Chapter 1: An Introduction to Marketing Research
Marketing- an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.
Current, service-centered view of marketing which: identifies core competencies, the fundamental knowledge and skills that may represent a potential competitive advantage, identifies potential customers who can benefit from these core competencies, cultivates relationships with these customers, allowing them to help create values that meet their specific needs, and allows one to gauge feedback form the market, learn from the feedback, and improve the values offered to the public firms must be more than customer oriented, firms must collaborate with and learn from customers, adapting to their changing needs
Products are not viewed as separate from services
Marketing concept- a business philosophy that holds that the key to achieving organizational goals consists of the company’s being more effective than competitors in creating, delivering, and communicating customer value to its chose target markets
Marketing strategy- consists of selecting a segment of the market as the company’s target market and designing the proper “mix” of product/service, price, promotion, and distribution system to meet the wants and needs of consumers within the target market
In order to implement the right strategy, managers need to make the right decisions, and they continuously need information to make these decisions
Marketing research- the process of designing, gathering, analyzing, and reporting information that may be sued to solve a specific marketing problem.
AMA definition: function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information- information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluating marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve the understanding of marketing as a process
Market research- a part of marketing research. Applying marketing research to a specific market area. The systematic gathering, recording, and analyzing of data with respect to a particular customer group in a specific geographic area.The purpose of marketing research- provides the necessary information to enable managers to market ideas, goods, and services properly.
To link the consumer to the marketer by providing information that can be used in making marketing decisions
To do a better job of satisfying consumers
Uses of marketing research:
Identify market opportunities and problems- opportunities exist, but companies must be aware and determine if they can provide a good or a service to fill that opportunity while achieving company objectives such as ROI. problems occur when market share, sales, profits, customer satisfaction, etc fall below expectations
Generate, refine, and evaluate potential marketing actions- once several strategies are in consideration, research can be conducted to evaluate each
Monitor marketing performance- to “see where we and our competitors are”- monitoring effectiveness of ads, sales force, in-store promotions, dealer effectiveness, competitors, and customer satisfaction. Monitoring sales and market shares. Tracking research.
Improve marketing as a process- expand our basic knowledge of marketing- studies that are designed to improve our basic understanding of marketing as opposed to solving a particular problem facing a business (small part of total marketing research studies)
The Marketing Information System- a structure consisting of people, equipment, and procedures to gather, sort, analyze, evaluate, and distribute needed, timely, and accurate information to marketing decision makers.
Determine decision makers’ information needs, acquire the needed information, and distribute that information to the decision makers in a form and at