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MARKETNG RESEARCH

INTRODUCTON:Marketing decisions are a combination of judgement and factual information. Therefore marketing decision should be based on facts. Marketing research helps in the gathering the useful information. Todays executive has a difficult task in marketing appraisal and decisions. Decision based on true facts is less likely to be wasteful. Marketing Research, by supplying the relevant facts, can aid considerably executives to raise the level of their performance. It can thus discharge an advisory function by highlighting the necessary facts on which the executive may base his decision. Through a reliance on facts soundly interpreted, the executive can lean less on hunch or intuition for his decisions.

MEANING AND DEFINITION:The terms Market research or Market Analysis and market research are often used loosely as having the same meaning. Actually Marketing Research is a term of wider significance as it includes all research activities in the field of marketing including market analysis. Richard D. Crisp explains it as: Marketing research is the systematic, objective, and exhaustive search for the study of the facts relevant to, any problem in the field of marketing. The American marketing association defined marketing research as the systematic gathering, recording and analyzing of data about problems relating to the marketing of goods and services. Cox arid Good defined Marketing information system is a set of procedures and methods for regular and planned collection, analysis and presentation of information in marketing decisions.

OBJECTIVES OF MARKETING RESEARCH:1. To know the demographics and psychographics of customers:Marketing research tries to reveal the number of persons who buy, why they buy, when they buy, the frequency of their buying, and the sources of their buying. It also includes the social status and the regional location of the customers. 2. To find out the impact of promotional efforts:A marketing research facilitates appraising and improving the methods of sales promotion. It also leads to measure the effectiveness of advertising, pricing policies and channels of distribution. 3. To know customer response to a new product:This is also known as product testing. Marketing research is frequently used to know the opinion of the customers about the, satisfaction given by a new product. This helps in knowing the desired improvements in quality, design, size, packing, distribution method, etc. 4. To forecast sales:Marketing research helps in sales forecasting and market planning. The researchers make sales forecast on the basis of the response from the customers and the distribution media. 5. To anticipate competitive moves:It helps the marketer to continuously monitor the competitor and judge about the right actions that might be required. For example, the war between P&G and HLL for their detergents included going to the court, apart from bringing new product by improvements, getting stamp of approval from Vimal and Videocon respectively.

6. To probe what went wrong:This happens when the product is having some special problems for example, Jonson & Jonson probed into the poisoning of their capsules and found that the customer felt very bad about the company. The company launched advertising campaign whereby it offered to replace all the capsules, it owned its responsibility for any injury caused to the customers, and that poisoning happened outside their factory. The company regained its market share and image. This was possible because marketing research found the right media and message. Which could change customer attitude in favour of Johnson & Johnson?

PROCESS OF MARKETING RESEARCH:Effective marketing research involve the following steps involve in this steps. The various stages in this process are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Defining the problem. Defining research objectives. Working out research design. Deciding on the source of data. Planning and deciding on data collection techniques and tools. Analyzing data. Writing out the report and presenting it to the decision makers

IMPORTANCE OF MARKETING RESEARCH:1) USES/IMPORTANCE TO BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY:i. Decision-making Tools:- Marketing research is useful for taking marketing management decision it provides necessary information and data in analyzed and processed forms for making marketing decisions. With advanced technology, higher production function and an increasing marketing complex, market research has become an indispensable tool for taking appropriate decisions. Management planning:- marketing research is used for management planning. It deals with marketing opportunities, i.e. those opportunities which are viable to be exploited by management. Thus, marketing management can assess the resources that will be useful for the business. Problem solving:- starting from problem identification to formulation of alternatives solution, and evolving the alternatives in every area of marketing management, Is the problem solving action of marketing research. Control technique:- marketing research is used as a control technique of marketing management to find out the weakness and shortcomings of the

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management decisions to reorient the planning and performance techniques Large scale production:- marketing research helps large scale production by providing suitable decisions to be undertaken by the producer to exploit the existing production resources to meet the growing markets. The resources of production and market potentials are properly assessed by marketing research Complex market:- the advancement of science and technology and the standard of living of consumers necessitate closer touch with the growing markets. The size and specialization with in the business unit and the intervention of numerous middlemen between the manufacturers and customers created a wide communication gap. Pattern of consumption:- The pattern of consumption is to be assessed by the marketing management. The study of buyer behaviour, attitudes and capacity to purchase is very important in marketing research. The purchasing power of a consumer depends upon his disposable personal income. Thus, the total purchasing power of a country or geographical are can be assessed by the disposable income of the place. Suitable market operation:- marketing operation decide production functions, and marketing operations can be better decided by the findings of marketing research. Marketing strategies:- marketing management has to lay down appropriate marketing strategies to meet competition to pursue growth in market and to attain organizational onjectives.

PROBLEM DEFINITION

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

RESEARCH DESIGN

SOURSE OF DATA

DATA COLLECTION

DATA ANALYSIS
PRIMARY SECONDARY AND ADVANCED

REPORT AND PRESENTATION

DEFINING THE PROBLEM:Under the marketing research, before understanding the study of any problem, it becomes necessary that a clear-cut definition of the problem be known. Without the definition of the problem, no strong and proper plan could be drawn up of the marketing research. Unless we decide the subject of our research, it is useless to hope for good results. For a good result of the researches, it is also essential that whatever data be gathered, their should be unbiased and reliable. For it is essential that the source of informations be widely examined or tested. Many a times, due to the drawbacks of the sources of information, proper conclusions are not drawn out of the research.

STATEMENT OF RESEARCH OBJECTIVES:Once the problem is defined, the next logical step is to state what the researcher wants to achieve. This statement is called objectives. To be meaningful and help focus the researchers attention, this objective should be specific, attainable and measurable. In the distribution example above, the researcher laid down the objectives are follows:(a) To determine the market penetration of the company and its competitors in metros and other urban cities, by collecting data on the number of outlets exclusively keeping the companys or its competitors products and outlets keeping both company and competitors products.

(b) To determine the ratio of brands sales to industry sales (extraction) that the company got from different retail outlets selling its own and its competitors brands and. (c) To assess the motivation level of channel members and evolve and incentive plan for enhancing it.

All these three objectives emanate from the problem definition. Also, these are measurable and attainable and they are specific. The purpose of these objectives is to act as a guide to the researcher and help him in maintaining a focus all through the research.

RESEARCH DESIGN:The third stage in the marketing research process is deciding on the research design. There are three types of research designs, namely: (a) Exploratory (b) Descriptive (c) Causative

(a) Exploratory Research:Exploratory research is conducted when the researcher does not know how and why a certain phenomenon occurs, for example, how does the customer evaluate the quality of a bank or a hotel or an airline? While in the case of a manufactured product, quality is the assessed on the basis of tangible features, replacement policy, warranty, etc. In the case of services, there are no tangibles. To understand this phenomenon, several researchers have conducted

focus group discussion to identify these quality parameters, for example, Zeithaml, Parsuraman and Berry identified variables which they clubbed under five groups. In doing so, they used focus groups. Since the prime goal of an exploratory research to known the unknown, this research is unstructured. Focus groups, interviewing key customer groups. Expert and even search for printed or published information are some common techniques.

(b) Descriptive research:Descriptive research is carried out to describe a phenomenon or market characteristic. For example, a study to understand buyer behaviour and describe characteristics of the target market is a descriptive research. Continuing the above example of service quality, a research done on how customers evaluate the quality of competing service institution can be considered as an example of descriptive research, likewise, research done on media habits and T.V. viewing habits is an illustration of descriptive research. Generally, descriptive research is carried out only when the researcher understand the phenomena or behavioural characteristics.

(c) Causative research:Causative research is done to establish a cause and effect relationship, for example, the influence of income and lifestyle on purchase decision. Here the researcher may like to see the effect of rising income and changing lifestyle on consumption of select products. He/she may test the hypothesis that as income increases are likely to be bought. Or in other words, choice of technology is a function of the customers income and lifestyle. Likewise, a firm may like to test the effect of a 10% raise in its products prices. In a causative research, unlike exploratory or descriptive, hypotheses are tested. Hypothesis is a statement of predicted outcomes of the research. In building up a hypothesis, it is important that the researcher understand the phenomena thoroughly, or a body of research that exists on the subject matter.

SOURCES OF DATA:Once the research design has been decided upon, the next stage is that of selecting the essentially, there are two sources of data or informationSecondary and Primary. (a) Secondary data:This refers to information that has been collected earlier by someone else. Often this includes printed or published reports, news items, industry or trade statistics, etc. This also includes internal documents like invoices, sales reports, payment history of customers, dispatch records, etc. These are important to the researcher as they provide an insight to the problem. Often the preliminary investigation is restricted to secondary data. It may be understood here that often this data includes information on competition, customers etc.

(b) Primary data:Primary sources refer to data collected directly from the market placecustomers, traders and suppliers often are the major sources. They are often reliable data sources and help in overcoming limitation of secondary data. The problem in primary data is its cost, both in terms of money and time, and often a researcher bias also creeps in. However, not with standing these

limitations, primary sources are important and more than 90% of marketing research involves one or the other part of this primary data search.

DATA COLLECTION:The researcher is now ready to take a plunge. But still he or she needs to be clear about the: Procedure of data collectionPrimary Data can be collected through any or combination of the following techniques. (1) Observational research: This technique involves observing what a customer is buying and doing in the store. Also it involves observing how a customer behaves in the shopping area; how he or she dresses up and what do the customer say when he or she sees the product. Closed video monitoring is a very common technique being used today by major dealer shows shops and other retail outlets. Other example fresh data can be gathered by observing the relevant actors and settings. The American airline researchers might meander around airports, airline offices, and travel agencies to hear how travellers talk about the different carriers. The researchers can fly on American and competitors planes to observe the quality of in-flight service. This exploratory research might yield some useful hypothesis about how travellers choose air carriers.

(2) Focus group research: A focus group is gathering of six to ten people who are invited to spend a few hours with a skilled moderator to discuss a product, service, organization, or other marketing entity. The moderator needs to be objective, knowledgeable on the issue, and skilled in group dynamics. Participants are normally paid a small sum for attending. The meeting is typically held in pleasent surroundings and refreshments are served.

Focus group research is a useful exploratory step. Consumer goods companies have been using focus groups for many years, and an increasing number of newspapers, law firms, hospitals and public service organizations are discovering their value. However, researcher must avoid generalizing the reported feelings of the focus group participants to the whole market, because the sample size is too small and the sample is not drawn randomly. With the development of the World Wide Web, many companies are now conducting on-line focus groups. (3) Experimentation: this is a technique that involves experimenting new product ideas, advertising copies and campaigns, sales promotion ideas and even pricing and distribution strategies with the target customers group. (4) Survey research: The most common procedure is the survey. Here the researcher carries out opinion polls involving customers, sales persons, dealers and experts. Also customer and trade survey are very common. In conducting these surveys, the researcher has to carefully select the instruments and methods of surveying. These methods are postal surveys, telephone surveys, personal contacts.

Tools of data collection The researcher has to decide on the appropriate tools for data collection. These tools are:

(1) Questionnaires : A questionnaire consists of a set of questions presented to respondents for their answers. Because of its flexibility, the questionnaire is by for the most common instrument used to collect primary data. Questionnaire need to be carefully developed, tested, and debugged before they are administered on a large scale.

In preparing a questionnaire, the professional marketing researcher carefully chooses the questions and their form, wording, and sequence. The form of the question asked can influence the response. Marketing researcher distinguish between closed-end and open-end question. Closed-end questions prespecify all the possible answers. Closed-end questions provide answer that is easier to interpret and tabulate. Open-end questions often reveal more because they do not constrain respondents answers. Open-end questions are especially useful in exploratory research, where the researcher is looking for insight into how people think rather than in measuring how many people think a certain way. (2) Interview Schedule: At times a questionnaire is not able to give an insight into the rationale of a customers feeling, or factors that will lead to success of a few technology like e-mail and voice-mail or new products that a firm may consider introducing. It is for these and several similar reasons that an interview schedule is developed. The purpose of this schedule to study indepth an object, an event, or a group of people unlike a questionnaire the responses are unstructured, unlike a questionnaire. (3) Association tests Recently, the researchers focus has been on the qualitative research, or researching the psychological dimension of consumer behaviour. In most direct questioning, using the questionnaire or an interview schedule, the respondent is generally guarded and gives response? More from the conscious part of his or her psyche. To get to, the

sub-conscious part, marketing researchers are using several psychological instruments like association tests, sentence completion tests and thematic appreciation tests (TAT). These tests are believed to reveal the customers perception of a product or brand or firm image also these tests can give information on customers perception of brand personality as also the personality and life style of target customer group.

DATA ANALYSIS:The next-to-last step in the marketing research process is to extract findings from the collected data. The researcher tabulates the data and develops frequency distribution. Averages and measures of dispersion are computed for the major variables. The researcher will also apply some advanced statistical techniques and decision models in the hope of discovering additional findings.

REPORTS AND PRESENTATION:The last stage is that of writing out a report and making a presentation to the decision-maker. It is important that the report has a summary, called the executive summary, giving a birds eye view of the research and major recommendation. This is because; most senior managers have little time for going through the entire report in depth. The execution summary can direct the leaders attention to specify issues and recommendations. Depending on his or her interest, the decision-maker goes in to the details of those issues by turning to the relevant sections in the report. This summary should generally not exceed a thousand words. The report should be structured and pages chronologically numbered. Generally, the structure of a good report is somewhat like the following: i. Introduction to the problem. State here the problem, the environmental context, objectives, sample size, stratification and sampling procedure adopted, tools for data collection, source of data, and data analysis tools, Marketing research findings or survey findings. Present here all the major findings,

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Interpretation of research findings, Policy implication. Often the decision maker may want the researcher to present the findings. For this it is important that he prepare his slides or transparencies of only major findings and he hold interest of decision makers, narrate experiences that he or she may have heard or had while collecting the data. But these experiences should relevant and support the research findings. Remember humanizing data can often make an interesting presentation and keep an audience tuned into the marketing researcher.

SCOPE OF MARKETING RESEARCH:Marketing research covers different aspect of marketing of goods, services and ideas. There are many areas of marketing management where marketing research has special branches. (1) Product research- Product research is associated with the conversion of customer needs into tangible product offer. This includes development and testing of new products, improving the existing products, and a tab on the changing customer preferences, habits, tastes, etc. Packaging design, branding and labelling decision are also included here. For example, Ponds tested its Pnnds Toothpaste, but it did not launch the toothpaste with the same package as used in the concept test and test marketing. The result was marketing failure of the product because the actual ponds toothpaste was with pink floral package which consumer perceived to resemble taking of talcum powder into their mouths. (2) Customer Research- This research type includes investigation into the customer buying behaviour the economic, social, cultural, personal, and psychological influences. For example, when Rasna concentrate was launched, it was targeted at the mothers. But sales did riot pick-up. Then, the targeting was changed to include the child as influencer of mothers

decisions to prepare Rasna for him. The sales graph picked-up and today it ruling the category.

(3) Sales Research- Sales research involves decisions concerning selection of store location, channels, territories, sales force motivation and compensation, etc. The purpose is to reach the target customer more effectively, efficiently and timely. For example, when Volform sauce was launched by voltas, it was heavily advertised and people were tempted to reach outlets. However, the retailers had not been provided with the product by that time.

Poor sales research resulted into marketing failure of he product. Later on, when Volform reached distribution channels, there was less promotional support and therefore people were, this time, unwilling to move to the retail outlets thanking that the product would not be available. (4) Promotion Research- Promotion research encompasses all efforts by the marketers to communicate the companys offer. This includes advertising, publicity, public relations, sales promotion, etc. Today, most of the products are advertising through sponsorship (Videocon independent cup, pepsi asian cup, Philips top 10, chutki baja ke (fevikwik), etc.) or launched through events (Bharti telecom.) launched its cellular phone service in Delhi through staging a play before select audience; Microsoft-launched Window 95 by carrying out spectacular events in 53 countries around the world). On sales promotion, the trend is towards offering freebies, exchanges, interest-low consumer finance, etc. All these are possible after conducting extensive research to ensure success of the particular campaign.

Product research

PRAMOTION RESEARCH

MARKETING RESARCH

CUSTOMER RESEARCH

SALES RESEARCH SCOPE OF MARKETIG RESEARCH

ADVANTAGES OF MARKETING RESEARCH:The following are some of the main merits or advantages of the market research: (1) New products The market potentialities of the new products are available as also of the new markets for the same. In this way, the market research proves helpful in presenting the new products into the market. (2) Appraisal of research of the sales policy Within the sales policy, it is determined as to how much is the target of the sales, how and where has the product to be disposed off, what has to be done in this regard, etc. The sales manager could evaluate the result of his sales policy through the market research. If there is the need of effecting changes in the sales policy, it is also known.

(3) Helpful in facing the Competition In the present era, the producers are required to face the competition in the market against so many competitors. By the market research knowledge could be gathered with regard to the

methods of the working of these competitors. By market research, help is available in successfully facing the competition. (4) Production and sates Planning By the market research, forecast could be made regarding the demand of the consumers by which much help could be possible in formulating the plans regarding the production and sales.

(5) Knowledge of consumers Reactions By the market research, the knowledge could be procured with regard to the reaction of the consumers about the particular product. After gelling the knowledge regarding the reaction of the consumers, in view of their desires of likings, necessary changes could be effected in the quality and kind of the product, its weight, packing, design, price, etc.

(6) Discovery of the New market of the Product By the market research, information is available regarding the new markets and customers of the product. In these new markets, for promoting the sales of the product, necessary steps may be taken up. (7) Reducing the Risk If any producer, with the help of market research, manufactures the products keeping in view the taste and temperament, fashion, etc. Of the consumers, or plans the production of the item, there doesnt remain any risk with regard to the sale of the product.

(8) Increase In the Standard of Living By the market research, due to the enhancement in the demand and production, the cost could be reduced and the consumers would be able to get the products on cheaper prices which might ultimately lead to an advancement in the standard of the living of the consumers.

LIMITATIONS OF MARKETING RESEARCH


Marketing research may suffer from the following limitations:(1) Huge expenditure:- Marketing research involve huge expenditure of money, efforts and time on the collection and analysis of data. Small firms cannot afford marketing research. (2) Bias in collecting data:- The effectiveness of marketing research depends largely on the types of data or information collected. The subjectivity of the investigators may have adverse effect on the effectiveness of the marketing research.

(3) Unpredictable Human Behaviour:- Marketing research is mainly a study of the behaviour of human beings. The individuals may not always give adequate and accurate data. Thus, the results of the marketing research are not cent percent accurate.

(4) Requires Intelligent Handling:- Marketing research is not an end in itself. It is a means to decision-making. It requires competent and experienced executive or managers to use the result of marketing research.

(5) Supplementary, Not Substitute: Marketing research is not a substitute for executive judgement. It only provides relevant information with the help of which executives can take decisions regarding product, pricing, promotion, place, packaging, etc. (6) Requires Competent Researcher:- Marketing research may lead the executive to wrong results because of carelessness of the research staff. If the investigators are not competent to collect right type of data and analyze it accurately, there will be no utility of marketing research.

(7) No Time Gap Allowed Between Research and its Implementation:There is generally a time lag between marketing research and the implementation of its findings. During this period, business conditions might change making the market research a futile exercise.

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