 Hi, welcome. My name is Dr. Marcy Stone, and this is Unit 2, Marketing Research, of your Strategic Marketing Course. And here is the course layout for the course. And again, this is Unit 2, Marketing Research. Here are the Unit 2 learning outcomes. Explain the strategic importance of marketing research for making marketing decisions. Explain the five steps in the marketing research process. Assess four methods for defining a marketing research problem. Evaluate primary and secondary research approaches for collecting data. Describe two quantitative and two qualitative research methods for a marketing research project. Differentiate exploratory, descriptive, and causal research designs for marketing research. And lastly, recommend guidelines for analyzing and interpreting research results for data validity and decision making. So why are learning outcomes important? So every learning outcome ties back to your course materials and your content. This includes assessments as well as test preparation. And then here are the overview topics for Unit 2. So we'll be looking at the market research process, defining a marketing research problem, primary and secondary research for collecting data, quantitative and qualitative research. And we'll look at exploratory, description, and causal research designs, as well as analyzing and interpreting the research results. Here is the marketing research vocabulary, which we will talk about in this presentation. Okay, so let's start with this slide. It just shows the marketing research process. So first you have to identify the problem. You're going to decide what the problem is, narrow it down. Sometimes that can be ironically the most important step of all of these. And I say ironically because it seems so simple, right? We know what the problem is, but actually identifying it and tweaking it, sometimes a research problem might be rewritten a dozen times before you're done. So it's something that is very specific. Everyone assumes they know what the problem is. And then when you really start to talk about what the problem is, you'll realize everyone has a different perspective. So it's the first step, but it's also probably the most important and the one that might actually take, I'm not gonna say it's gonna take longer than actually conducting your research, but it will take quite a bit of time to get it just right. But identifying your problem, it also includes your research questions, any objectives that you have for the project, and then also defining the problem. And then you have developing the research plan. So now you're gonna gather your information, you're going to look at what kind of research or analysis methods you might use, who's gonna be responsible for what, all of that will go into your research plan. Then you're going to actually conduct your research. So you may use primary data, you may use secondary data, you may do a mixture of data, but you're gonna look at your methods, your techniques, everything that's available to you and figure out what is gonna work best for your study. And then we have the analyze and report findings. At this point, you're looking at how are we gonna format the data? How are we gonna analyze the data? How are we going to interpret the results? And then you're gonna report on your findings and then also make recommendations. And then finally there, it's take action. You're going to be looking at what did we, what was our focus? What did we do? What has come out of this? And then how can we come up with our marketing plans? You're looking at your options, you're evaluating those options, and then you're trying to think of, here's what we need to do, and then just go and do it at that point. Okay, so marketing research is essential to help a marketer make informed decisions and create a strategic marketing plan. Many marketing companies conduct their own research and use internal and external sources with their marketing research to help collect data that will lead to a successful strategic marketing plan. Marketing research might include planning and conducting pilot groups, interviewing consumers about the brand or specific products, asking consumers to complete targeted surveys or perhaps using existing data from government and public websites. The more data that can be collected about a product or potential marketplaces for a product, the easier it will be to develop a strategic marketing plan. Marketing research may be used to determine how to properly market a product, obtain information to create a marketing plan or look for additional ways to promote a brand. The marketing research process utilizes a systematic approach that includes numerous steps. That process includes, that process includes the five steps, which we just went over on the last slide. So it's identifying the problem, developing the research plan, conducting your research, analyzing and reporting your findings and taking action. So as you go through the five steps, think about how this might be applied to the marketing plan. So we talked a little bit of identifying the problem. So it's perhaps the most important part of a systematic marketing research process. If you can't come up with a solid problem, then results are really unlikely. You want to think about things like what problem am I trying to solve? What objectives and goals do you have for this product? What are the research questions that you would like to answer? Then the second step is developing the research plan. So then ask yourself, what information do you need to conduct this study? And how will you analyze the research results and data? The next step is to actually conduct your research. So the process of how you will collect your research needs to be planned in detail. It should be simple enough so that anyone can look at your plan and then recreate your research. So think about how you will collect the data. What secondary data will you need or do you need it at all? And then what research methods are best suited to the type of data that you will collect. The next step is to analyze and report findings. So it's important to be as specific as possible when you're analyzing and reporting findings. How will you analyze the data? How will you interpret the results? How do you plan to report the data? And then what recommendations will you need? So you'll notice that I also mentioned some of these under develop the research plan. It really is important to think about how you're going to analyze the data before you collect it. And you have to be able to visualize once I have it, here's what I'm going to do. Because it may affect how you conduct your research. So you want to think about that and really think about how you're going to analyze the data in step two because you don't want to have to redo it if you haven't thought the whole process through. And then in the final step in the marketing research process is to take action. So you want to evaluate options, review the results, create a plan to take action and then execute the plan. Then we have, so this is again just those steps in the research process. So just so you can see this one breaks it out into really 10 love steps really. So you're looking for your ideas for a research project. You're looking at what each step is. It's understanding each of these phases. So you're looking at your literature search. You're looking at identifying any, what do you not know that you need to know or what is this research study going to answer for me? Looking at your aims and objectives. Identifying any hypothesis to be tested. So usually we'll see these in quantitative studies not in qualitative studies. Then you've got identified key deliverables and resources. What kind of timeframe are we looking at? Are you going to conduct a survey until you get a certain number of people that respond? And then once you hit that, are you done? How will you fund them? Will you request this information, maybe send out a survey, maybe hit up a couple of social media sites? And then at that point, do you try to do it again in a week until you get your numbers? This all has to be things that you have to think about as you go through this process. We've got workflow model on here, risks and risk mitigation, and then undertaking your research. And this is all just getting to that point that gets you to that point. So as you can see, it can be pretty extensive. You really do need to think through the process. You need to think through the entire process before you can actually begin your research. Okay, so defining the research problem is perhaps one of the most important steps in the process of conducting research. If you don't know exactly what you're trying to study, then there's no point to conducting research in the first place. So many researchers believe that they understand the problem, but can you simply define it? Defining the specific problem, you will be able to focus your marketing and ensure that you get results that you want from your study. This information will help you to better define strategic marketing plan and learn how to properly promote your brand or products. So when you set out to define a marketing research problem, quite a few things must be considered in the process. For example, you need to consider the overall goals of the business, any potential trends that may be incurring in the industry at the time, maybe recent brand or product feedback from consumers, and maybe even looking at what competitors are doing in the industry with any additional research that you can gather. So once you've properly defined your research problem and everyone agrees that is the problem, then you can begin to plan your research and flush out a detailed problem statement. When you are collecting data for your study, it will include primary and potentially secondary research. Understanding the difference between the two is key for conducting research and collecting data. Primary research includes collecting information that will help to answer the research question, and it will require more time and effort than secondary research. So this is the main way and for some studies the only way that you will conduct your research. Primary research may include organizing and conducting consumer focus groups in which you will collect information specific to your research question, or you may conduct case studies or conduct action research, or you may interview consumers or you might develop a consumer questionnaire and ask potential customers to complete it. Sometimes it's also useful to collect secondary research. This type of research may give validity to your primary research. Not all studies include secondary research, but you may find it extremely useful to conduct. Secondary research may include researching and collecting any existing internal organizational data, searching for detailed information on government websites, or using marketing or industry journals and publications, or you may use existing polling information collected by outside organizations. Secondary research may be needed when primary research does not answer the research question in its entirety, or when gaps are found in the data collection. The difference between primary and secondary research is action. Typically you will create or conduct primary research and secondary research has already been completed by someone else, and you can add secondary research information to your study. Choosing a quantitative or qualitative research study is important when conducting marketing research. After you understand your research question and the direction that you want your study to go, it is then important to choose whether you want to use a quantitative or a qualitative research. For marketing research qualitative might include a consumer focus group or an in-depth interview. Qualitative research explores ideas and concepts. Questions would include longer open-ended questions that begin with the words such as how and why. Typically qualitative research can be subjective and more open-ended than a quantitative study because it is not mathematically based, but you're looking for people's opinions or attitudes. For marketing research, quantitative research may include consumer surveys or questionnaires. A consumer survey or questionnaire may be conducted after or before a purchase and will ask the consumer how they might use the product or service and for their opinion. Quantitative research may ask short closed-ended questions that begin with the words like how much, how many or to what extent do you? Typically a quantitative research is mathematically based. So you may ask questions based on a Likert scale, like a five-point Likert scale that's highly agree, generally agree, that kind of thing. And then you analyze the answers as mathematical data. A mixed method study would be both, would include both quantitative and qualitative research and would double the effort and expense to conduct it, but it may provide more in-depth data. By choosing a research design, you will dictate how your data will be organized. Before designing a study, it's important to understand what results are needed from your study. Then the appropriate research design can be chosen. So you've got three different types of research designs that we're gonna cover in this section and that's exploratory, descriptive and causal. So if you cannot find any research or very little research about your study, then an exploratory research design is the best way to go. This will allow you to explore an area that has yet to be uncovered. Exploratory research is used to answer research questions that have not been well explored in the past and they may include a survey, a case study, a collection of information from other studies. While this type of research is typically qualitative primary research, secondary research methods might be used. Descriptive research attempts to understand and describe a specific population of people or a situation for marketing research. A descriptive study, research study may attempt to answer the what, where, when and how questions. This type of research may use observations, panels or an analysis of previously completed research. This type of research can be primary or secondary and is qualitative in nature. Causal research design uses experiments as the basis for research and may reviews the cause and effect between two or more variables. A marketing plan using this type of research may attempt to determine the consumer impact regarding changes to a product or features of a product or service. This is primary research and it's typically quantitative in nature. It's important to think about how you intend to plan and analyze and interpret your research results to ensure that your research is unbiased. Properly interpreting research results will help to ensure that the decision-making process is based on facts. For example, if you use inappropriate or lower quality data, for example, blogs versus industry journals, if they're used in a research study then the decision-making process may not be valid. So it's important that the data reviewed is of an appropriate quality to prevent any inconsistencies. Gray literature is information that can easily be obtained either online or from mass media population publications. This type of data should not be used in marketing research studies because it is of lower quality. Whereas previously published peer-reviewed studies are of higher quality because of the number of people who have reviewed and approved such literature. Properly interpreting research results is important to determine trends, patterns or possible correlations in the industry or for specific products and services. This information will be used to complement the marketing plan and make fact-based decisions. Ensuring data validity includes reviewing the quality of data used to ensure that few errors are made in the research process and to make informed decisions about products or services. Okay, so today in this presentation, we've covered all of these learning objectives. So we looked at the strategic importance of marketing research. We looked at the five steps in the marketing research process. We looked at defining, we have several different ways to define your marketing research problem. We've looked at evaluating primary and secondary research and what those mean. We've looked at quantitative and qualitative research. And then we also covered exploratory, descriptive and causal research designs. And then we also talked about analyzing and interpreting research results. Okay, so what's next? Unit three is on consumer behavior. My name is Dr. Marcy Stone and I just wanted to say thank you.