LEE KONG CHIAN SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
Year 2008/09 Term 3A
MKTG 103 MARKETING RESEARCH
Instructor:
Cathy Chen
Assistant Professor of Marketing
Tel:
Email:
Office:
6828 0726
cathychen@smu.edu.sg
Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Level 5, Room 5068
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course provides you with the skills and tools needed to understand, evaluate and
conduct marketing research. Marketing research is vital in the assessment of new business
opportunities, go/no go decisions for new products, pricing and product design issues,
among other business issues. In this course, we will go through the basic marketing
research process to understand how to formulate and structure marketing problems, gather
and analyze quantitative marketing data, and make effective decisions based on those
data. In addition, we will also discuss some more advanced issues related to marketing
research design, measurement, analyses and inferences, with a view to make
recommendations for the appropriate marketing research to be undertaken and to
appreciate what can and cannot be learned from marketing research. This is a hands-on
course and these skills are particularly useful if you plan to go into a consulting or
marketing career.
PRE-REQUISITE/ CO-REQUISITE/ MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE COURSE(S)
Please refer to the Course Catalogue on OASIS for the most updated list of pre-requisites /
co-requisites for this particular course.
Do note that if this course has a co-requisite, it means that the course has to be taken together with
another course. Dropping one course during BOSS bidding would result in both courses being
dropped at the same time.
RECOMMENDED TEXT AND READINGS
Aaker, Kumar and Day (AKD),
Marketing Research (9th Ed.),
Wiley, 2006 (ISBN: 978-0-470-05076-7)
The course packet contains selected cases and other required readings and is required. Additional
material will be distributed as needed and we will use the class website as a clearing house for current
1
articles. Students are expected to keep abreast of current developments in the Asia-Pacific region by
reading leading business dailies/weeklies like the Asian Wall Street Journal, Far Eastern Economic
Review, The Economist, Business Times and Business Week.
ASSESSMENT METHOD
1.
2.
3.
4.
Class Participation
Mid terms exam
Group projects
Final Exam
10%
30%
20%
40%
CLASS TIMINGS
3 days per week, 3 hours/class
COURSE METHODS
Lectures and discussions
CLASS SCHEDULE (subject to minor changes)
Session
1
2
3
Date
April 28
April 29
April 30
4
May 5
5
May 6
Topic
Course Introduction
CP: read “Market Research”
CP: read “Backward Market Research”
AKD
1,2
Research design and the value of marketing
research
CP: read “The Value of Information”
Sources of marketing data: secondary and
standardized
CP: read “If Brands Are Built Over Years...”
3,4
Primary data collection
Focus groups
Questionnaire design, measurement and
measurement scales, and sampling
8,9
CP: read “Non-sampling vs sampling errors...”
Assignment 1 due (May 4th)
Causality and experimentation
CP: read “Causal Inference...”
CP: read “EDLP, Hi-Lo, …”
Fundamentals of data analysis
14,15
Hypothesis testing
17,18
5,6
10-12
13
16
2
6
May 7
Regression analysis I
CP: read “Four Steps to Forecasting,…”
19
Regression analysis II
CP: case reading and preparation “Nopane
Advertising…”
Session
Date
Assignment 2 due (May 8th)
Topic
7
May 12
Logistic regression
8
May 13
Mid Term Exam
9
May 14
Conjoint analysis I
CP: read “New Ways to Measure…”
AKD
22
Conjoint analysis II
CP: case reading and preparation: “Clark
Material…”
10
May 19
Assignment 3 due (May 15th)
Market segmentation and profiling
11
May 20
Customer value analysis
Factor analysis I (scale construction)
21
May 21
Factor analysis II (complete analysis)
Discriminant analysis
20
13
May 26
Assignment 4 due (May 22nd)
CP: case preparation and discussion: Juice Guys (A)
25
14
May 27
12
Course summary and wrap-up
Assignment 5 due (May 28th)
3