Research Process
Slide 1
Welcome to this presentation about stages of the research process. This particular PowerPoint
presentation is more to provide you with an outline and less to provide you with verbiage from
me.
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The important issue to grasp from these first few slides is that research is a multi-stage process
that is somewhat cyclical. The stages can occur concurrently; they may occur as first, second,
third, and back to first, so the linkages are both forwards and backwards. Research is a multistage process and each stage relates to the other stages in a meaningful way.
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The first stage is “Problem Definition.” It should be pretty obvious, at this stage of your
undergraduate education, that if you can’t define the problem properly, then it will be impossible
to find the appropriate solution.
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“The formulation of the problem is often more essential than its solution.” –Albert Einstein
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As future businesspeople, it is important for you to understand that the problem is not always
obvious, often because the cause of the problem is not readily apparent. Hence, the “Iceberg
Principle”: the dangerous parts of the problem may not be obvious. It is the job of both the
manager and the marketing researcher to identify the appropriate problem despite this
possibility.
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Fortunately, there is a basic process by which problems can be defined and this flow diagram
illustrates that process. The first step a good researcher will take is to ascertain the decision
maker’s objectives. What does the decision maker want to do or need to do? The second step is
to discuss the problem with managers in sufficient depth so that subsequent research can follow
from this rich background information. The third step is to isolate or identify the problem as
opposed to the symptoms. The next step is to determine the unit of analysis—households,
mutual customers, organizations—so that who will be evaluated is identified. The fifth step is to
determine what information we should gather from or about those units. The last step is to
identify the research questions objectives. Part of the course project often assigned for an inclass marketing research course is writing a brief research proposal. When I require my
students to conduct such studies, that proposal is dominated by two things: identification of a
research problem and a list of questions associated with that problem.
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Slide 9
Marketing managers may have very different, yet very reasonable objectives. The example I
have here is immediate versus long-run increase in sales or profits. Clearly, the goals of that
research might all change markedly based on whether a short-term or a long-term increase is
sought, the nature of the manager’s needs, and the type of study that might be done.
Regardless, whatever those objectives may be, the managerial goals must be expressed in
measureable terms. Otherwise, it’s impossible to assess whether or not the results are
favorable or unfavorable.
Slide 10
As I mentioned in the first lecture, a good researcher will avail him or herself of existing
managerial expertise and try to understand the background for the current research problem.
Fortunately, middle and upper managers love to talk about their work. For whatever the reason,
sometimes it’s an opportunity to brag or share their situation with someone else that is informed
and is interested. Regardless, middle and upper managers are not shy about providing as much
background as a researcher would need to effectively conduct the necessary marketing
research.
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Also consistent with what I mentioned during the first lecture, a good marketing researcher will
help a manager to structure and to understand the true problem. Often, managers are so caught
up with the symptoms that they don’t understand the disease. This slide illustrates how those
symptoms can be confusing. As a result, the manager may be unaware of the true problem.
Slide 12
Still thinking in terms of the problem definition process, which is the first stage of the overall
research process, what we should be concerned about is the unit of analysis. As I said before,
this could be individuals, households, and organizations. Without understanding the appropriate
unit of analysis, it’s impossible to draw the appropriate sample or conduct the appropriate type
of analyses. In many studies, family rather than the individual is the appropriate unit of analysis.
This may be true of consumption studies. Marketers have long been interested in family
dynamics and decision making for the purchase of consumer durables. What is the dynamic
between spouses in selecting an automobile or a home? Without a sound understanding of that
process, marketers are flying blind as far as providing the best possible product.
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The fifth step in the problem definition process is to determine the relevant variables. In this
case, we must assume that we are trying to determine variables that are measurable in some
way. The list in terms of types—categorical, continuous, dependent, and independent—will be
discussed in subsequent lectures. Categorical just means categories or nominal (naming) or
putting people into groups; market segments, for example. Continuous is more of interest to
physicists than marketers, who typically deal with discrete data. Yet, we often deal with ordinaland interval-scaled variables. Dependent and independent variables deal with the focus of the
study. As the words indicate, dependent variables depend on the values of the independent
variable. What we’re often looking for here are forecasting models meant to predict the value of
a dependent variable by looking at a series of associated and reflective independent variables.
We might want to predict home-buying behavior during the next quarter or the next year by
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looking at the things that are related to future home-buying behavior, such as growth in
disposable income, growth in investment income, and consumer sentiment.
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Finally, the last stage in the problem definition process is to convert or translate the marketing
problem into researchable objectives. Those of you in an in-class version of MKTG 310 will
conduct a marketing research study this semester will need to write a proposal that includes a
research problem—which is the marketing problem—and associated research questions. This
translates into the research objectives.
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The next three slides provide examples of research problems and associated researchable
questions.
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Here’s a list of basic questions that marketing researchers would ask in trying to define the
research problem. Certainly, researchers would want to know the purpose of the study.
Researchers would try to ascertain how much is already known because there is no reason to
re-invent the wheel, especially when that re-invention will be costly to the manager soliciting the
study. Researchers would be interested in additional background information that might be
unavailable to the manager and need to assess how that information could be acquired.
Researchers would want to ascertain what needs to be measured and how it will be measured.
Are we looking at conducting survey research or are we going to do something like a focus
group? These are the kinds of techniques we’ll discuss throughout these lectures. If we are
talking about information that has already been collected, what we call secondary data, can it be
made available? Sometimes that information has been collected by the company itself, but the
accountants may be reluctant to rearrange it so that the marketing manager can use it for
decision making. There even may be issues about whether or not the research should be
conducted, either because it’s of insufficient value or ethically problematic. As researchers must
develop a problem definition, they’ll want to express it in the most rigorous terms—something
called a hypothesis.
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A hypothesis is a formal, testable statement that can be refuted by empirical data. Managers
may have all sorts of hunches or guesses or beliefs about how their markets work, but a
hypothesis is a formal statement of a belief or hunch that can be tested rigorously by market
research.
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Often, exploratory research is a necessary prelude to developing hypotheses. It’s possible that
the marketing researcher may not understand the underlying process sufficiently to develop a
formalized, testable statement, in which case exploratory research is a preliminary step.
Different types of exploratory research include reviews of secondary data, conducting pilot
studies, doing in-depth interviews with people who have requisite experience, and case studies.
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Slide 21
Perhaps this slide best depicts the role of hypotheses in the research process. We start with a
purpose, which helps to generate some research questions that are informed by exploratory
research, managerial experience, and basic marketing theory. All of these go into developing
formalized hypotheses that then can be tested through marketing research.
Slide 22
We are finally finished with that first stage of the research process, which is defining the
problem. Now we are onto the second stage, which is to develop the research design. The
research design is basically the master plan for the research that will follow. This specifies the
research method as the basic methods that the researcher will use to conduct the necessary
study.
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Here’s just a sample of some basic questions researchers need to ask in attempting to
formulate basic research designs. They need to understand the types of questions that need
answering and whether or not the type of answer is the result of conducting a descriptive study,
which for our purposes we’ll call a questionnaire, or a causal type study, which we’ll call an
experiment. I’ll broach both of those topics in the next lecture. A researcher would need to
understand the source of the data for conducting that research and whether or not it’s possible
to get the answers that are needed by merely asking people.
Often, we discover that people are unaware of their reasons for doing things or are incapable to
responding meaningfully to questions that we might pose to them regarding their preferences or
opinions. So it’s possible that merely asking people will be insufficient or it may also be that we
prefer not to ask them. They may be unable to give us accurate answers and we may be able to
ascertain what we need to know without asking or bothering people to fill out a questionnaire or
to respond to our phone inquiries.
A researcher would need to know how quickly management needs the information. Again,
marketing research can be good, it can be fast, it can be cheap, but it can only be two out of
those three simultaneously. If the information is required quickly, then the expense will rise
markedly for an adequate quality research study. If a survey is required, a researcher would
certainly need to know how the questions need to be worded. There are all sorts of tricks of the
trade in designing good surveys.
One final question that a researcher might think about, in terms of research design, is if an
experiment is to be conducted, then what is the experimental manipulation? What will the
researcher ask one group of people to respond to and how will he or she compare that
response to a group of people who receive something else to respond to?
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Here’s a more comprehensive list of the basic questions a marketing researcher might ask
when planning the design of a marketing research study.
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Step three is selecting the sample for the research. Often, what we’re looking at in marketing
research is a sample of individual customers, but other times the sample could be households,
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companies, or municipalities. Regardless, the next step is to identify the unit of analysis and to
identify a sample that will have elements consistent with that unit of analysis.
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Here’s a list of basic questions that I’ll address during my lectures on sampling and the sample
design. As a prelude to those lectures, here’s a list of those basic questions: Who or what is the
source of the data? Can the target population be identified? (Target population here means
population of interest.) Is it necessary to draw a sample? Instead, is it possible to query
everyone in the population (in which case we’re talking about a census)?
Many of the questions regarding sample size are related to accuracy and the way in which the
sample is drawn from a larger population. In many commercial studies, researchers are required
to use commercially available lists, and those lists sometimes are incredibly flawed. I was forced
to use one list in a study of people who recently moved, and that list included people who hadn’t
moved in 57 years. After doing a careful analysis of this $4000.00 sample, I discovered I would
have been as well off contacting people randomly via telephone. In that particular case, the
sample was poor because the list from which I drew potential respondents was poor.
Researchers also may need to assess whether or not a probability, or scientific sample, is
necessary. For some research purposes, convenience sampling—a type of non-probability
sample—is much less costly and might be appropriate. It’s possible that only a local sample is
needed or a regional sample, as opposed to a national sample, and that might affect the
methodology used. For example, if I need to draw a national sample and I’m concerned about
cost, then I probably want to collect respondent data via mail. For a local sample, I can use
telephone or other methods. A national or international sample, for example, might be much
better conducted by the Internet. Knowing something about the scope of the sample would be
useful. The size of the sample is clearly important, if for nothing else, to keep data collection
costs within budget. From my experiences as a consultant, I can tell you that data collection
cost is a large share of total study cost.
Finally, the research must decide on the sampling unit.
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Step #4: Data Gathering Stage
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The fourth stage is collecting the data. In this domain, here are some basic answers I, as a
researcher, would need. I’d want to know who is responsible for gathering data. If it’s an
independent field service, then I’d like some control over the way in which interviewers queried
respondents, either by telephone or by mail. I certainly, if I’ve been given a time horizon for the
completion of the study, would like to know how long the data collection folks need to collect the
data, because if they take longer than I planned, then I’d have less time to analyze the data and
write a report. I’d be concerned about the level of supervision that’s required. For example,
telephone surveys typically are fielded by data collection services that have supervisors
monitoring calls out of phone banks. Supervision in this case is fairly straightforward. For
personal interviews, the level of supervision may be vastly different, so I’d be concerned about
the research company verifying that at least ten or fifteen percent of interviews were conducted
as indicated by the field service workers. The final answer here might entail the basic
procedures that the data collection folks will follow.
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Step #5: Data Processing and Analysis
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Step five concerns the technical questions about data processing and analysis. How will the
data be edited and coded? Extensive expertise is required if we’re dealing with open-ended
questions. Alternatively, if we’re looking at the entry of responses to close-ended questions—
the type of questions that are scaled 1 to 6 or 1 to 7—then minimal expertise is required. How
will the data be categorized? My ability to analyze data depends on the way I can group it.
If you’re conducting a research project for this course, then you might like to know what kind of
statistical software will be used. I recommend for your class project, if you need to complete one
for this course, that you use SPSS, although you could force spreadsheet software like Excel to
do the necessary analyses.
The nature of the data could be qualitative, in which case we might be looking at people’s openended and rambling responses to questions. If we’re looking at close-ended data, which I’ve
indicated is much easier and more straightforward to analyze, then we might be concerned
about the number of different responses that would need to be considered simultaneously.
Although somewhat beyond the scope of this course, marketing researchers often need to look
at the effect of multiple variables on a single variable they are trying to predict.
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The value of a research study is only as good as the weakest link in the chain of the process
that I’ve outlined throughout this lecture. Even the best conceived and best conducted study will
be useless if the results of that study are not meaningfully presented to management, so that it
can be used effectively to make the best possible decisions.
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It’s always a good idea to understand your audience if you’re going to make a presentation, so
as a researcher responsible for the report writing and presentation, I would want to understand
these kind of issues. Who is going to read my report? That’s critical because that determines
the level of technical expertise I assume in writing it. If specific recommendations are requested,
then I know I’m responsible for making them and I need to include them and justify them in my
report. If I’m merely providing information that managers will use to draw their own conclusions,
then perhaps my providing recommendations is unnecessary. If presentations are required, as
part of the budgeting process, I might want to know to whom those presentations will be made,
how many I need to make, and where I need to make them. Finally, I might want to know about
a preferred format for my report. The degree to which it should be formal or informal may
depend on corporate culture and the need to please the manager(s) who ordered the study. The
less I understand such preferences and constraints, the more unlikely I’ll submit the kind of
report for which the manager(s) intended to pay.
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In guaranteeing that the most useable report is created, it would be helpful for both the
researcher and the manager to see tables of dummy results. If I, as the researcher, can provide
those dummy tables to managers, then they can provide me with feedback about how helpful
that particular set of tables would be to their decision-making process.
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Slide 34
Before beginning a study, both the manager and researcher might ask these final, checklist-type
questions to confirm the wisdom of conducting that study. Both the researcher and the manager
might want to confirm the cost of the study, as that’s a critical component to its value. Studies
inherently require different times to complete and both the manager and the researcher would
need to confirm that the timeframe for completion is acceptable. If outside help is needed, both
the manager and researcher would need to identify that outside help and make certain it’s
accessible. The manager and researcher must confirm that the research they plan to conduct
will address the research objectives. Finally, given budgetary and other concerns, both the
researcher and the manager must confirm the starting date for the research and that the date is
commensurate with the decision-making needs of the manager.
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Here’s another more detailed checklist. In this case, this checklist was designed for postresearch assessment.
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To recap the marketing research process entails the following six steps, which are confronted
iteratively. First is identifying the problem. Second is specifying the required information. Third is
designing the data collection methodology. Fourth is managing and implementing the data
collection process. Fifth is analyzing the results of that data collection process. Sixth, and by no
means least important, is communicating those findings effectively as well as the implications of
those findings to managers.
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