Managing market

information to gain
customer insights

 Customer

insights:

fresh understandings of customers and the

marketplace derived from marketing information that
become the basis for creating customer value and
relationship.
Marketing

information system:

people and procedures for assessing information

needs, developing the needed information, and helping
decision makers to use the information to generate and
validate actionable customer and market insight.

Developing Marketing information:

Internal Database:
electronic collections of consumer and
market information obtained from data sources
within the company network.

Marketing Intelligence:
the systematic collection and analysis of
publicly available information about consumers,
competition, and developments in the marketing
environment.

 Marketing

Research:

the systematic design, collection,

analysis, and reporting of data relevant to
a specific marketing situation facing an
organization.

 Defining

the problem and research Objectives:

Marketing managers and researchers must work closely together to define the
problem and agree on research objectives.
A marketing research project might have one of three types of objectives.
Exploratory research:
marketing research to gather preliminary information that will help define
problems and suggest hypotheses . (case studies, expert interviews and literature

search)

Descriptive research:
marketing research to better describe marketing problems, situation or
markets, such as the market potential for a product or the demographics and
attitudes of consumers. (market potential, market share, pricing research,
distribution research)

Causal research:
marketing research to test hypotheses about cause-and-effect
relationship.

 Defining

the research plan:

once the research problems and objectives have been defined, researchers
must determine the exact information needed, develop a plan to gather it
and present the plan to management.
This plan tells about the sources of existing data, determine the specific
research approaches, contact methods, sampling plan, and instruments
that will use to gather new data.
The research plan should be presented in a written proposal.
To meet the information needs we can get secondary data, primary data,
or both.
Secondary data:
information that already exists some where, having been collected for
another purpose.

Primary data:
information collected for the specific purpose at hand.

 Gathering

Companys internal database can provide secondary data.

Companies can buy secondary data reports from outside suppliers
like AC Nielsen.
They can get data by commercial data base (computerized
collection of information available from online commercial sources
or via the internet) like dialog, proQuest.
the search engines can also be used to gather data.

Primary

Secondary Data:

Data Collection:

the researchers must carefully gather the primary data.

They need to make sure that it will be relevant, accurate, current
and unbiased.
To design a plan for primary data collection we consider following
steps.

Research Approaches:
following research approaches are used to
collect primary data.

Observational

Research:

gathering primary data by observing relevant people, actions

and situations.
Observational research can obtain information that people are
unwilling or unable to provide.
Observation can be a difficult tool to interpret as we can not
observe some ones feelings and attitudes.
Many companies now use Ethnographic research (a form of
observational research that involves sending trained observers
to watch and interact with consumers in their natural habitat.

Survey Research:

It is the most widely used method.

This approach is used to gathering primary data by
asking people questions about their knowledge,
attitudes, preferences, and buying behavior.

Experimental Research:
gathering primary data by selecting matched groups of
subjects, giving them different treatments, controlling
related factors, and checking for differences in group
responses.

Contact Methods:
Information can be collected through following
mediums
Mail:

mail questionnaires can be a cost effective way of gathering

large amount of information.
This interview is not flexible
The mail survey take longer to complete and the response
rate is often very low.
Researchers have little control over the sample, as they are
not fully confident that who will be responding to this email.
It can not be a good tool to gather information in some
countries because of the low literacy rate.

 Telephone

Is the best method to gather information

quickly.
This interview is flexible.
Interviewers can explain difficult questions,
and depending on the response they can even
skip some questions.
Response rate of telephonic interview is high
then mail.
The cost in this case is high and some times a
respondent may not feel comfortable to
discuss personal questions.

Personal

Interview:

Interviews:

Personal interviews are of two types,

Individual interview

 Individual

Individual interviewing involves talking with people in their

homes or offices, on the street, or in shopping malls.
Such interview is flexible.
trained interviewers can guide interviews, explain difficult
questions, and explore issues such as situation required.
This is a costly method of gathering data.

Focus

interview:

Group interviews:

Six to 10 people are invited to meet with a trained moderator

to talk about a product.
It is a source of easily available educated interview in a low
cost.
The moderator encourage free and easy discussion, at the
same time he focuses on the discussion.

Online Marketing Research :

Collecting primary data online through internet surveys, online

focus groups, web-based experiments, or tracking consumers
online behavior.

Sampling Plan:

Sample:
a segment of the population selected for
marketing research to represent the population as a whole.
While determining sample we firstly determine that who is
to be surveyed?
Secondly we decide that how many people should be
surveyed?
How should the people in sample be chosen?

Probability sample:

Simple random sample: (every member have a equal chance to be a

sample)
Stratified random sample: (population is divided into exclusive
groups such as age group, and random samples are drawn from each
group)
Cluster sample: (a whole group is used as a sample in cluster
sampling)

Non probability Sample:

Convenience sample: (the researcher select the easiest population

member)
Judgment sample: (the researcher uses his or her judgment to select
population member)
Quota Sample: (the researcher finds and interviews a prescribed
number of people in each of several categories)

Research Instrument:

in collecting primary data marketing researchers have a

choice of two main research instruments.
Questionnaires:
The most common instrument of research.
There are different ways to ask questions in a
questionnaire.

Close-ended-questions: it includes all the possible answers.

Open-ended-questions: allow respondents to answer and can
help to explore.

Mechanical Instruments:

The use of mechanical devices to know about the people response.

 Implementing

here the marketing research plan now put into action.

This involves collecting, processing and analyzing the
information.
Here researchers must take a great care that all the plan
has implemented carefully.

Interpreting

the research plan:

and reporting the findings:

The market researcher after implementation researcher

must now interpret the findings, draw conclusions, and
report them to management.