This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (April 2007)

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of

Marketing

Consumer marketing research (US English) or market research (British English) is a form of applied sociology that concentrates on understanding the behaviours, whims and preferences, of consumers in a market-based economy, and aims to understand the effects and comparative success of marketing campaigns. The field of consumer marketing research as a statistical science was pioneered by Arthur Nielsen with the founding of the ACNielsen Company in 1923 and later the A.C. Nielsen Center for Marketing Research. Image File history File links Wikibooks-logo-en. ... Wikibooks logo Wikibooks, previously called Wikimedia Free Textbook Project and Wikimedia-Textbooks, is a wiki for the creation of books. ... Sociology (from Latin: socius, companion; and the suffix -ology, the study of, from Greek λόγος, lógos, knowledge [1]) is the systematic and scientific study of society, including patterns of social relationships, social action, and culture[2]. Areas studied in sociology can range from the analysis of brief contacts between anonymous... Consumers refers to individuals or households that purchase and use goods and services generated within the economy. ... For the magazine, see Marketing (magazine). ... Arthur Charles Nielsen, Sr. ... ACNielsens Logo ACNielsen is an international marketing research firm, based in Schaumburg, Illinois. ... Year 1923 (MCMXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

In addition to marketing research, other forms of business research include:

• Market research (US English; in Britain market research is used for "marketing research" as well) broader in scope and examines all aspects of a business environment. It asks questions about competitors, market structure, government regulations, economic trends, technological advances, and numerous other factors that make up the business environment (see environmental scanning). Sometimes the term refers more particularly to the financial analysis of companies, industries, or sectors. In this case, financial analysts usually carry out the research and provide the results to investment advisors and potential investors.

• Product research - This looks at what products can be produced with available technology, and what new product innovations near-future technology can develop (see new product development).

• Advertising research - is a specialized form of marketing research conducted to improve the efficacy of advertising. Copy testing, also known as "pre-testing," is a form of customized research that predicts in-market performance of an ad before it airs, by analyzing audience levels of attention, brand linkage, motivation, entertainment, and communication, as well as breaking down the ad’s flow of attention and flow of emotion. Pre-testing is also used on ads still in rough (ripomatic or animatic) form. (Young, pg. 213)

Research is the scholarly or scientific practice of gathering existing or new information in order to enhance one's knowledge of a specific area. Research has many categories, from medicine to literature. Marketing research, or market research, is a form of business research and is generally divided into two categories: consumer market research and business-to-business (B2B) market research, which was previously known as industrial marketing research. Consumer marketing research studies the buying habits of individual people while business-to-business marketing research investigates the markets for products sold by one business to another. Market research is the process of systematic gathering, recording and analyzing of data about customers, competitors and the market. ... Competition is the act of striving against others for the purpose of achieving gain, such as income, pride, amusement, or dominance. ... In economics, market structure (also known as market form) describes the state of a market with respect to competition. ... For a company to gain or maintain a sustainable competitive advantage, it must be ever vigilant, watching for changes in the business environment. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... In business and engineering, new product development (NPD) is the term used to describe the complete process of bringing a new product or service to market. ... // Advertising research is a specialized form of marketing research conducted to improve the efficacy of advertising. ... // A specialized field of marketing research, copy testing is the study of television commercials prior to airing them. ...

Types of marketing research

Marketing research techniques come in many forms, including:

• [[Ad Tracking]] – periodic or continuous in-market research to monitor a brand’s performance using measures such as brand awareness, brand preference, and product usage. (Young, 2005)

• Advertising Research – used to predict copy testing or track the efficacy of advertisements for any medium, measured by the ad’s ability to get attention, communicate the message, build the brand’s image, and motivate the consumer to purchase the product or service. (Young, 2005)

• Brand equity research - how favorably do consumers view the brand?

• Brand name testing - what do consumers feel about the names of the products?

• Commercial eye tracking research - examine advertisements, package designs, websites, etc by analyzing visual behavior of the consumer

• Concept testing - to test the acceptance of a concept by target consumers

• Coolhunting - to make observations and predictions in changes of new or existing cultural trends in areas such as fashion, music, films, television, youth culture and lifestyle

• Buyer decision processes research - to determine what motivates people to buy and what decision-making process they use

• Copy testing – predicts in-market performance of an ad before it airs by analyzing audience levels of attention, brand linkage, motivation, entertainment, and communication, as well as breaking down the ad’s flow of attention and flow of emotion. (Young, p 213)

• Customer satisfaction studies - exit interviews or surveys that determine a customer's level of satisfaction with the quality of the transaction

• Demand estimation - to determine the approximate level of demand for the product

• Distribution channel audits - to assess distributors’ and retailers’ attitudes toward a product, brand, or company

• Internet strategic intelligence - searching for customer opinions in the Internet: chats, forums, web pages, blogs... where people express freely about their experiences with products, becoming strong "opinion formers"

• Marketing effectiveness and analytics - Building models and measuring results to determine the effectiveness of individual marketing activities.

• Mystery shopping - An employee or representative of the market research firm anonymously contacts a salesperson and indicates he or she is shopping for a product. The shopper then records the entire experience. This method is often used for quality control or for researching competitors' products.

• Positioning research - how does the target market see the brand relative to competitors? - what does the brand stand for?

• Price elasticity testing - to determine how sensitive customers are to price changes

• Sales forecasting - to determine the expected level of sales given the level of demand. With respect to other factors like Advertising expenditure, sales promotion etc.

• Segmentation research - to determine the demographic, psychographic, and behavioural characteristics of potential buyers

• Online panel - a group of individual who accepted to respond to marketing research online

• Store audit - to measure the sales of a product or product line at a statistically selected store sample in order to determine market share, or to determine whether a retail store provides adequate service

• Test marketing - a small-scale product launch used to determine the likely acceptance of the product when it is introduced into a wider market

• Viral Marketing Research - refers to marketing research designed to estimate the probability that specific communications will be transmitted throughout an individuals Social Network. Estimates of Social Networking Potential (SNP) are combined with estimates of selling effectiveness to estimate ROI on specific combinations of messages and media.

All of these forms of marketing research can be classified as either problem-identification research or as problem-solving research. According to Decision Analyst, “Once commercials go ‘on air,’ the only way to know if the advertising is working is tracking research. ... // Advertising research is a specialized form of marketing research conducted to improve the efficacy of advertising. ... // A specialized field of marketing research, copy testing is the study of television commercials prior to airing them. ... According to Decision Analyst, “Once commercials go ‘on air,’ the only way to know if the advertising is working is tracking research. ... This article is about the marketing concept. ... The discipline of brand management was started at Procter & Gamble PLC as a result of a famous memo by Neil H. McElroy. ... In recent years, the increased sophistication and accessibility of eye tracking technologies have generated a great deal of interest in the commercial sector. ... Concept testing is the process of using quantitative methods and qualitative methods to evaluate consumer response to a product idea prior to the introduction of a product to the market. ... Coolhunting is a term coined in the early 1990s referring to a new breed of marketing professionals, called coolhunters. ... Buyer decision processes are the decision making processes undertaken by consumers in regard to a potential market transaction before, during, and after the purchase of a product or service. ... // A specialized field of marketing research, copy testing is the study of television commercials prior to airing them. ... The supply and demand model describes how prices vary as a result of a balance between product availability at each price (supply) and the desires of those with purchasing power at each price (demand). ... Wikibooks [[wikibooks:|]] has more about this subject: Marketing Distribution is one of the 4 aspects of marketing. ... For other uses, see Brand (disambiguation). ... Marketing Effectiveness is the function of improving how marketers go to market with the goal of optimizing their marketing spend to achieve even better results for both the short-term and long-term. ... Mystery shopping is a tool used by market research companies to measure quality of retail service. ... A products position is how potential buyers see the product. ... Target market may be defined as a market which an organisation sets its views on, either because it is witnessing an increasing demand for the product produced by the organisation, either because it represents a blue ocean for the organisation to exploit before its competitors get there, so as to... For other uses, see Brand (disambiguation). ... In economics and business studies, the price elasticity of demand (PED) is an elasticity that measures the nature and degree of the relationship between changes in quantity demanded of a good and changes in its price. ... A Market segment is a subgroup of people or organizations sharing one or more characteristics that cause them to have similar product needs. ... Demographics refers to selected population characteristics as used in government, marketing or opinion research, or the demographic profiles used in such research. ... In marketing, demographics, opinion research, and social research in general, psychographic variables are any attributes relating to personality, values, attitudes, interests, or lifestyles. ... An online panel is a group of individuals (either professionals or general public) made up of members of a specific category of the population (eg : lawyers, physicians, car dealers, elderly, ...) who participate in market research studies online. ... Market share, in strategic management and marketing, is the percentage or proportion of the total available market or market segment that is being serviced by a company. ... A test market, in the field of business and marketing, is a geographic region or demographic group used to gauge the viability of a product or service in the mass market prior to a wide scale roll-out. ... Viral Marketing Research is a subset of marketing research that measures and compares the relative Return On Investment (ROI) of advertising and communication strategies designed to exploit social networks. ... Not to be confused with social network services such as MySpace, etc. ... Social Networking Potential (SNP) is a numeric coefficient, derived through algorithms to represent both the size of an individuals social network and their ability to influence that network. ...

A company collects primary research by gathering original data. Secondary research is conducted on data published previously and usually by someone else. Secondary research costs far less than primary research, but seldom comes in a form that exactly meets the needs of the researcher.

A similar distinction exists between exploratory research and conclusive research. Exploratory research provides insights into and comprehension of an issue or situation. It should draw definitive conclusions only with extreme caution. Conclusive research draws conclusions: the results of the study can be generalized to the whole population.

Exploratory research is conducted to explore a problem to get some basic idea about the solution at the preliminary stages of research. It may serve as the input to conclusive research. Exploratory research information is collected by focus group interviews, reviewing literature or books, discussing with experts, etc. This is unstructured and qualitative in nature. If a secondary source of data is unable to serve the purpose, a convenience sample of small size can be collected. Conclusive research is conducted to draw some conclusion about the problem. It is essentially, structured and quantitative research, and the output of this research is the input to management information systems (MIS). Management Information Systems (MIS), are information systems, typically computer based, that are used within an organization. ...

Exploratory research is also conducted to simplify the findings of the conclusive or descriptive research, if the findings are very hard to interpret for the marketing manager.

Marketing research methods

Methodologically, marketing research uses the following types of research designs:^[1]

Based on questioning:

• Qualitative marketing research - generally used for exploratory purposes - small number of respondents - not generalizable to the whole population - statistical significance and confidence not calculated - examples include focus groups, in-depth interviews, and projective techniques
• Quantitative marketing research - generally used to draw conclusions - tests a specific hypothesis - uses random sampling techniques so as to infer from the sample to the population - involves a large number of respondents - examples include surveys and questionnaires

Based on observations: Qualitative research is a set of research techniques, used in marketing and the social sciences, in which data are obtained from a relatively small group of respondents and not analyzed with statistical techniques. ... A focus group is a form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about their attitude towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging. ... A projective test, in psychology, is a personality test designed to let a person respond to ambiguous stimuli, presumably revealing hidden emotions and internal conflicts. ... Quantitative marketing research is a social research method that utilizes statistical techniques. ... Look up Hypothesis in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Sampling is that part of statistical practice concerned with the selection of individual observations intended to yield some knowledge about a population of concern, especially for the purposes of statistical inference. ... Statistical surveys are used to collect quantitative information about items in a population. ... Questionnaires are frequently used in quantitative marketing research and social research in general. ...

• Ethnographic studies -, by nature qualitative, the researcher observes social phenomena in their natural setting - observations can occur cross-sectionally (observations made at one time) or longitudinally (observations occur over several time-periods) - examples include product-use analysis and computer cookie traces
• Experimental techniques -, by nature quantitative, the researcher creates a quasi-artificial environment to try to control spurious factors, then manipulates at least one of the variables - examples include purchase laboratories and test markets

Researchers often use more than one research design. They may start with secondary research to get background information, then conduct a focus group (qualitative research design) to explore the issues. Finally they might do a full nation-wide survey (quantitative research design) in order to devise specific recommendations for the client. Experimental research designs are used for the controlled testing of causal processes. ...

Business to business market research

Business to business (B2B) research is inevitably more complicated than consumer research. The researchers need to know what type of multi-faceted approach will answer the objectives, since seldom is it possible to find the answers using just one method. Finding the right respondents is crucial in B2B research since they are often busy, and may not want to participate. Encouraging them to “open up” is yet another skill required of the B2B researcher. Last, but not least, most business research leads to strategic decisions and this means that the business researcher must have expertise in developing strategies that are strongly rooted in the research findings and acceptable to the client.

There are four key factors that make B2B market research special and different to consumer markets:^[2]

• The decision making unit is far more complex in B2B markets than in consumer markets
• B2B products and their applications are more complex than consumer products
• B2B marketers address a much smaller number of customers who are very much larger in their consumption of products than is the case in consumer markets
• Personal relationships are of critical importance in B2B markets.

Most of B2B market research today is done online, using online panels. An online panel is a group of individuals (either professionals or general public) made up of members of a specific category of the population (eg : lawyers, physicians, car dealers, elderly, ...) who participate in market research studies online. ...

Marketing Research in Small Business and Nonprofit Organizations

Marketing research does not only occur in huge corporations with many employees and a large budget. Marketing information can be derived by observing the environment of their location and the competitions location. Small scale surveys and focus groups are low cost ways to gather information from potential and existing customers. Most secondary data (statistics, demographics, etc.) is available to the public in libraries or on the internet and can be easily accessed by a small business owner.

International Marketing Research

International Marketing Research follows the same path as domestic research, but there are a few more problems that may arise. Customers in international markets may have very different customs, cultures, and expectations from the same company. In this case, secondary information must be collected from each separate country and then combined, or compared. This is time consuming and can be confusing. International Marketing Research relies more on primary data rather than secondary information. Gathering the primary data can be hindered by language, literacy and access to technology.

Commonly used marketing research terms

Market research techniques resemble those used in political polling and social science research. Meta-analysis (also called the Schmidt-Hunter technique) refers to a statistical method of combining data from multiple studies or from several types of studies. Conceptualization means the process of converting vague mental images into definable concepts. Operationalization is the process of converting concepts into specific observable behaviors that a researcher can measure. Precision refers to the exactness of any given measure. Reliability refers to the likelihood that a given operationalized construct will yield the same results if re-measured. Validity refers to the extent to which a measure provides data that captures the meaning of the operationalized construct as defined in the study. It asks, “Are we measuring what we intended to measure?” A meta-analysis is a statistical practice of combining the results of a number of studies. ... In psychometrics reliability is the accuracy of the scores of a measure. ... In psychometrics a valid measure is one which is measuring what it is supposed to measure. ...

Applied research sets out to prove a specific hypothesis of value to the clients paying for the research. For example, a cigarette company might commission research that attempts to show that cigarettes are good for one's health. Many researchers have ethical misgivings about doing applied research.

Sugging (or selling under the guise of market research) forms a sales technique in which sales people pretend to conduct marketing research, but with the real purpose of obtaining buyer motivation and buyer decision-making information to be used in a subsequent sales call. Sugging is a market research industry term, meaning selling under the guise of research. This behavior occurs when a product marketer falsely pretends to be a market researcher conducting a survey, when in reality they are simply trying to sell the product in question. ...

Frugging comprises the practice of soliciting funds under the pretense of being a research organization. There are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ... For other uses, see Organization (disambiguation). ...

See also

• Ad Tracking
• A/B testing
• Advertising Research
• Commercial eye tracking
• Copy testing
• experimental techniques
• Global Marketing
• Industry or market research
• Integrated Marketing Communications
• Knowledge management
• List of marketing research firms
• Marketing
• Marketing Research Association
• Marketing research mix
• Master of Marketing Research
• mTAB
• Observational techniques
• Propaganda
• Quantitative marketing research
• Qualitative marketing research

According to Decision Analyst, “Once commercials go ‘on air,’ the only way to know if the advertising is working is tracking research. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... // Advertising research is a specialized form of marketing research conducted to improve the efficacy of advertising. ... In recent years, the increased sophistication and accessibility of eye tracking technologies have generated a great deal of interest in the commercial sector. ... // A specialized field of marketing research, copy testing is the study of television commercials prior to airing them. ... Experimental research designs are used for the controlled testing of causal processes. ... // The Oxford University Press defines global marketing as “marketing on a worldwide scale reconciling or taking commercial advantage of global operational differences, similarities and opportunities in order to meet global objectives. ... Industry or market research is the acquisition of corporate intelligence on a broad range of issues including: Macroenvironment economy government legal technology ecological sociocultural Market Analysis and Competitor analysis market definition market size market segmentation industry structure and strategic groupings Porter 5 forces analysis supply chain competition and market share... Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC), according to The American Marketing Association, is “a planning process designed to assure that all brand contacts received by a customer or prospect for a product, service, or organization are relevant to that person and consistent over time. ... Knowledge Management (KM) comprises a range of practices used by organisations to identify, create, represent, and distribute knowledge. ... This is a list of marketing research firms. ... For the magazine, see Marketing (magazine). ... The MRA logo. ... // The term Marketing Research Mix (or the MR Mix) was created in 2004 and published in 2007 (Bradley - see references). ... Master of Marketing Research (MMR or M.M.R.) is a graduate degree program that may be from one to three years in length. ... The mtab (contraction of mounted file systems table) file is commonly found on UNIX-like systems and lists the mounted file systems. ... In marketing and the social sciences, observational research (or field research) is a social research technique that involves the direct observation of phenomena in their natural setting. ... For other uses, see Propaganda (disambiguation). ... Quantitative marketing research is a social research method that utilizes statistical techniques. ... Qualitative research is a set of research techniques, used in marketing and the social sciences, in which data are obtained from a relatively small group of respondents and not analyzed with statistical techniques. ...

Notes

1. ^ Marketing Research: An Applied Orientation 2006 (5th Edition) by Naresh Malhotra. ISBN 0132221179 This book is a must for marketing researchers. http://www.amazon.com/Marketing-Research-Applied-Orientation-Student/dp/0132221179
2. ^ Business-to-Business Marketing By Paul Hague, Nick Hague and Matt Harrison (undated) accessed October 9, 2006

is the 282nd day of the year (283rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

References

• Bradley, Nigel Marketing Research. Tools and Techniques.Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007 ISBN-10: 0-19-928196-3 ISBN-13: 978-0-19-928196-1
• Marder, Eric The Laws of Choice -- Predicting Customer Behavior (The Free Press division of Simon and Schuster, 1997. ISBN 0-684-83545-2
• Young, Charles E, The Advertising Handbook, Ideas in Flight, Seattle, WA, April 2005. ISBN 0-9765574-0-1
• Kotler, Philip and Armstrong, Gary Principles of Marketing Pearson, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 2007 ISBN13 978-0-13-239002-6, ISBN10 0-13-239002-7