Introduction to Marketing Research: Part 1
Slide 1
Hi! My name is Mike Hyman, and I’m a Professor at New Mexico State University in the
Marketing Department. This is “Introduction to Marketing 310—Marketing Research.” This entire
course, from a lecture perspective, will be online and available to you whenever you wish. All
the lectures will be through this PowerPoint format, with my audio clips attached to most of the
slides. The lectures (at least as far as the audio portion) will be as if I delivered them in class.
The point of this audio is to make the lectures available to you and not make them too terribly
stilted. If I worked to perfect every single audio clip so that it is flawless, you won’t enjoy
listening to them. These are going to be real lectures in real time, but available to you any time.
Slide 2
This series of online lectures is based on the in-class lectures I’ve delivered during the last
twenty-five years about Marketing Research. In delivering those lectures, I’ve borrowed liberally
from many other sources; certainly many textbooks I’ve used over the last twenty-five years, the
works of cartoonists, and the works of other marketing researchers. In other words, this course
is heavily borrowed from many other sources. So while it is perfectly acceptable to use this for
pedagogical purposes--you are welcome to review these materials as frequently as you like--it
would be inappropriate to borrow any of these other materials for any other purpose. Therefore,
I am asking you not to do so.
Slide 3
One obvious advantage of this online format is that it is asynchronous. You may listen to any or
all of the lecture at your convenience. The downside seemingly would be that it is not especially
interactive. Unlike an in-class lecture, you might believe that you won’t be able to ask any
questions; but that really isn’t the case. Each PowerPoint presentation has numbered slides. All
you need to do is email me at mhyman@nmsu.edu, indicate which presentation and which slide
number is causing you some confusion, and I will quickly respond to that email. This type of
feedback will be especially useful, not just to you, but to me as well. I’ll revisit that particular
slide and audio clip, try to understand why my explanation or the slide itself may have appeared
confusing, modify one, the other, or both, and then post the revised version on the internet.
Over time, I’m hoping that any confusion will be permanently resolved through your questions to
me about possibly confusing explanations or slides. In other words, I am encouraging you to
email me regarding any questions you have about any of these presentations.
Slide 4
So Let’s Begin (No Audio)
Slide 5
I’m sure you’ll come to agree that marketing research humor is rather limited at best.
Nonetheless, I often try to illustrate points through the use of cartoons. One of the points I’d like
to make right off is there are certain reasons for taking this class other than it is required for
marketing majors. One of the main reasons for taking this class is so that you will be an
informed consumer of marketing research.
This cartoon illustrates that lots of problems can occur when you have no idea what you are
buying. In this case, Calvin is so clueless about mathematics that he doesn’t realize that three
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hundred billion gazillion is not the sum of 7+6. My goal in making you an informed consumer of
marketing research is to help you avoid this type of situation.
Slide 6
The point of this cartoon is to illustrate one very critical point about marketing research. That is,
marketing research cannot replace managerial decision making in the same way that a
computer cannot write Calvin’s book report for him. A marketing research study cannot make a
decision for you. The results of a marketing research study are one of many inputs to a
decision. With any luck and after this course, you’ll know exactly to what extent you should trust
different kinds of research and which type of study you should use to make different marketingrelated decisions.
Slide 7
One of the things that marketing managers do is to assist marketing researchers in their
research. Marketing managers provide researchers with sufficient background and feedback
regarding studies so that, once a study is fielded, the results that follow from it will be valid and
helpful to the marketing decision maker.
Here’s a case where clearly the study that was fielded left much to be desired. Had the study
been done properly, there’s no chance that the “None of the Above” restaurant would have been
the name for this particular establishment.
Slide 8
In addition to making you an informed consumer of marketing research, my other major goal for
this class is to prepare you to conduct, from beginning to end, a customer satisfaction survey.
To do that, I’ll need to review many of the dimensions of marketing research: how to identify a
research problem, how to develop a series of research questions related to that problem, how to
design a survey that will explore those research questions. Ultimately, once you’ve fielded that
survey and collected respondent data, you will learn how to take that data, input it into a
computer, analyze it, understand it, and write a report that a manager could use to make a
sound decision.
So the two goals for this class are to make you an informed consumer of marketing research
and to prepare you to perform a customer satisfaction survey for the kinds of organizations that
you are likely to work for, which I am assuming would be smaller marketing firms without
dedicated marketing research departments. Part of this process entails showing you not only
what are appropriate things to do, but also showing you examples of inappropriate things so that
you’ll know to avoid them.
This next series of three slides shows you what someone who is totally unknowledgeable about
appropriate question development would write for a questionnaire question.
In the first slide, you can see the choices for demographics are absurd, at best.
Slide 9
The next questionnaire, which covers this and the next slide, I show you for two reasons. One
reason is that, if you read the questions that are asked, you will see that they are extraordinarily
leading questions. It would be almost impossible for anybody to answer these questions in a
different way than the question writer had intended. For example, the second question asks,
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“Despite an international moratorium on commercial whaling, Norway has taken it upon itself to
resume killing whales for commercial purposes. Japan continues to kill whales for so-called
‘scientific research.’ Would you support an international initiative to create a whale sanctuary,
banning all commercial whaling in the waters around Antarctica?”
You would be hard pressed to answer “no” given the way that particular question has been
phrased. If you read the remaining questions in this survey, you will see that all of them are
quite leading. It makes no sense to ask a question that is leading because the point of fielding
the survey is to understand (in this case) the respondents’ attitudes. There is no understanding
of an attitude if the answer is obvious.
Slide 10
The other reason for showing you this particular questionnaire, which I received from a
colleague who was interested in identifying the worst questionnaires ever developed, is the last
questions at the very bottom (numbered 5 and 6) and then the plea after those questions. “Do
you support Greenpeace’s nonviolent direct action to protect all marine animals and preserve
ocean ecosystems?” “Would you be willing to spend just a few cents a day to help Greenpeace
expose, confront, and stop the decimation of the world’s oceans and marine life?” Not only
would there be almost no way to answer “no” to those questions, but clearly this was not meant
to be an information gathering survey. This is really a marketing piece. This is an example of
what we call “frugging.” This is not an obscenity, but rather stands for fundraising under the
guise of research.
Fielding a study like this is ethically problematic. One of the things we will discuss later in the
semester in at least one lecture is research ethics. A questionnaire like this one is totally
inappropriate. One of my goals for this course is that, if you ever do any marketing research or
if you ever purchase any research, then the research you do or purchase will be conducted
ethically.
Slide 11
I’m sure you’ve taken enough marketing classes at this point or been a consumer for long
enough to recognize that marketing is a very complex subject, and marketing managers have
very difficult tasks. The goal of marketing research is to help marketing managers to make
better marketing decisions. Sometimes it is those decisions that present most of the complexity
in the development of a new product, and the technology to produce the new product is
relatively straightforward. That is the point of this particular cartoon.
Slide 12
Unfortunately, there is a lot of misguided conventional wisdom in marketing. Marketing
research is often necessary to dispel managers of that erroneous conventional wisdom. As this
quote from Ward indicates, “Often times, it’s not the things that we don’t know that get us in
trouble, it is the things that we believe that are true, but in fact are not.” One of the values of
marketing research is to examine those things that we believe are true, but in fact may not be
true about our customers, our competitors, and the environment--all the areas that concern a
good marketing manager.
Slide 13
One of my goals for this class is that if you do marketing research, then you’ll do it right the first
time. That may mean you doing the research yourself, or it may mean you hiring someone to do
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the research for you. Either way, it is an expensive proposition if you do a study and then
discover that you did it incorrectly and it is worthless in helping you make sound marketing
decisions.
Slide 14
Even worse, you may not realize the research you’ve done is inappropriate and, in fact, is
misleading. Misleading research is worse than doing no research at all, as is illustrated by this
cartoon.
Slide 15
So what is marketing research? These next three slides are based on the current AMA definition
of marketing research. They will give you a broad idea of what marketing research entails and
the domain of this course. If nothing else, I hope you will note that marketing research is far
more than those annoying people who call you during dinner and ask you a series of questions.
It is far more than those people at the mall who intercept you with a clipboard in one hand and a
pencil in the other hand, rather than allowing you to shop, and ask you numerous questions
about some product you care little about.
Slide 16
This slide indicates the kinds of questions marketing research can answer for marketing
managers. Specifically, marketing research is intended to link customers, consumers, and the
public to markets through information used to identify and define marketing. As you can see on
this slide, there is an informational aspect of marketing research. It deals with more than mere
consumers. It also deals with buyers, it deals with the public in general, and it’s used to identify
and define things for marketing managers. Marketing research is also useful for generating,
refining and evaluating marketing actions. Certainly, managers need insights into the kinds of
things they ought to be doing; they need insight into the ways they can modify and improve the
things they are already doing, and they also need ways to benchmark and to evaluate whether
what they are doing could be improved.
Marketing research also is important to help in the monitoring of marketing performance. How is
the firm doing in terms of things like market share, sales volumes, and consumer attitudes
toward the firm or its products? Finally, marketing research could help managers to really
understand marketing as a process, even if it only gives them insights--basic fundamental
insights--into how their market works. Those insights could ultimately be turned into better
decisions in months, or maybe years, out.
Slide 17 (No Audio)
AMA Definition
MR is the function which links the consumer, customer, and the public to the marketer through
information—information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems;
generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve
understanding of marketing as a process. MR specifies the information required to address
these issues; designs the method for collecting information; manages and implements the data
collection process; analyzes the results; and communicates the findings and their implications.
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Slide 18
Marketing Research versus Marketing Information Systems
So before we go any further, let’s make sure we’re clear the difference between marketing
research and marketing information systems.
Slide 19
MIS vs. Marketing Research
Perhaps the easiest way to ensure that you recognize the difference between a Marketing
Information System and Marketing Research is to do a simple ‘compare and contrast’. As this
slide shows, marketing research is something we do when we need the answer to an immediate
question. Marketing research is inspired by a problem that management suddenly recognizes
it’s facing. In contrast, marketing information systems generate marketing information on a
routine basis, which could be weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Such systems generate ongoing
reports in a standardized format that managers can use for benchmarking or tracking trends.
Marketing research only uses data sources that are relevant to the research problem. So if we
are conducting marketing research and we want to understand something about different
attitudes among consumers, then we’re looking at a survey. An information system, on the other
hand, gathers great quantities of information, and if the system is working well, then it allows its
operators to sift that data and sort it in a way that allow the manager to see patterns in that data.
So as a result, marketing research deals with much less information than a marketing
information system. However, these things complement one another. The information system, in
fact, may alert the manager to a problem and that to better understand that problem marketing
research is required.
Slide 20
Here’s another table that allows you to contrast the differences between marketing research and
marketing information systems. The information here is similar to that summary of the last slide,
but perhaps the additional text here will help to explain the differences a bit better.
Slide 21
Finally, this slide indicates the components of marketing information systems. You can see that
such systems are comprised of four components. The first component, internal data, is
generated from accounting records; things like sales, costs, and inventories. Because this kind
of data is organized in accord with accounting needs and not in accord with marketing needs, it
may be necessary to convert that data into a form that is more readily useable by a marketing
manager. The second component is marketing intelligence, which is comprised of observation
and outside data that can come from existing publications or companies dedicated to providing
such data (such as syndicated data services). We’ll talk more about those sources as the
semester progresses. Observation refers to a manager’s observation and interaction with sales
force members, distributors, suppliers, or other executives. The third component is the analytical
system. Marketing information systems rely on marketing scientists who create models meant to
help managers make better decisions. Finally, there’s marketing research, a component of the
overall information system that is triggered by observations or trends revealed by the ongoing
data collection process that indicate there may be a problem. I’ll talk, because this course is
about marketing research, much more about the quantitative and qualitative aspects of
marketing research as the semester progresses.
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Slide 22
These next series of slides are meant to emphasize the conditions under which it is advisable to
do marketing research and the conditions under which it is ill advised to do marketing research.
My goal is to make sure you understand that often it’s best not to conduct research. If you
mistakenly do research when it is unnecessary, you’ll come to believe it’s of little value, it’s
overpriced, and it’s irrelevant—and that would be the absolutely most wrong conclusion you
could draw. There are many circumstances under which doing marketing research is valuable,
and understanding when you are faced with a situation that merits research and when you are
faced with a situation that does not merit research is critical to applying research properly. As
the first slide indicates, “Why would you do marketing research?” You would do it if it would help
you to make a better decision. That’s the primary reason for doing research. As I’m sure I’ll
mention repeatedly throughout this presentation, the goal of marketing research is primarily to
help managers select the best among alternative viable courses of action; in other words, to
make the best decisions.
Another worthy reason for doing marketing research is to better understand consumers. If you
better understand your customers, then you are more likely to create products that they prefer
and purchase. That ability is what will make you successful in the marketplace.
The third reason you might want to do marketing research is to find out what went wrong.
Sometimes you can do the best research, have the best people working on a marketing
problem, seemingly come up with the best solution, and discover that it fails miserably. It’s
usually worthwhile to figure out what caused the solution that you initially thought were so
wonderful, to fail. Those are three outstanding reasons for doing marketing research.
Slide 23
Again, in case that point was lost in my discussion of the previous slide…The primary reason for
conducting marketing research is to help managers select among viable alternative courses of
action. This silly cartoon just indicates some of the decisions that a manager would consider
and these are the kinds of possibilities that a marketing researcher would explore to help the
manager select the best course of action.
Slide 24
So, when is it ill-advised to do marketing research? Here’s a partial list of circumstances under
which it’s ill-advised to spend the money it would take to successfully complete a marketing
research study. The first circumstance is if you don’t have the necessary resources to do the
research properly. There were many times, as a consultant, when I was asked by clients to
conduct a study, and when I indicated what that study would cost, if done properly, the client
would ask if it could be done for one third of that cost. I knew the study couldn’t be done
properly with a budget only one third of what I had specified. As a result, I would refuse to do
the study. I would suggest that perhaps there were other alternatives and the client might be
able to find another supplier, as I would not be party to research that I could not trust because
not enough was spent to ensure it was done properly.
The second circumstance not to do marketing research is if the timing of the study is ill-advised.
It may be that it’s premature to do the study; that the market isn’t there yet. Then the information
that you get will be so dated that by the time you need to make a decision, the information is no
longer worthwhile.
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The third circumstance for avoiding marketing research is when the decision has already been
made. It makes no sense to pay for marketing research to confirm an already made decision.
Once the decision has been made, all uncertainty about the decision has been eliminated.
Confirming the wisdom of an already made decision is just a waste of money.
The fourth circumstance is if managers can’t agree on what information is needed; in that case,
there’s no way to appropriately guide the researcher in the type of study needed. If the
researchers don’t know what they need to discover, then there is no way he or she can help the
managers to make a better decision.
The fifth circumstance is the needed information already exists. There is no sense in reinventing
the wheel. If there are secondary sources, which will be discussed more during the semester, or
previous studies that are still timely, then it makes no sense to spend the money it would take to
do a new marketing research study.
The sixth circumstance is it’s not of value to do a study if its costs outweigh its benefits, which
should just be obvious. Finally from this list for avoiding marketing research is that by doing a
study you’ll tip your competitors about some new product that you might be interested in
launching or some new configuration of an existing product, thus giving them an opportunity to
develop a ‘me too’ sort of product and costing you a lot of the advantage that would come from
introducing the product without a competitor being able to anticipate that action.
Slide 25
Although the next several points are illustrated by cartoon, they are no less valid. Here’s a
reason not to do marketing research…having someone else to blame for a lousy decision.
Saying that the manager is not responsible for the decision but that the research made the
decision for him or her is ludicrous. Research is supposed to assist rather than replace the
manager, and so you cannot, as a manager, blame the research for your faulty decision making.
That is one reason for taking this course: so you’ll be able to identify research that is
untrustworthy or is of lesser trustworthiness, and thus you’ll be able to make more informed
decisions.
Slide 26
Once you’ve hit the point, illustrated by this cartoon, it’s probably too late to do marketing
research. To some extent managers have to anticipate when things are beginning to go wrong
and do the appropriate research to right their marketing ship. In this case, there’s no ship to
right; this company is going bankrupt. It is probably best to avoid marketing research when the
company is a few days from bankruptcy.
Slide 27
For those of you who prefer a flow diagram, here’s one that might help you to determine when
to conduct a marketing research study. You can see that part of the decision process includes
the possibility that you will not conduct research. It may seem odd that I’m not proposing
marketing research as the cure for all managerial problems and that it’s only appropriate in
some situations. You may wonder why I’m not being a stronger advocate for marketing
research. There must be something wrong with it if I can’t advocate its use at all times. As I said
previously, there are going to be circumstances when you are best off not doing research, and if
you always do it when it’s appropriate to do, then I’ll be comfortable that you’ve gained a
tremendous amount from this course.
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Slide 28
Again, as I can’t stress it enough, the goal of marketing research is to help managers choose
the best among viable alternative courses of action. One of the ways research does that is to
reduce the uncertainty associated with any decision that a manager might make; hence, this
example in which the manager doesn’t know whether or not to enter the Australian market. The
goal of marketing research would be to help reduce the uncertainty about the likely success or
failure of that endeavor for this manager and this company.
Slide 29
This slide shows a somewhat more formalized depiction of the decision about whether or not
research is worthwhile. Remember the value should exceed the cost or otherwise it’s
nonsensical to do research. Why would anyone pay more for something than it was worth? The
value of research is to decrease uncertainty, to increase the likelihood of a correct decision, and
to improve marketing performance. The costs are equally clear cut; the direct costs of doing the
research, the cost of any delay in implementing a decision, and potentially tipping rivals to your
actions. Of course, there’s always the possibility that the research, regardless of how well
conceived, will yield erroneous information. Think in terms of the now-classic New Coke.
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