Syllabus for Marketing Research (BUS462)
_____________________________________________________________________________
2004 Summer I (May 24-Jun 30), 1:40pm-3:10pm, Everyday, Nelson Hall 01130
Instructor: Yinghong (Susan) Wei
Phone: 919-345-5075
Email: weiy@bschool.unc.edu
Office hours: 3:30-5:00 M/W or by appointment
_____________________________________________________________________________
Objectives
The objective of this five-week summer course is to enable the student to become a wellinformed “consumer” of state-of-the-art marketing research. The emphasis is on the design and
analysis of surveys or experiments. By “consumer,” we mean someone who can formulate and
structure marketing problems, recommend the marketing research that should be undertaken,
appreciate what can and cannot be learned from marketing research, analyze quantitative
marketing data, and make effective decisions based on marketing research information. While
we do not intend to produce marketing research methodologists in this course, the student
should be able to design and conduct some analyses herself or himself for projects that do not
require specialization. The skills covered in this course will be applicable to marketing
problems encountered in both consumer and business-to-business markets, and public and
private sectors.








Develop ability to translate a management/marketing problem into a feasible research
question
Understand primary and secondary sources of marketing research information
Increase your sensitivity to the bias and limitations of research data
Familiar with the skills of data collection and research designs
Develop concrete techniques for analyzing data
Introduce most recent development of marketing research
Learn how to use research results to make better marketing decisions
Provide opportunities to work on real project
Requirements
The prerequisites are BUS 360 (Marketing Management) and BUS/ST 350 (Economics and
Business Statistics). Lectures may cover materials not in the textbook. Attendance in class is
required at all times. Students are expected to be fully prepared to discuss reading assignments
and cases. Thorough preparation for quiz, cases, class discussions and exercises is essential for
constructive participation. Meaningful class participation during in-class activities is part of the
student’s evaluation. Students should be respectful of their colleague’s opinions. All
assignments must be submitted on dates specified. During teamwork, all members must be
prepared to contribute to the learning process. The honor code will be strictly observed.
1
Textbook
Marketing Research (Sixth Edition), 2004, Carl McDaniel and Roger Gates.
Grading
Daily Quiz (20) and Self-Evaluations
Class Attendance and Discussion Questions
Peer Evaluation
Marketing Research Reading (2)
Exams (2)
Projects (4)
20%
10%
10%
20%
20%
20%
Teaching Method
The course will utilize lectures, case discussions, article readings, projects, guest speakers, inclass exercises, videos and selected readings. The content of this class includes marketing
research and practice; data collection techniques, data analysis techniques, presentation and
current issues. The core applied statistics course provides an important foundation for this
course, especially the material on confidence intervals, hypothesis tests, and regression.
Students will use SPSS, Excel, and other software in completing their assignments. Students are
expected to participate fully in class discussions. An important aspect of this course is the
“hands-on” experience to be gained from the analysis of real world marketing data and the
design and testing of a marketing research survey.
Each class will include three parts. First part is 15-minute-quiz. The answer of the quiz will be
distributed in the class. Students will self-grade the quiz and hand the score to me immediately
after grading. The second part is 45-minute-lecture. The third part is 30-minute-in-class
activities. The sequences may not be fixed for the last two parts. Sometimes we may have inclass activities before the lecture. Most of in-class activities will be team-based. Peer evaluation
will be used to assess the quality of each team’s participation.
During this course we will be using a combination of different learning strategies as follows:
Chapter Readings (20%)
Every student will be responsible for reading, analyzing and deliberating on the text assigned
for each day. It is expected that the student will, after careful reading of the text chapters, arrive
at personal conclusions. They will share their opinion with other students through the
discussion of questions with their team and subsequently, through an asynchronous interaction
with the rest of the class. This will enable them to complete all the homework assigned for that
session. Also, the reading will be enhanced by doing a quiz and self-evaluation for each chapter
at the beginning of each class.
Class Attendance and Discussion Questions (10%)
Attendance in class is required at all times. No laptop is allowed except for computer lab
sections. I expect our class meetings to be very interactive. A truly interactive session involves
you not only interacting with me but also with the rest of the group. I will distribute a list of
names and contact information for all the students in our class to help you get to know each
other better. I strongly encourage you to get to know each other by name and to respond
thoughtfully to each other’s comments during class. It is important for you to actively make
2
constructive comments and share your knowledge and experience with the class so that you will
be considered an asset by your classmates.
Peer Evaluations (10%)
During the semester students will be assigned with special small projects to practice research
skills covered in class so they can get a better understanding on how to apply those skills.
Examples of these could be: visiting websites and writing papers with conclusions, watch a
video and answer some questions, solve a case, read a selected article and participate in a
discussion, and more things that could be applicable to the class. The preparation of those
special homework will be reflected in class discussion and peer evaluation of in-class activities.
Students, working in their assigned teams, will participate in the in-class activities. Each team
should make contributions to the class discussion and will be responsible for peer evaluations
using the following criteria: 1) Number of comments from each team; 2) Comments’ reflective
quality; 3) Comments’ relation to the topic; 4) Comments’ discussion generation; 4) Quality of
the answers. The peer evaluations will be collected after each in-class activity. Three team
competitions will be used in this class. The winners will be rewarded small gifts.
Academic Readings (20%)
Examples of marketing research covered in this course can be found in many business and
academic publications. The students will seek out a current (published after July, 2001) article
that addresses a marketing research issue related to the class using the digital library. Each
student may choose any relevant current event or discussion (from Journal of Marketing,
Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, etc) that they feel is applicable to the
course.
Students will be required to select, write and submit two short reading summaries for this class.
The first reading should be experiment research and the second reading should be survey
research. Each reading should be summarized in one page with single-spaced. It should include:
1). A brief summary of the key points of the article; 2) A discussion of how the article relates to
a key concept examined in this course and implications for marketing practitioners; 3) A
personal evaluation or critiques to the article, based on the marketing research perspective the
student has gained during the course.
Exams (20%)
Each exam will follow roughly the same format. Each will be composed of several essay
questions. All course material is fair game for these exams. This means that material from class
discussions, the textbook, and supplemental readings will appear on the tests. Each of the two
exams will focus on the material covered during that half of the semester (i.e., the final exam
will focus on the material covered in the final half of the course). However, because each class
session builds on the previous ones, the second exam will require you to draw on some
concepts that you learned earlier in the course.
Projects (20%)
Project 1 (Team): Research Question and Research Design
Project 2 (Team): Questionnaire Design, Data Coding and Data Entry
Project 3 (Individual): Data Analysis (T-Test and ANOVA)
Project 4 (Individual): Data Analysis (Correlation and Regression)
3
The class will form teams of 3-4 individuals during the first day of classes. These teams will be
the same throughout the semester. The first two projects require that each team writes 5 pages.
The last two projects require that each individual writes 2 pages. These four projects include
research questions, research design, data collection, analyzing data, result interpretation and
presentation.
These projects are intended to provide you with first-hand research experience and to illustrate
the concepts and methods discussed in the classroom. The projects’ grading will be based on: (1)
the degree of interesting of research questions, and how sound of research design, (2) the
quality of questionnaire design and data collection, (3) the quality of data analysis and
interpretation of results, (4) the quality of your recommendations and the readability (clarity of
writing and organization of material) (5) peer evaluations by your team members.
All projects’ reports must be typed, double-spaced, have one-inch margins, and use a 12-point
font. Assignments must be turned in on the dates specified in the syllabus. Last submissions
will be deducted 1 point per day.
Class Schedule and Readings
Date
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
5/24 M
5/25 T
5/26 W
5/27 Th
5/28 F
6.
7.
8.
9.
5/30 M
6/1 T
6/2 W
6/3 Th
6/4 F
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
6/7 M
6/8 T
6/9 W
6/10 Th
6/11 F
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
6/14 M
6/15 T
6/16 W
6/17 Th
6/18 F
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
6/21 M
6/22 T
6/23 W
6/24 Th
6/25 F
Topic
Readings
Introduction to Marketing Research
Introduction
Syllabus
The Importance of MR in Decision Making
Ch1&2
Research Problem Identification
Ch3
Research Process
Ch3
Secondary Research Technique
Ch4
Marketing Research Design
NO Class
Qualitative Research
Ch5
Primary Data Collection - Survey Research
Ch6
Primary Data Collection - Observation
Ch7
Primary Data Collection - Experimentation
Ch8
Data Collection
Measurement 1
Ch9
Measurement 2
Ch10
Questionnaire Design
Ch11
Sampling and Statistics Review
Ch12
Sample Size Determination
Ch13
Data Analysis
Data Coding and Data Entry
Ch14
Data analysis 1 -- Descriptive Analysis
Ch14
Data analysis 2 -- Hypothesis Testing
Ch15
Data analysis 3 -- T test and ANOVA
Ch15
Data analysis 4 -- Correlation and Regression
Ch16
Research Results & Discussion
Guest Speaker
Multivariate Data Analysis
Ch17
Research Results and Discussion
Ch18
Presentations
Marketing Research Review
Ch19&Notes
6/28 M
In-Class Activities
Deadlines
Introduction/Teams
Exercise/Web Search
Competition
Exercise
Computer Lab
Reading 1 Due
Focus Group
Exercise
Exercise
Exercise
Exercise
Exercise
Competition
Computer Lab
Computer Lab
Project 1 Due
Reading 2 Due
Project 2 Due
Computer Lab
Computer Lab
Computer Lab
Computer Lab
Computer Lab
Exam 1 Due
Review of Exam 1
Discussion
Competition
Peer Evaluation
Class Evaluation
Project 4 Due
Project 3 Due
Exam 2 Due
4