So far we have seen the basic elements of marketing research.
Today, we are going to cover the different stages of the marketing research process.
The first stage of the marketing research process is the formulation of the problem.
Of course, in an organization a manager has certain decision problems.
So he encounters a problem and then refers that problem to a market research
company maybe within the company or outside the company.
Once this formulation of the problem stage is done the next stage
is determining the research design, what kind of research you are going to do.
The first option for marketing research is called exploratory research.
Under exploratory research you use usually secondary data that is a data
from other companies and get some qualitative conclusions.
The second type of research design is called descriptive research.
Here usually you use primary data, and more or less,
always you use some quantitative methodologies to analyze the data.
The third type of marketing research methodology is called causal research.
This is why again you used primary data and
used a quantitative methodology to analyze the data.
We are going to look deeper into these three different types of
marketing research designs in the next videos.
Rather, let's go to the next stage of the marketing decision process
which is called the designing of the data collection method and
the different forms of data collection.
Of this the first one is usually observational or survey method.
That's where you ask potential consumers
different questions based on their opinions and their preferences.
And that's how you get some idea of what the consumers are wanting.
The second type of design is usually open-ended or closed-ended.
Now here in open-end case you are not giving the consumers or
the potential survey respondents any options, but
rather they express their opinions just from their own mind.
And then you actually decipher that information from the text.
Otherwise, if it's closed-ended,
then you have certain options which are given to the potential respondents.
And based on that, you draw your conclusion.
The fourth stage of the marketing research process is called a designing sample and
collection of data.
Now when you are doing this stage, you have to remember three basic elements.
First of all, who are the people you are going to talk to?
That's very important because your sample should be representative.
Why?
Because unless the sample is representative, you cannot just
draw your conclusions or any meaningful conclusions because your consumers,
your actual consumers doesn't reflect in the sample you're talking to.
The next important element to remember is the reliability of the sample.
What do we mean by reliability?
Is the sample actually giving you suggestions or responses which
are logical or which makes sense in the overall context of your research problem?
Once you know your sample is reliable, the next important thing is to go for
validity.
That is, do you have enough sample points which can give you meaningful conclusions?
If we have too few people responding to your questions,
then all your conclusions are going to be biased because they do not represent that
total population you are looking at.
The next stage of the marketing decision process, or marketing research decision
process is analyzing the data and interpreting the data.
There are two kinds of analysis you can do.
First one is basic analysis.
Of course here, the analysis is done at the more fundamental level.
Maybe you do some descriptive analysis or
maybe do some correlation analysis, where the results are not very detailed but
gives you some idea of what you are expecting.
The second type of analysis is more advanced.
That's where you go in-depth, use certain models, maybe statistical models or
econometric models, which gives you much more insightful result.
The final stage of the marketing decision process is reporting of the results.
Of course, all the analysis you have done is not of any value
unless you summarize the research results properly and draw conclusions.
And remember, you always have to make certain recommendations based on
the conclusions you have drawn.
Because remember, in the first stage we talked about that a marketing manager
gives you certain decision problems from which you formulate the research problems.
So unless you provide back the recommendations which are many fold,
the entire marketing research design is not worthwhile to consider.
So that's why it's important to consider all the six stages
of the market research process.
And in the next video, we're going to be exploring in depth the three different
approaches to marketing research, which are causal research,
descriptive research, and exploratory research.
[MUSIC]
Shameek SinhaProfessor
