three years than during all his years of schooling.

Golfing and fishing are Mike’s only “Type B” activities. When not teaching, spending time with his family, playing poker, or following the exploits of his beloved New York Yankees (a remnant of his misspent youth), he’s usually preoccupied with some writing project. His roughly 70 academic journal articles, 45 conference papers (10 which won a “best paper” award), 2 books, 15 other academic works, and 20 nonacademic works attest to this writing compulsion. He’s also a sucker for professional service requests; among other activities, he’s been talked into serving on 13 journal editorial boards, reviewing an excessive number of manuscripts and books each year, serving as a journal editor, and coordinating two different doctoral programs.

Jeremy J. Sierra, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Texas State University — San Marcos. He teaches a wide array of marketing courses, including Marketing Research, which he has taught the past four years. Prior to joining the marketing faculty at Texas State, he taught at Northern Arizona University. He earned his MBA. and PhD from New Mexico State University and his BS in Hotel and Restaurant Management from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Before entering academia, Jeremy accumulated ten years of experience in the hospitality industry, where he acquired his knack for cost controls, customer relationship management, and in-store design. His industry experience ranges from entrepreneurial restaurant establishments to high-end resorts (for example, Scottsdale Princess and Scottsdale Plaza Resort) and golf club environments (for example, Frenchman’s Creek Country Club in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida).

Jeremy’s research interests include advertising effects, consumer behavior, marketing ethics, and services marketing. Jeremy’s research is published in the following journals: Journal of Academic Ethics; Journal of Advertising; Journal of Business and Management; Journal of Current Issues & Research in Advertising; Journal of Marketing Education; Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice; and Journal of Services Marketing. Jeremy has presented numerous conference proceedings, including two “best paper” awards, and has received a research grant from the Research Enhancement Program at Texas State. He is an avid golfer and an ardent Nebraska football fan, and he also is hopeful that this book will make you a better marketing researcher.

Authors' Acknowledgments

Mike: To read about every person who ever inspired me, and as a result this book, would be at best a mind-numbing experience. That said, certain people were more directly and indirectly influential in its creation and therefore especially deserving of acknowledgment.

My wife, Stacey, and sons, Aaron, Derek, and Evan, should be commended for their tolerance with my oft-uttered “Daddy would love to spend time with you now, but he’s got to work on his book.” Of course, the boys’ college funds will benefit from their patience, so I prefer to rationalize their considerateness as “enlightened self–interest.” Regardless, they are my primary motivation for awakening each morning. (Translation: They arise at 6 a.m. and make enough noise to wake the dead.)

My parents, Aaron and Selma, reinforced my genetic predisposition toward workaholism with a perpetual Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card. They always forgave any personal transgression — such as forgetting to call on their anniversary — when I could attribute it to my preoccupation with a school or work-related project. In essence, they encouraged the type of self-absorption requisite to a large writing project like this book.

Robin Peterson, a partner in crime and the best golfing buddy on the planet — when he doesn’t almost flip our cart — effectively discouraged me from dwelling on his many non-lucrative book-authoring efforts. Sadly, he often failed to convince me that I would benefit more from an afternoon of golf than an afternoon of writing. Now that this book is finished, he will ensure that I renew my support of the golf ball industry.

Unlike the drama junkies who inflict discord and dysfunction on many academic departments, my colleagues at New Mexico State University are truly wonderful people. No one could find better co-workers and friends than Pookie Sautter, Jerry Hampton, Kelly Tian, Kevin Boberg, Bruce Huhmann, Michelle Jasso, Collin Payne, Mihai Niculescu, Pat Gavin, and Virginia Espinosa. By making my life so easy, they allowed me the time and energy needed to write this book.

I would be remiss if I failed to thank the many students throughout the years who enrolled in my marketing research course. They taught me more about teaching than all other sources combined and had an enormous influence on the quality of this book.

Finally, I also would be remiss if I failed to thank my Wiley editorial teammates for their trust and patience. When I initially panicked over the magnitude of this project, Mike Baker repeatedly reassured me that Jeremy and I could complete it. Natalie Harris, Jessica Smith, and Christy Pingleton ensured that the text never drifted into obtuse esoteric academese (like the last phrase). Thanks also to Jenny Swisher and the Media Development team for their help in setting up the DVD.

Jeremy: For brevity, I would like to acknowledge a few essential people (although there are a host of others) that have helped me along the way. For her love, companionship, and support, I would like to thank my wife, Dian; she is the best co-pilot a guy could ask for. To my Mom who showed me persistence growing up, although I never asked her what it was. To my Dad who would hit countless fly balls to me and throw hours of batting practice; these were his ways of communicating that in life, your toughest competitor is yourself. To my Grandma, for her love and support throughout my life, especially during my 11-year, 3-degree process. I also would like to acknowledge and thank my mentors, colleagues, students, and former professors for their insight about marketing. Finally, to the underdog, which I usually side with unless they’re playing Nebraska: You inspire and make the world a better place. Keep the upsets coming.

Dedication

Mike: To Aaron, father and son.

Jeremy: To my wife and family, the underdog, and the loving memory of my Mom.

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Introduction

If you’re reading these words, it’s unlikely that you’re thinking “Marketing research . . . I’d rather watch paint dry than read about, let alone conduct, marketing research. What could be duller?” Perhaps we’re a bit biased, but we believe that marketing research is exciting because it’s an important source of information that can help you make better business decisions. It touches every aspect of marketing practice.

Many undergraduate students believe that successful marketing practitioners merely need to learn a few broad principles and to apply their common sense. Although we generally disagree with that assessment, it’s particularly false for marketing research. A marketing study is only as good as the quality of its weakest of many components. In other words, the devil is in the details — and we’re your friendly neighborhood demons.

About This Book

Among others, our main goals for this book are to make you an informed consumer of marketing research and to prepare you to conduct a basic survey — most likely a customer satisfaction survey — for yourself or your organization. To accomplish these goals, we must show you what is and isn’t proper for good marketing research. That way, you’ll know what should be done and what should be avoided (like slivovitz, haggis, tripe, and overeating on Thanksgiving).

If we achieve these goals, the probability that you’ll perform and acquire useful marketing research is far higher. You may conduct research yourself, or you may hire someone to conduct research on your behalf. Either way, it’s a waste of time, effort, and money to conduct a study and then discover that it was carried out incorrectly and is worthless for making better marketing decisions.

In this book, we discuss the many skills associated with conducting a successful marketing research study, such as the following:

Identifying a research problem

Developing a series of research questions related to that problem

Writing good questions and designing a good questionnaire that will explore those research questions

Fielding a survey and avoiding common survey research errors

Designing a qualitative study — like a focus group — that will explore your research questions

Collecting respondents’ data, entering it into a computer spreadsheet, analyzing it, and interpreting the results

Writing a report that can help your organization or encourage a loan officer to lend you (and perhaps your associates) money for a business venture

Conventions Used in This Book

Here are some conventions that we use in this book:

Whenever we introduce a word or phrase that may not be familiar to you, we put that word in italics. You can bet that there’s a nearby definition, explanation, or vivid example.

We use bold for key words in bulleted lists and the action part of numbered steps.

On occasion, we include URLs for Web sites that we think may interest you. Those Web addresses appear in monofont, which distinguishes them from the rest of the text.

When this book was printed, some Web addresses may have needed to break across two lines of text. If that happened, rest assured that we haven’t put in any extra characters (such as hyphens) to indicate the break. So, when using one of these Web addresses, just type in exactly what you see in this book, pretending as though the line break doesn’t exist.

What You’re Not to Read

We wrote this book to help you easily find and understand what you need to know about marketing research. Because you may be too busy to read every word, we’ve designed the book so it’s easy to recognize less critical text. Unless you’re super-compulsive or short on reading material, you can skip the following:

Text in sidebars: The shaded boxes that appear occasionally are called sidebars. They include asides and additional but noncritical detail.

Text associated with the Technical Stuff icon: Skipping this interesting but advanced text should be okay if your goal is to conduct a basic customer satisfaction survey.

Foolish Assumptions

This book presents such a broad range of information that we can’t presume we know exactly why you’re reading it. Here are some good — and perhaps not so good — guesses:

You’re thinking about starting a business and you need credible market analyses — of customers, competitors, and the business environment — to convince investors or a loan officer that this business is likely to succeed.

You already own (or co-own) a business and you want marketing research that can help you decide how to grow (or at least maintain) that business.

You want to know the ways that marketing research can improve marketing-related decisions.

You want to improve your financial or nonfinancial success. For example, you want to boost your market share, improve consumers’ responses to your brand, or increase your gross margin percent.

You don’t know your targeted customers or competition as much as you’d like to know them.

You’re a student enrolled in a marketing research course and you want a readable and affordable text without 10,000 footnotes.

You’re not a math, statistics, or econometrics whiz.

You’d rather read this book than our academic journal articles.

We also hope we’re safe in assuming that you know your PC’s DVD tray isn’t a cup holder. Seriously, we assume you know how to use a word processor (to create questionnaires and write reports) and spreadsheet software (to analyze the data you collect).

How This Book Is Organized

We’ve grouped the chapters in this book into five parts, each one focusing on a particular aspect of marketing research. The following sections provide an overview of the content in each part.

Part I: Marketing Research: Learn It, Live It, Love It

This part begins by introducing marketing research and the approaches used to create a research plan. We summarize the research process and the basic types of research you may conduct: exploratory, descriptive, and causal. We then discuss the ethical do’s and don’ts for research doers and research consumers. The part concludes with how to choose, work with, and assess the efforts of marketing researchers you may hire.

Part II: Surveys: A Great Way to Research

This part begins with an overview of the different types of surveys and the relative strengths and weaknesses of each type. Next, we discuss strategies you can use to boost the reliability and validity of respondents’ answers as well as to increase response rates and control research-related costs. We then introduce attitude research, including information about question forms such as Likert and semantic differential scales. We also explain guidelines for question and questionnaire do’s and don’ts, including a brief overview of formatting issues and constant sum, ranking, and purchase-intention scales. We round out the part with chapters on sample type and sample size.

Part III: More Methods to Meet Your Needs

This part discusses the types of secondary data and how to use them; we emphasize important online sources and sites with links to multiple sources. Also, we discuss qualitative and observational research, with an emphasis on in-depth interviews and focus groups. Finally, we introduce experiments, including multiple examples of experiments you may run (for example, identifying effective price points, promotional efforts, and shelf/floor space organization).

Part IV: Collecting, Analyzing, and Reporting Your Data

In this part, we begin by discussing strategies for increasing respondent involvement, avoiding respondent bias, and inputting data. We then discuss how to analyze survey and internal (for existing businesses) data using Microsoft Excel or a comparable spreadsheet program. We conclude with the art of creating research reports.

Part V: The Part of Tens

Our two Part of Tens chapters provide quick and useful insights about critical marketing research do’s and don’ts. Chapter 20 offers ten essential tips for business operators. Such readers may find it useful to peruse this chapter first. Chapter 21 describes ten statistical methods that a marketing research supplier may use to analyze data. Because it focuses on uses, examples, and potential misuses for each method, the chapter is meant more for research consumers than research doers.

Also included in this part is an appendix that discusses the DVD. This appendix shows computer hardware and software requirements for accessing the DVD. It also provides a list of the DVD’s content.

Icons Used in This Book

In the margins of this book, you find the following icons — mini-graphics that denote paragraphs containing certain types of information. Here’s a list of icons we use and what they mean:

This icon highlights information that’s so important you’ll definitely want to read it (and perhaps return to it later).

Although interesting, this information isn’t critical to using or conducting marketing research. Of course, we find it fascinating — and you may too!

Based on our experience and knowledge of marketing research literature, we believe this information may prove especially helpful. These tidbits may save you time or money, or may just be nuggets of insider information.

Our warnings are meant to save you from defective studies and practices that mislead you into costly marketing mistakes.

This icon denotes information that can be accessed on the DVD.

Where to Go from Here

We designed this book with four sets of readers in mind. You may consider the following reading game plan if one of these groups describes you:

Research doers: If you’re a research doer, you may want to read this book in the following sequence: Part I, Part III, Part II, and Part IV. Without understanding the big picture (Part I), you can’t put any of our remaining discussion in the proper context. Although survey research is popular, and you’re likely to conduct a customer survey eventually, you’ll benefit from considering the alternatives first (Part III). After you decide to field a survey, you’ll benefit from discovering how to write a good questionnaire (Part II) and how to analyze the data you collect from it (Part IV). Of course, if you ultimately decide that you should find and hire a low-cost marketing research supplier, you can return to Chapter 5.

Research consumers: Other than Chapter 5, you should focus on the remaining four chapters of Part I — which provide an extensive overview of marketing research — and the two Part of Tens chapters. We meant those last two chapters predominantly for research consumers. Also, Chapter 19 indicates what you should expect from any report summarizing the results of a marketing study. Obviously, being an informed consumer requires extensive knowledge about product features, so you’ll benefit from reading additional text as it pertains to a study you’re considering.

Students: Sadly, there’s no shortcut for students, because much of our text addresses topics included in most marketing research courses. In essence, we suggest that students read our book from beginning to end. Look on the bright side: If you buy this book — rather than borrow it from a library — you’ll get your money’s worth!

Need a customer survey yesterday: If you have an immediate need to field a survey, analyze its data, and make a marketing-related decision, you’ll want to focus on Parts II and IV of this book. (That said, you should at least skim Chapter 11 to avoid a totally useless respondent pool.) You always can return to the remaining text at a later date.

Part I

Marketing Research: Learn It, Live It, Love It

In this part . . .

This part introduces you to marketing research and tells you how to begin the process of creating a research plan. In Chapters 1 through 3, we summarize the research process and the basic types of research you may conduct. In Chapter 4, we discuss the ethical do’s and don’ts for research doers and research consumers. Chapter 5 shows you how to choose, work with, and assess the efforts of marketing researchers you may hire.

Chapter 1

Seeing What Marketing Research Can Do for You

In This Chapter

Defining marketing research

Examining marketing information systems in context of marketing research

Reviewing problem-identification research and problem-solving research

Relating the product life cycle to your research needs

Identifying when it’s wise to conduct and avoid marketing research

Marketing research is more than those annoying people who call you during dinner to ask you a series of questions. It’s also more than those oddly cheerful people at the mall — with clipboard and pencil in hand — who want to ask you seemingly innumerable questions rather than let you shop.