Managing Marketing
Information
Chapter 4
Marketing Info. System
Marketing Information System
(MIS)
 Consists of people, equipment, and
procedures to gather, sort, analyze,
evaluate, and distribute needed,
timely, and accurate information to
marketing decision makers.
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Goal 2: Define the Marketing Information System
Marketing Info. System
Begins and Ends with Information Users:
 Interacts with information users to assess
information
 Develops needed information from internal
and external sources
 Helps users analyze information for
marketing decisions
 Distributes the marketing information and
helps managers use it for decision making
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Goal 2: Define the Marketing Information System
Fig.4.1.The Marketing Information System
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Assessing Marketing
Information Needs
 The MIS serves company managers
as well as external partners
 The MIS must balance needs against
feasibility:
• Not all information can be obtained.
• Obtaining, processing, sorting, and
delivering information is costly
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Goal 2: Define the Marketing Information System
Developing Marketing
Information
Sources of Info
Internal data
Marketing
intelligence
Marketing research
• Internal data is gathered via
customer databases,
financial records, and
operations reports.
• Advantages include
quick/easy access to
information.
• Disadvantages stem from the
incompleteness or
inappropriateness of data to
a particular situation.
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Goal 2: Define the Marketing Information System
Developing Marketing
Information
Sources of Info
Internal data
Marketing
intelligence
Marketing research
• Marketing intelligence is the
systematic collection and
analysis of publicly available
information about
competitors and trends in
the marketing environment.
• The goal of marketing
intelligence is to improve
strategic decision making,
assess and track
competitors’ actions, and
provide early warning of
opportunities and threats
• Many sources of competitive
information exist.
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Goal 2: Define the Marketing Information System
Sources of
Competitive Intelligence
• Company
employees
• Internet
• Garbage
• Published
information
• Competitor’s
employees
• Trade shows
• Benchmarking
• Channel
members and key
customers
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Goal 2: Define the Marketing Information System
Developing Marketing
Information
Sources of Info
Internal data
Marketing
intelligence
Marketing research
Marketers often need
formal studies of specific
situations.
Marketing research is the
systematic design,
collection, analysis, and
reporting of data
relevant to a specific
marketing situation
facing an organization.
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Goal 2: Define the Marketing Information System
Companies use marketing research in a wide variety
of situations.
• It can help marketers understand customer
satisfaction and purchase behavior.
• It can help them assess market potential and
market share.
• It can measure the effectiveness of pricing,
product, distribution, and promotion activities.
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Steps in the Marketing
Research Process:
1. Defining the problem and research
objectives.
2. Developing the research plan for
collecting information.
3. Implementing the research plan –
collecting and analyzing the data.
4. Interpreting and reporting the
findings.
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Goal 3: Outline the steps in the market research process
Step 1: Defining the problem
and research objectives



The manager and the researcher must work together.
The manager and researcher must set the research
objectives. There are three types.
–
The objective of exploratory research is to
gather preliminary information that will help
define the problem and suggest hypotheses.
–
The objective of descriptive research is to
describe things, such as the market potential for
a product or the demographics and attitudes of
consumers who buy the product.
–
The objective of causal research is to test
hypotheses about cause-and-effect
relationships.
These objectives guide the entire process.
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Goal 3: Outline the steps in the market research process
Step 2: Developing the
Research Plan

The research plan is a written document that
outlines the type of problem, objectives, data
needed, and the usefulness of the results.

To meet the manager’s information needs, the
research plan can call for gathering secondary
data, primary data, or both.
•
•
Secondary data: Information collected for
another purpose that already exists.
Primary data: Information collected for the
specific purpose at hand
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Goal 3: Outline the steps in the market research process
Gathering Secondary Data
Secondary data sources:
 Government information
 Internal, commercial, and online databases
 Publications
Advantages:
 Obtained quickly
 Less expensive than primary data
Disadvantages:
 Information may not exist or may not be usable
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Goal 3: Outline the steps in the market research process
Secondary Data
Evaluate the Following When
Judging Data Quality
Relevance
Accuracy
Currency
Impartiality
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Goal 3: Outline the steps in the market research process
Primary Data Collection
Primary research decisions:




Research approaches
Contact methods
Sampling plan
Research instruments
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Goal 3: Outline the steps in the market research process
Primary Data
Decisions
Observation research using
people or machines
 Discovers behavior but
not motivations.
Research Approach
 Ethnographic research,
trained observers watch
Contact Method
people.
Sampling Plan
Survey research
Research Instrument
 Effective for descriptive
information.
 Single-source data
systems start with
surveys of huge
consumer panels.
Experimental research
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 Investigates cause and
effect
relationships.
Goal 3: Outline the steps in the market
research
process
Primary Data
Decisions
Research Approach
Contact Method
Sampling Plan
Research Instrument
Key Contact Methods Include:
 Mail surveys
 Telephone surveys
 Personal interviewing:
• Individual or focus
group
 Online research
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Goal 3: Outline the steps in the market research process
•
Advances in communications have resulted in
a number of high-tech contact methods.
– Computer assisted telephone interviewing
(CATI) is where interviewers sit at
computers, read questions on the screen,
and type in respondents’ answers.
– Completely automated telephone surveys
(CATS) enables respondents to be dialed by
computer and asked prerecorded
questions.
– Online (Internet) marketing research
includes Internet surveys, experiments,
and online focus groups.
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Marketing Info. System
Strengths and Weaknesses of
Contact Methods Relate to:
Flexibility
Sample control
Data quantity
Cost
Interviewer effects
Speed of data
collection
Response rate
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Goal 3: Outline the steps in the market research process
Table.4.3 Strengths and Weaknesses of Contact
Methods
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Primary Data
Decisions
Research Approach
Contact Method
Sampling Plan
Research Instrument
Sample: subgroup of population
from whom information will be
collected
Sampling Plan Decisions:
 Sampling unit
 Sample size
 Sampling procedure:
• Probability samples
• Non-probability
samples
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Goal 3: Outline the steps in the market research process
Table.4.4 Types of Samples
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Primary Data
Decisions
Research Approach
Contact Method
Sampling Plan
Research Instrument
 Questionnaires
• Include open-ended
and closed-ended
questions
• Phrasing and
question order are
key
 Mechanical instruments
• Nielsen’s people
meters
• Checkout scanners
• Eye cameras
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Goal 3: Outline the steps in the market research process
Table.4.5 A Questionable Questionnaire
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Step 3: Implementing the
Research Plan
 The researcher next puts the marketing
research plan into action. The data
collection phase of marketing research
process is generally the most expensive
and the most subject to error.
 Data is collected by the company or an
outside firm
 The data is then processed and checked for
accuracy and completeness and coded for
analysis
 Finally, the data is analyzed by a variety of
statistical methods
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Goal 3: Outline the steps in the market research process
Step 4: Interpreting and
Reporting the Findings
 The research interprets the findings,
draws conclusions and reports to
management
 Managers and researchers must
work together to interpret results for
useful decision making
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Goal 3: Outline the steps in the market research process
Analyzing Marketing
Information


Statistical analysis and analytical models
are often used
Marketing scientists have developed
numerous models to help marketing
managers make better marketing mix
decisions, design sales territories and
sales call plans, select sites for retail
outlets, develop optimal advertising
mixes, and forecast new-product sales.
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Goal 4: Explain how companies analyze/distribute marketing information
Customer Relationship
Management
•
•
•
•
Smart companies capture information at every possible
customer touchpoint. These touchpoints include
customer purchases, sales force contacts, service and
support calls, Web site visits, satisfaction surveys, and
every contact between the customer and the company.
CRM consists of sophisticated software and analytical
tools that integrate information from all sources,
analyze it in depth, and apply the results to build
stronger customer relationships.
CRM analysts develop data warehouses.
Once the data warehouse brings the data together, the
company uses high-powered data mining techniques
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Distributing and Using
Marketing Information
 Routine reporting makes information
available in a timely manner.
 User-friendly databases allow for
special queries.
 Intranets and extranets help
distribute information to company
employees and value-network
members.
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Goal 4: Explain how companies analyze/distribute marketing information
Other Considerations
• Marketing research in small
businesses and not-for-profit
organizations
• International marketing research
• Public policy and ethics
 Consumer privacy issues
 Misuse of research findings
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Goal 5: Discuss Special Issues Facing Market Researchers