Unit F: Marketing Information and Research

What you’ll learn to do: describe key types of marketing information including internal data, competitive intelligence, and marketing research

Marketing information and research are most effective when they feed an ongoing awareness of what’s happening with customers, their perceptions, and purchasing decisions. The next section of this module explores different types of information that contribute to the customer insights that inform your organization, strategy, and the marketing mix.

The specific things you’ll learn in this section include:

• Explain the types of insights provided by each type of marketing information
• Describe how organizations manage marketing information

Illuminating the Marketing Picture

There are three primary types of marketing information marketers use to gain insights that will contribute to wise marketing choices: internal data, competitive intelligence, and marketing research.

Internal Data

Internal data consists of the information companies collect about their customers and prospective customers, typically as part of their internal operations. Marketing departments, for example, maintain information about the interest and leads they generate from prospective customers and how they are interacting with these contacts. They may capture information used for segmentation and targeting purposes, such as geographic location, gender, age, buying behaviors, and communication preferences. Information about Web site visitors, traffic, and other customer engagement activities can be another useful type of internal data. Additionally, sales teams capture and maintain information about who is buying the product, where buyers are located, buying patterns, and behaviors. Sales and marketing teams may also maintain information about customer references, success stories, and how prospective customers are progressing toward becoming new clients.

Other parts of the organization capture also capture and maintain data that may be useful as marketing information. Accounting and billing departments track information about customers such as how much they spend with the organization, when they buy, and other payment details. Product managers and customer support organizations maintain information about customers implementing or using products, problems or issues they run into, and satisfaction levels with the company and products.

Historically, it was standard for each department to maintain these data in their own systems rather than in a common system or database that all parts of the organization could access. This presented challenges for marketers, who had a difficult time gaining access to complete, up-to-date internal data, since the information would need to be pulled out of the various systems and put into usable formats before they could conduct any sort of analysis.

Increasingly, organizations capture and maintain internal data by using information systems and databases shared across multiple departments. A database is a set of structured data accessible via a computer, and the data can be organized so that it’s available for a variety of different uses, such as marketing or financial analysis. Shared information systems may include large enterprise systems designed to support business processes and functions, customer support systems, and customer relationship management (CRM) systems, among others.

“Database marketing,” also known as marketing analytics, takes internal data several steps further. Large databases collect massive amounts of data from a variety of sources: customer demographic and profile data linked to in-store and online purchasing history, Web site search terms, page views, social media posts, and other data. In a process called data mining, computer algorithms search for patterns in the data and generate recommendations and insights about how to increase sales.

With access to accurate, up-to-date internal data, marketers gain a better understanding of who the organization is serving and how it is performing relative to its goals for sales, customer satisfaction, and other priorities. Marketers rely on internal data to manage communications and interaction with customers and prospects, as they track the series of interactions that take place when a prospective customer is making a purchase decision. They may also use internal data to identify patterns that make someone more likely to become a customer, and behaviors that contribute to any given customer type having a higher or lower total lifetime value.

To illustrate the power of internal data, consider this example from Trident Marketing, a company that conducts marketing and sales activities for other businesses like home security firm ADT, satellite media company DirectTV, and Travel Resorts of America. It used marketing analytics to generate insights based on internal data from its customer-service call centers, order systems, CRM systems, search engine results, and external credit-bureau data about customers. The resulting recommendations were powerful and provided specific guidance about the following:

When to call a consumer, which product to pitch, and which salesperson is best suited to close the sale. Plus, sophisticated analytic models can also predict which consumers are likely to cancel services within twelve months—a metric that goes straight to the bottom line because the company must compensate its customers for consumer churn.^[1]

Using this information, the company was able to apply sales and marketing techniques to increase sales, profitability, and customer retention on behalf of its clients. In fact, revenue increased nearly 1000 percent over four years.^[2]

Competitive Intelligence

Competitive intelligence is marketing information that helps marketers and other members of an organization better understand their competitors and competitive market dynamics. Common types of competitive intelligence include the following:

• Product information: Who is making products that compete with your offerings? What features or capabilities make these products attractive to prospective customers? How do these features compare to yours? How are products packaged and offered to customers?
• Market share and penetration: Which companies in your competitive market sell the most products to your target market, and how much do they sell? Which organizations are considered the market leaders? How is market share evolving over time?
• Pricing strategy: What do competitors charge for their products? What pricing structure and strategies do they use? What special pricing or discounting do they offer? How does this affect your pricing and position relative to competitors?
• Competitive positioning and messaging: What are competitors saying about themselves? What are they saying to current and prospective clients or other stakeholders about your organization or products? How effective are their messages at generating interest in competitor products or diminishing interest in yours? What keywords are competitors dominating in search engines?
• Win/loss analysis: What proportion of new sales are you winning or losing? Why are people selecting your product over competitors’? Why are they selecting a competitor’s offering instead of yours?

Companies tend to guard sensitive information closely, such as detailed information about product cost, pricing structure, and market share. In fact, there are market analysts who specialize in competitive intelligence because it can be so difficult to obtain. However, anyone in a marketing role should maintain a general level of awareness about competitors and what’s happening in their market, and there are fairly easy ways to do this. Marketers can learn a lot directly from competitors, such as reading their Web sites, following them on social media, and monitoring press releases and other published content to understand what they are communicating to the market and to prospective customers. Information can also come from industry-focused newsletters, blogs, social media conversations, reports, conferences, and other forums that discuss new developments and key players in a product category or market.

When marketing activities are associated with a higher-priced sale and a complex decision process, sales and marketing organizations may conduct some type of win/loss analysis after a purchasing decision is made. A win/loss analysis captures information from individuals involved in a sale to understand the key factors influencing the final purchasing decision. It can help marketers better understand how to improve the marketing mix—product, price, promotion, placement—in order to improve sales performance in comparison with competitors.

All of these activities can provide useful insights about how customers view the choices available to them, as well as how competitors view and compete in the market. As with internal data, a better understanding of these factors helps marketers improve the marketing mix to compete more effectively and become a preferred choice for customers.

Marketing Research

Marketing research is a systematic process for identifying marketing opportunities and solving marketing problems, using customer insights derived from the collection and analysis of marketing information. Marketing research identifies the problem to be solved or the opportunity to be explored, as well as the information required to address research questions. It also involves processes for collecting the information, analyzing it, identifying insights, and reporting findings and recommendations to those who will take action based on the results.^[3]

Marketing research may cover a full spectrum of topics related to customers, products, and market dynamics, and it can use a variety of research methods (which will be discussed later in this module). In general, marketing research requires some additional information beyond what marketers have at their fingertips (like, say, internal data). Sometimes it is necessary to collect new primary data directly from target audiences, such as current or prospective customers. In other situations, marketing research uses secondary data captured previously by another organization. Marketing research may incorporate internal data and/or competitive intelligence in order to provide a more complete answer to a marketing problem or question.

Common subjects for marketing research include:

• Environmental factors and how they affect consumer behavior. These include factors such as the health of the economy, the legal environment, market trends and other social factors, technology and its influence, and cultural factors that make doing business different in one region or country compared to others.
• Customer attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions. Marketing research can be essential in understanding customer needs, how their needs are or aren’t being met by the market, views about various products and companies, satisfaction levels, preferences for product features and pricing, the consumer decision-making process, and factors that influence it.
• Product research. Product research explores where opportunities and gaps exist for improving existing products or introducing new ones, concept testing, sizing the market for a product, market penetration, prioritizing product features and preferences, testing product effectiveness and customer receptivity, user testing, pricing strategies, product naming and branding, and gauging how to position a product relative to competitors.
• Marketing, advertising, and promotion research. This area of research seeks to improve the effectiveness and reach of marketing activities such as market segmentation, messaging and communications, advertising and media testing, events and sponsorships, packaging and display testing.
• Corporate research. Corporate research investigates corporate reputation and opportunities for strengthening an organization’s position in the market through brand building, research and development, mergers and acquisitions, strategic partnerships, corporate planning and profitability.

Marketing research is usually a wise investment when it’s undertaken to inform decisions involving a significant shift in direction, whether that shift is associated with a product, brand, message, tone, corporate image or other area linked to a major change and related investment. Marketing research projects may be large or small in terms of time, scope, cost, and resources involved. With a simple project, it could take an in-house marketer just a few hours to formulate research questions and analyze a data set from internal or secondary data sources, with no external costs. Complex marketing research projects may take longer than a year to complete and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to research firms that specialize in particular markets or types of research.

As organizations grow, they may employ a marketing research director to oversee and coordinate research activities to ensure that they are getting accurate data and useful results. Smaller organizations without this internal capacity may hire a marketing research company or consultant to conduct the project, lead data collection, provide analysis, and advise on the best methods for interpreting and acting on research findings.

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This courseware was assembled by Christopher VanOosterhout from a variety of resources copyrighted and openly licensed by multiple individuals and organizations.  See our Copyright and Attribution page for additional details.  For details about permission to use please contact me at c@vanosterhout.com with the phrase  Courseware Usage Inquiry.  If you believe that this courseware violates your copyright, please contact me at c@vanoosterhout.com with the phrase Copyright Inquiry in the subject.  Details about the collector of these resources and Licentia LLC can be found at www.vanoosterhout.com

• Illuminating the Marketing Picture. Authored by: Lumen Learning. License: CC BY: Attribution
• Introduction to Types of Marketing Information. Provided by: Lumen Learning. License: CC BY: Attribution

• Target Shopper. Authored by: Wm. Mag. License: CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives

• Make the most out of a small space. Provided by: Target.  License: All Rights Reserved. License Terms: Standard YouTube License

What you’ll learn to do: explain the role of marketing information in helping organizations understand and reach customers

Marketers are fortunate to work in an information-rich environment. They don’t have to make decisions based on gut feeling or blind luck. These days, many valuable sources of marketing information are available to guide marketers’ thinking, choices, and actions. While it’s true that this information may be more readily accessible in some organizations than others, it’s important for marketers to know what to look for and how to find it in order to make wise decisions about marketing strategy and execution.

The specific things you’ll learn in this section include:

• Define marketing information
• Explain why organizations use marketing information to provide customer insights

Fresh Customer Insights

Effective marketing starts with a strong knowledge of your customers: the kind of knowledge that gives you unique insights into what they want and how to satisfy them better than the competition. The most reliable source of fresh customer insights is good marketing information. Useful marketing information may come from a variety of sources both inside and outside your organization. Marketing information is generated by a variety of different activities, including marketing research.

Marketing research is a systematic process for identifying marketing opportunities and solving marketing problems, using customer insights that come out of collecting and analyzing marketing information. The mechanics of marketing research must be controlled so that marketers uncover the relevant facts to answer the problem at hand. Control over this fact-finding process is the responsibility of the marketing research director, who must correctly design the research and carefully supervise its execution, to ensure it yields the customer insights the organization needs.

A marketing information system is a combination of people, technologies, and processes for managing marketing information, overseeing market research activities, and using customer insights to guide marketing decisions and broader management and strategy decisions.

Knowledge Is Power Against the Competition

The business environment is increasingly competitive. With something as simple as a Google search, customers have unprecedented opportunities to explore alternatives to what any single company offers. Likewise, companies have ample opportunity to identify, track, and lure customers away from their less-vigilant competitors. A regular infusion of fresh customer insights can make all the difference between keeping customers and losing them. Marketing information and research are essential tools for marketers and the management team as they align strategy with customer wants and needs.

Consider the following examples:

• Before introducing OnStar, the first-ever embedded wireless service in cars, GM used marketing research to understand what types of applications would make consumers most interested in subscribing to the service and how much they would pay for it. Of all the benefits OnStar could offer, the research helped GM prioritize how the initial service would provide value, focusing on driver assistance and security. Research also helped determine OnStar pricing to help the company build a large subscriber base quickly.^[1]
• Enterprise systems provider PeopleSoft recruited a diverse set of universities as early-adopter “Beta” partners to provide input as it designed a new student information system for higher education. This marketing research helped PeopleSoft create a versatile system that could support the needs of a variety of colleges and universities, ultimately leading to strong receptivity and market share when the new system became widely available.^[2]

What Should Marketers Investigate Using Marketing Information?

An easy—and truthful—answer to this question is “everything.” There is no aspect of marketing to which information and research do not apply. Every marketing concept and every element involved in the marketing management process can be subjected to a great deal of careful marketing research and inquiry. Some important questions include:

• Who is the customer?
• What problems is the customer trying to solve with a given purchase?
• What does s/he desire in the way of satisfaction?
• How does the customer get information about available choices?
• Where does s/he choose to purchase?
• Why does s/he buy, or not buy?
• When does s/he purchase?
• How does s/he go about seeking satisfaction in the market?

Seeking answers to these questions yields insights into the customer’s needs, perceptions, and behaviors. Another area in which research is critical is profitability. Organizations need to forecast sales and related costs in order to understand how their operations will be profitable. They also need to plan competitive marketing programs that will produce the desired level of sales at an appropriate cost. The analysis of past sales and interpretation of cost information are important in evaluating performance and providing useful facts for future planning. All these activities rely on marketing information and a rigorous marketing research process to produce insights managers can trust and act on.

When to Use Marketing Information and Research

Many marketing decisions are made without consulting marketing information or the use of formal marketing research. For example, a decision maker may feel she already knows enough to make a good decision. The time required to investigate a question or conduct formal marketing research may not be available. In other cases, the cost of obtaining the data is prohibitive, or the desired data cannot be obtained in reliable form. In a few instances, there may be no choice among alternatives and therefore no decision to make because there is little value in spending time and money to study a problem if there is only one possible solution. But in most business situations, marketers and managers must choose among two or more courses of action. This is where fact-finding, marketing information, and research enter to help make the choice.

Marketing information and research address the need for quicker, yet more accurate, decision making by the marketer. These tools put marketers close to their customers to help them understand who they customers are, what they want, and what competitors are doing. When different stakeholders have very different views about a particular marketing-related decision, objective information and research can inform everyone about the issues in question and help the organization come to agreement about the path forward. Good research should help align marketing with the other areas of the business.

Marketers should always be tapping into regular sources of marketing information about their organization and industry in order to monitor what’s happening generally. For example, at any given time marketers should understand how they are doing relative to sales goals and monitor developments in their industry or competitive set.

Beyond this general level of “tuning in,” additional market research projects may also be justified. As a rule, if the research results can save the company more time, money, and/or risk than it costs to conduct the research, it is wise to proceed. If the cost of conducting the research is more than it will contribute to improving a decision, the research should not be carried out. In practice, applying this cost-test principle can be somewhat complex, but it provides useful guidance about when marketing research is worthwhile. Ultimately, successful marketing executives make decisions on the basis of a blend of facts and intuition.

Fact: Top Performers Research Customer Preferences

In 2010, the management consultancy McKinsey published research about the difference between organizations that produced top-performing products and those that produced under-performing products. The use of marketing research was a striking differentiator:

More than 80 percent of the top performers said they periodically tested and validated customer preferences during the development process, compared with just 43 percent of bottom performers. They were also twice as likely as the laggards to research what, exactly, customers wanted.^[3]

The study also identified other differences between top and bottom performers, but an underlying theme was the emphasis successful projects and companies placed on understanding their customers and adjusting course when necessary to better address customers’ needs. This research provides more than anecdotal evidence that marketing research and well-applied marketing information can make a substantial contribution to an organization’s success.

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COPYRIGHT

This courseware was assembled by Christopher VanOosterhout from a variety of resources copyrighted and openly licensed by multiple individuals and organizations.  See our Copyright and Attribution page for additional details.  For details about permission to use please contact me at c@vanosterhout.com with the phrase  Courseware Usage Inquiry.  If you believe that this courseware violates your copyright, please contact me at c@vanoosterhout.com with the phrase Copyright Inquiry in the subject.  Details about the collector of these resources and Licentia LLC can be found at www.vanoosterhout.com

• Revision and Adaptation. Authored by: Lumen Learning. License: CC BY: Attribution
• Introduction to Importance of Marketing Information. Provided by: Lumen Learning. License: CC BY: Attribution

• Chapter 3: Marketing Research: An Aid to Decision Making, from Introducing Marketing. Authored by: John Burnett. Provided by: Global Text.  License: CC BY: Attribution
• The Taste is Gonna Mooove Ya. Authored by: John. License: CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
• Chiclete na boca. Authored by: Guilherme Yagui.  License: CC BY: Attribution

Why use marketing information and research to develop marketing strategies for organizations?

Your uncle Dan owns an independent bookstore called Bookends in Seattle, Washington. You drop in to see him whenever you’re in the neighborhood to catch up and borrow some graphic novels. (That’s you in the picture.)

When you visit this time, Dan sits you down in a corner and tells you he needs help. “Sales are down,” he says, “and rent’s going up. It’s killing me. I’d say I’ve got six months to turn things around or I’m done. The end of Bookends. You still learning about marketing?—your mom said you’re taking a class. Got any bright ideas? Maybe some whiz-bang advertising?”—he grins and punches you lightly on the shoulder.

You start to tell him that marketing isn’t just advertising . . . but instead you say, “I don’t know, Dan. I’ll have to think about it.”

So, you do think about it. You don’t know everything about marketing yet, but you’ve learned this: Your uncle needs to understand his customers—that’s where marketing starts and ends. Who are Dan’s customers, and what’s up with them? Why aren’t they buying as much as they used to? How can you find out more about what they want?

These are big, important questions. For now, they all have one answer: marketing information and research.

Read on if you want to save your uncle’s bookstore . . .

Marketing information and marketing research are tools that organizations use to understand what’s happening in the markets they serve.

Why do marketing information and research matter? Because no one has all the answers all the time. Because people and attitudes and behaviors change. Because customers, competitors, the economy, and other factors can all affect your success. Marketing is an increasingly data-rich field, and these days, doing it well means using all the information you can to gain insights into what your customers want and how you can give them value. Without that information, you’re trying to shoot a target in the dark.

Learning Outcomes

• Explain the role of marketing information in helping firms understand and reach consumers
• Describe the key types of marketing information including internal data, competitive intelligence and marketing research
• Outline a standard process for using marketing research to address an organization’s strategic questions
• Recognize alternative methods for conducting marketing research, including primary and secondary research methods
• Identify major sources of available market data
• Explain how Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems can help organizations manage and gain customer insights from marketing information
• Use marketing information to inform the marketing strategy

COPYRIGHT

This courseware was assembled by Christopher VanOosterhout from a variety of resources copyrighted and openly licensed by multiple individuals and organizations.  See our Copyright and Attribution page for additional details.  For details about permission to use please contact me at c@vanosterhout.com with the phrase  Courseware Usage Inquiry.  If you believe that this courseware violates your copyright, please contact me at c@vanoosterhout.com with the phrase Copyright Inquiry in the subject.  Details about the collector of these resources and Licentia LLC can be found at www.vanoosterhout.com

• Why It Matters: Marketing Research. Provided by: Lumen Learning. License: CC BY: Attribution

• bookstore. Authored by: darwin.wins.

What you’ll learn to do: outline a standard process for using marketing information and research to address an organization’s strategic questions

Marketers can glean powerful insights from marketing information, but these insights generally don’t come from nowhere.

Instead, it takes a well-structured research process to identify what you are trying to understand better and then take the appropriate steps, using the right information, to get your questions answered. The next part of this module explains a standard process organizations use to conduct marketing research and generate insights from marketing information of all types.

The specific things you’ll learn in this section include:

• Identify the steps of conducting a marketing research project

A Standard Approach to Research Inquiries

Marketing research is a useful and necessary tool for helping marketers and an organization’s executive leadership make wise decisions. Carrying out marketing research can involve highly specialized skills that go deeper than the information outlined in this module. However, it is important for any marketer to be familiar with the basic procedures and techniques of marketing research.

It is very likely that at some point a marketing professional will need to supervise an internal marketing research activity or to work with an outside marketing research firm to conduct a research project. Managers who understand the research function can do a better job of framing the problem and critically appraising the proposals made by research specialists. They are also in a better position to evaluate their findings and recommendations.

Periodically marketers themselves need to find solutions to marketing problems without the assistance of marketing research specialists inside or outside the company. If you are familiar with the basic procedures of marketing research, you can supervise and even conduct a reasonably satisfactory search for the information needed.

Step 1: Identify the Problem

The first step for any marketing research activity is to clearly identify and define the problem you are trying to solve. You start by stating the marketing or business problem you need to address and for which you need additional information to figure out a solution. Next, articulate the objectives for the research: What do you want to understand by the time the research project is completed? What specific information, guidance, or recommendations need to come out of the research in order to make it a worthwhile investment of the organization’s time and money?

It’s important to share the problem definition and research objectives with other team members to get their input and further refine your understanding of the problem and what is needed to solve it. At times, the problem you really need to solve is not the same problem that appears on the surface. Collaborating with other stakeholders helps refine your understanding of the problem, focus your thinking, and prioritize what you hope to learn from the research. Prioritizing your objectives is particularly helpful if you don’t have the time or resources to investigate everything you want.

To flesh out your understanding of the problem, it’s useful to begin brainstorming actual research questions you want to explore. What are the questions you need to answer in order to get to the research outcomes? What is the missing information that marketing research will help you find? The goal at this stage is to generate a set of preliminary, big-picture questions that will frame your research inquiry. You will revisit these research questions later in the process, but when you’re getting started, this exercise helps clarify the scope of the project, whom you need to talk to, what information may already be available, and where to look for the information you don’t yet have.

Step 2: Develop a Research Plan

Once you have a problem definition, research objectives, and a preliminary set of research questions, the next step is to develop a research plan. Essential to this plan is identifying precisely what information you need to answer your questions and achieve your objectives. Do you need to understand customer opinions about something? Are you looking for a clearer picture of customer needs and related behaviors? Do you need sales, spending, or revenue data? Do you need information about competitors’ products, or insight about what will make prospective customers notice you? When do need the information, and what’s the time frame for getting it? What budget and resources are available?

Once you have clarified what kind of information you need and the timing and budget for your project, you can develop the research design. This details how you plan to collect and analyze the information you’re after. Some types of information are readily available through secondary research and secondary data sources. Secondary research analyzes information that has already been collected for another purpose by a third party, such as a government agency, an industry association, or another company. Other types of information need to from talking directly to customers about your research questions. This is known as primary research, which collects primary data captured expressly for your research inquiry. Marketing research projects may include secondary research, primary research, or both.

Depending on your objectives and budget, sometimes a small-scale project will be enough to get the insight and direction you need. At other times, in order to reach the level of certainty or detail required, you may need larger-scale research involving participation from hundreds or even thousands of individual consumers. The research plan lays out the information your project will capture—both primary and secondary data—and describes what you will do with it to get the answers you need. (Note: You’ll learn more about data collection methods and when to use them later in this module.)

Your data collection plan goes hand in hand with your analysis plan. Different types of analysis yield different types of results. The analysis plan should match the type of data you are collecting, as well as the outcomes your project is seeking and the resources at your disposal. Simpler research designs tend to require simpler analysis techniques. More complex research designs can yield powerful results, such as understanding causality and trade-offs in customer perceptions. However, these more sophisticated designs can require more time and money to execute effectively, both in terms of data collection and analytical expertise.

The research plan also specifies who will conduct the research activities, including data collection, analysis, interpretation, and reporting on results. At times a singlehanded marketing manager or research specialist runs the entire research project. At other times, a company may contract with a marketing research analyst or consulting firm to conduct the research. In this situation, the marketing manager provides supervisory oversight to ensure the research delivers on expectations.

Finally, the research plan indicates who will interpret the research findings and how the findings will be reported. This part of the research plan should consider the internal audience(s) for the research and what reporting format will be most helpful. Often, senior executives are primary stakeholders, and they’re anxious for marketing research to inform and validate their choices. When this is the case, getting their buy-in on the research plan is recommended to make sure that they are comfortable with the approach and receptive to the potential findings.

Step 3: Conduct the Research

Conducting research can be a fun and exciting part of the marketing research process. After struggling with the gaps in your knowledge of market dynamics—which led you to embark on a marketing research project in the first place—now things are about to change. Conducting research begins to generate information that helps answer your urgent marketing questions. There are two types of research: primary and secondary. Primary research is research that you conduct yourself (i.e., you go out into the field and find data and complete experiments). Secondary research is research conducted or synthesized by someone else (i.e., someone else has gone out into the field or someone else has compiled multiple sources of research). Though it may seem counterintuitive based on their names, typically data collection begins by reviewing any existing secondary research. After getting everything you can from secondary research, it’s time to shift attention to primary research. After all, it’s much easier (and smarter!) to review existing research before potentially redoing experiments or recapturing known information.

Secondary Research

With secondary research, it’s important to narrow your scope to existing research and data that provide some information or insight about the problem. Prior research projects, internal data analyses, industry reports, customer-satisfaction survey results, and other information sources may be worthwhile to review. Even though these resources may not answer your research questions fully, they may further illuminate the problem you are trying to solve. Secondary research and data sources are nearly always cheaper than capturing new information on your own. Your marketing research project should benefit from prior work wherever possible.

Primary Research

You may not always complete primary research, but it is often part of research plans. Primary research involves asking questions and then listening to and/or observing the behavior of the target audience you are studying. In order to generate reliable, accurate results, it is important to use proper scientific methods for primary research data collection and analysis. This includes identifying the right individuals and number of people to talk to, using carefully worded surveys or interview scripts, and capturing data accurately. Without proper techniques, you may inadvertently get bad data or discover bias in the responses that distorts the results and points you in the wrong direction. The module on Marketing Research Techniques discusses these issues in further detail, since the procedures for getting reliable data vary by research method.

Step 4: Analyze and Report Findings

Analyzing the data obtained in a market survey involves transforming the primary and/or secondary data into useful information and insights that answer the research questions. This information is condensed into a format to be used by managers—usually a presentation or detailed report.

Analysis starts with formatting, cleaning, and editing the data to make sure that it’s suitable for whatever analytical techniques are being used. Next, data are tabulated to show what’s happening: What do customers actually think? What’s happening with purchasing or other behaviors? How do revenue figures actually add up? Whatever the research questions, the analysis takes source data and applies analytical techniques to provide a clearer picture of what’s going on. This process may involve simple or sophisticated techniques, depending on the research outcomes required. Common analytical techniques include regression analysis to determine correlations between factors; conjoint analysis to determine trade-offs and priorities; predictive modeling to anticipate patterns and causality; and analysis of unstructured data such as Internet search terms or social media posts to provide context and meaning around what people say and do.

Good analysis is important because the interpretation of research data—the “so what?” factor—depends on it. The analysis combs through data to paint a picture of what’s going on. The interpretation goes further to explain what the research data mean and make recommendations about what managers need to know and do based on the research results. For example, what is the short list of key findings and takeaways that managers should remember from the research? What are the market segments you’ve identified, and which ones should you target?  What are the primary reasons your customers choose your competitor’s product over yours, and what does this mean for future improvements to your product?

Individuals with a good working knowledge of the business should be involved in interpreting the data because they are in the best position to identify significant insights and make recommendations from the research findings. Marketing research reports incorporate both analysis and interpretation of data to address the project objectives.

The final report for a marketing research project may be in written form or slide-presentation format, depending on organizational culture and management preferences. Often a slide presentation is the preferred format for initially sharing research results with internal stakeholders. Particularly for large, complex projects, a written report may be a better format for discussing detailed findings and nuances in the data, which managers can study and reference in the future.

Step 5: Take Action

Once the report is complete, the presentation is delivered, and the recommendations are made, the marketing research project is over, right? Wrong.

What comes next is arguably the most important step of all: taking action based on your research results.

If your project has done a good job interpreting the findings and translating them into recommendations for the marketing team and other areas of the business, this step may seem relatively straightforward. When the research results validate a path the organization is already on, the “take action” step can galvanize the team to move further and faster in that same direction.

Things are not so simple when the research results indicate a new direction or a significant shift is advisable. In these cases, it’s worthwhile to spend time helping managers understand the research, explain why it is wise to shift course, and explain how the business will benefit from the new path. As with any important business decision, managers must think deeply about the new approach and carefully map strategies, tactics, and available resources to plan effectively. By making the results available and accessible to managers and their execution teams, the marketing research project can serve as an ongoing guide and touchstone to help the organization plan, execute, and adjust course as it works toward desired goals and outcomes.

It is worth mentioning that many marketing research projects are never translated into management action. Sometimes this is because the report is too technical and difficult to understand. In other cases, the research conclusions fail to provide useful insights or solutions to the problem, or the report writer fails to offer specific suggestions for translating the research findings into management strategy. These pitfalls can be avoided by paying due attention to the research objectives throughout the project and allocating sufficient time and resources to do a good job interpreting research results for those who will need to act on them.

COPYRIGHT

This courseware was assembled by Christopher VanOosterhout from a variety of resources copyrighted and openly licensed by multiple individuals and organizations.  See our Copyright and Attribution page for additional details.  For details about permission to use please contact me at c@vanosterhout.com with the phrase  Courseware Usage Inquiry.  If you believe that this courseware violates your copyright, please contact me at c@vanoosterhout.com with the phrase Copyright Inquiry in the subject.  Details about the collector of these resources and Licentia LLC can be found at www.vanoosterhout.com

What you’ll learn to do: Identify major sources of available marketing data

Marketing information and research are powerful tools to improve your understanding of your customers, competitors, and the industry and market in which you work. In today’s information-rich world, many great sources of marketing data are already available. Knowing what they are and how to find them is a great skill for any marketer.

Marketing Information: Where the Data Are

Earlier sections of this module alluded to excellent sources of marketing data, many of which are freely available or carry minimal cost. Others are well-respected commercial sources of marketing data and customer insights. This reading provides an overview of useful go-to data sources that marketers should know about, should the occasion arise to use them. The data sources recommended below are a representative sampling, rather than a complete list.

It is also worth noting that the marketing information landscape is continually changing. Marketers would be well served to continually scan for new developments and information sources that may be beneficial to improve their understanding of customers and ways of serving them.

Publicly Available Data Sources

Government agencies, non-profit organizations, and non-governmental organizations often publish freely available data that may inform marketers’ understanding of consumers, customers, the geographies, and industry sectors where they operate. Great information sources include the following:

Data.gov	A centralized portal for open data available from the U.S. government on a wide variety of topics. Helpful for finding government data that you know exist somewhere, but you aren’t sure which agency maintains it.
FedStats	A U.S. government-maintained Web site that provides access to a wide variety of statistical data published by the federal government. Also helpful for finding data that you know exist somewhere, but you aren’t sure which agency maintains it.
Google Public Data Directory	A directory of publicly-available data sources from around the world.
Google Trends	A search tool for exploring search volume for any term used in a Google search.
Pew Research Center	Public opinion and research reports from a non-partisan, American think tank. Freely available research covers social issues, public opinion, and demographic trends shaping the United States and the world
U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis	Data published by the federal government about economic indicators for the economy as a whole, as well as specific industries and economic sectors.
U.S. Census Bureau Data	Demographic and geographic information about the population of the United States.
U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) General Business Data and Statistics	A collection of data about the U.S. economy, industries, businesses and the general population, developed with business users in mind.
United Nations UNdata	A data service of the United Nations that provides centralized access to a wide variety of U.N.-maintained data sets such as demographics, socioeconomic status and development indicators for nations around the world.
World Bank Data	Economic data and economic development indicators for 100+ countries around the world.
World Trade Organization (WTO) Data	Information about international trade and tariffs and the regulatory environment for 100+ WTO member countries.

Syndicated Marketing Research Data

A number of commercial companies provide syndicated marketing research that is well respected and often well used by organizations that subscribe to their services. A sampling of these services is provided below:

Acxiom	Extensive consumer datasets containing demographic, purchasing, credit, and other information companies can map to their own customer and prospect data for research, marketing analytics, and marketing campaign execution.
Experian	Extensive consumer datasets containing demographic, purchasing, credit, and other information that companies can map to their own consumer and prospect data for research, marketing analytics, and marketing campaign execution.
Ipsos	The Affluent Survey USA is an annual survey tracking media and consumer spending habits of U.S. households in the top 20% income level.
IRI	Point-of-sale data linked to household panel purchasing data, providing detail around sales, pricing, promotion and market share for a variety of consumer products.
Media Audit	Audience demographics and media consumption profiles for 100+ media markets in the U.S.
MRI Simmons (formerly GfK MRI and MediaMark)	Extensive datasets around multimedia audience research and measurement.
Nielsen	Point-of-sale data linked to household panel purchasing data, providing detail around sales, pricing, promotion and market share for a variety of consumer products. Datasets to support popular lifestyle and behavioral segmentation systems such as PRIZM.
Roper Center for Public Opinion Research	Database of public opinion and polling questions exploring many aspects of American life, including contemporary data as well as polling data dating back to the 1930s.
Yankelovich	MONITOR provides long-running syndicated research about consumer values, attitudes, and trends.

Other Useful Sources for Marketing Data

These additional sources for other types of marketing information are also warrant attention. Whether or not marketers use them, they should be aware of these tools and how they can be useful for a variety of marketing purposes.

Google Analytics	Detailed analytics, statistics and insights about Web site traffic, usability and sales effectiveness. Free and premium services available.
LexisNexis	Searchable source for full-text articles from regional, national and international newspapers, government documents, and many legal, medical and business publications.
Statista	A subscription-based statistics portal, providing searchable access to many original sources of market, industry, and business data.

COPYRIGHT

This courseware was assembled by Christopher VanOosterhout from a variety of resources copyrighted and openly licensed by multiple individuals and organizations.  See our Copyright and Attribution page for additional details.  For details about permission to use please contact me at c@vanosterhout.com with the phrase  Courseware Usage Inquiry.  If you believe that this courseware violates your copyright, please contact me at c@vanoosterhout.com with the phrase Copyright Inquiry in the subject.  Details about the collector of these resources and Licentia LLC can be found at www.vanoosterhout.com

• Marketing Information: Where the Data Are. Authored by: Lumen Learning. License: CC BY: Attribution
• Introduction to Marketing Data Sources. Provided by: Lumen Learning. License: CC BY: Attribution

• Google search. Provided by: Pixabay. License: CC0: No Rights Reserved

Back to Bookends

Let’s pay Uncle Dan and his bookstore another visit, now that you’re a little further along in your understanding of marketing research.

You’ll remember that you and Dan conducted both primary and secondary research to get a handle on who Bookends’ customers are—and who they aren’t. With the help of your cousin Marina, you crunched the data and identified three target segments you believe Dan should focus on. Here is the profile data you compiled for them:

Bookends Target Segment Profiles
Characteristics	Bored Empty-Nesters	Busy Families	Hipster Wannabes
Age & family status	45–75, mix of single and married	25–50, mostly married with kids under 12	15–35, mostly single
Times most likely to visit Bookends	Daytime, evenings, weekends, holidays	After school, weekends, summertime, holidays	Evenings & weekends
Most likely to buy	Cards, gifts, novels, history/biography	Kids’ books, how-to books, bestsellers	Magazines, used books, graphic novels, snacks
Why they come to Bookends	Socialize, shop, read	Family outing	Socialize
Communications preferences	Hard copy, email, face-to-face	Email, texting, Facebook	Texting, Twitter, Instagram & beyond
Effective promotions	Coupons, loyalty cards	Loyalty points (recorded electronically)	Point-of-sale
What they wish Bookends would offer	Book clubs & discounts	More hours in the day	Coffee, beer & wine, live music
% of all customers/month	36%	27%	21%
Avg. # of customers/month	144	108	84
% of monthly revenue	43%	29%	18%
Avg. monthly revenue/person	$30	$27	$21

Together, these segments make up more than 80 percent of Bookends’ clientele and about 90 percent of its monthly revenue. Looking at what they buy and why they come to Bookends, you’re getting some good ideas for ways of making the store more attractive for current customers, and you’ve got some ideas for bringing in new ones. With this new and improved information, it’s time to get to work on a marketing strategy and mix for each target segment.

Marketing Strategy: Bored Empty-Nesters

Bookends’ Bored Empty-Nesters are both the largest and the most profitable of the target segments. They have more time and more disposable income, and they spend more of both at your uncle’s bookstore. They like to use Bookends as a meeting place with friends and acquaintances, and you think that is a promising direction. You and your uncle brainstorm about ways of using the four Ps to win over even more of these customers (and get them to spend). The “product” you’re adjusting is not just the books you carry, but the whole experience customers have when the come to Bookends. Dan is excited about introducing book clubs—one for fiction and one for nonfiction books—to cater to this segment’s interests. Since Empty-Nesters have told you they love both socializing and getting a discount, you and Dan are trying out a “buddy night” promotion, in which people get a better price if they talk their friends into spending at Bookends, too.

Here is your Bored Empty-Nester game plan for the next couple of months:

Bookends Segment Strategy: Bored Empty-Nesters
Element	Marketing Mix Adjustment
Marketing Goals	15% increase in store visitors for this segment 20% increase in monthly revenue per person
Product	Carry larger selection of history and biography Adjust shelves and seating to create more socializing spaces Launch two book clubs led by Dan and longtime employee Emma, one featuring new fiction and the other on new nonfiction
Promotion	Print flyers, posters, and send emails about book clubs, buddy discount Set up in-store sign-up table for book club Introduce Thursday night “buddy discount”: Get 5% off if you and a buddy each spend over $20 Explore interest in loyalty program: Spend $100 to get 10% discount on next purchase
Price	Offer 5% discount on monthly book club selection
Place	No changes (yet). Explore opening online store

Marketing Strategy: Busy Families

Research tells you that Busy Families come to Bookends as a family outing, so you need to make some aspects of the store more family-friendly, without ruining the atmosphere for your other target segments. The socializing-area adjustments you’re already planning for the Empty Nesters will be good for the Family segment, as well. You’re trying to get parents to spend a little more money at Bookends each month, so you’re adding a small toy section, a slightly expanded children’s book section, and also bottled drinks, packaged cookies, and brownies from a delicious local bakery. These adjustments add to the Bookends experience and include some new items Dan can sell with a nice profit markup.

Your Busy Families marketing mix is shaping up like this:

Bookends Segment Strategy: Busy Families
Element	Marketing Mix Adjustment
Marketing Goals	10% increase in store visitors for this segment 10% increase in monthly revenue per person
Product	Increase selection of DIY, crafting, and “How-To” books Slightly expand children’s book selection and add a small toy section Add child seating to the kids’ area, and donate your old train table to the Bookends cause Hold children’s story hour on Tuesdays and Saturdays with stories, songs, games Sell packaged baked goods from a local bakery and bottled drinks
Promotion	Send emails and post to Facebook about story time, bigger kids’ area, buddy discount, social media discount promo Explore interest in loyalty program: Spend $100 to get 10% discount on next purchase
Price	Run Facebook promotion offering 5% discount to people who post about Bookends
Place	No changes (yet). Explore opening online store

Marketing Strategy: Wannabe Hipsters

The Wannabe Hipsters are an interesting group. You almost didn’t include them in the three target segments because they are a smaller-sized group and don’t spend as much as the others. However, they do make up one in five Bookends customers, so it’s worth reaching out to see if you can bring more of them into the store and get them to spend more money while there. Fortunately, they like to come to Bookends during times when there aren’t many Busy Families around, so that opens some unique possibilities for ways of appealing to both segments.

Dan is excited about your suggestion to invite local bands to perform on Saturday nights. The Hipsters you spoke with suggested Dan try this, and it could make Bookends more of a social draw for that crowd. By rearranging shelving to create more socializing space, it opens up enough area for a live band to play for a small audience. You’re not convinced it’s going to translate into more book sales, but it’s worth a try.

The Hipster crowd has decidedly different communication preferences compared to the other groups, so your communication and promotion activities reflect this. To make sure they see the buddy discounts you’re offering, you suggest that Dan add signage about this promotion near the checkout counter, since that’s the place this audience is most likely to notice it.

The broad strokes of your Hipster Wannabe strategy are the following:

Bookends Segment Strategy: Hipster Wannabe
Element	Marketing Mix Adjustment
Marketing Goals	15% increase in store visitors for this segment 20% increase in monthly revenue per person
Product	Adjust shelves and seating to create more socializing spaces Invite local bands to play on Saturday evenings Add more prominent shelf placement to feature graphic novels Sell packaged baked goods from a local bakery and bottled drinks
Promotion	Promote live music nights and buddy discount nights via social media Add point-of-sale signage about Thursday and Saturday night “buddy discounts” Explore interest in loyalty program: Spend $100 to get 10% discount on next purchase
Price	Thursday and Saturday night “buddy discounts”: Get 5% off if you and a buddy each spend over $20
Place	No changes (yet). Explore opening online store.

Onward and Upward for Bookends

After running the numbers with Dan, you are optimistic that outreach to these target audiences will be the jumpstart his business needs. Your use of near-term promotions and events will help generate renewed interest and traffic for the store. You have advised Dan to explore interest in and options for a customer loyalty program that rewards customers for spending more at Bookends. That’s what the next round of marketing research will investigate.

In the meantime, you’ve learned a lot about the marketing research process and how to turn marketing information into future marketing strategies and plans. You’re excited to keep helping Dan as he puts your ideas to work, and, best of all, if business at the Bookends really starts to improve, you’ve got free graphic novels for life.

COPYRIGHT

This courseware was assembled by Christopher VanOosterhout from a variety of resources copyrighted and openly licensed by multiple individuals and organizations.  See our Copyright and Attribution page for additional details.  For details about permission to use please contact me at c@vanosterhout.com with the phrase  Courseware Usage Inquiry.  If you believe that this courseware violates your copyright, please contact me at c@vanoosterhout.com with the phrase Copyright Inquiry in the subject.  Details about the collector of these resources and Licentia LLC can be found at www.vanoosterhout.com

• Putting It Together: Marketing Research. Provided by: Lumen Learning. License: CC BY: Attribution

What you’ll learn to do: use marketing information to inform the marketing strategy

After you work through the process of identifying a problem, collecting and analyzing the best marketing information available, you arrive at the moment you’ve been waiting for: You can use this information to guide your decisions about marketing strategy. That strategy is aimed at getting you the results you need.

We’ve already described this final part of the overall marketing research process, but in this section you’ll get a chance to see how real-world companies undertake this final, important step.

The specific things you’ll learn in this section include:

• Explain and provide examples of how marketers can use marketing information to improve the marketing mix

Translating Marketing Information into Action

With marketing information and research results collected, it’s now the responsibility of marketers to share this information internally with people who need to understand it. It’s standard practice to hold meetings with appropriate team members to walk through the research findings and brainstorm together about how to apply the results to marketing strategy and operations. It’s also good practice to make the research report available on a company intranet or other central forum, where people who need the information can readily find and access it.

The reception to research results may vary from person to person or from team to team. In some cases, where marketers have been waiting on the research results before they move forward, the new information fills a gap in their knowledge. They are likely very eager to take guidance from the research and charge ahead. In other cases, marketers may have a vested interest in continuing to do the things they’ve always done—perhaps because they dislike change or because they think the original course of action is still working. In these situations, if the research suggests that a course change is necessary, there may be significant resistance.

Start Conversations About New Customer Insights

To help encourage a better reception to what the organization is learning from marketing information, it may be useful to review the original problem the research is trying to solve. Remind team members that the goal of using marketing information is to gain new customer insights that will help make the organization more effective. With this in mind, marketers should think about how the research results can help them better understand customers and translate this understanding into adjustments to the marketing mix to better address customers’ needs. By framing research results around a deeper or broader understanding of the customer, it can help defuse resistance and make people feel more informed and empowered to make good marketing decisions.

The following section lists the types of questions marketers can explore as they brainstorm about how marketing information and research results can help them adjust marketing strategy and improve the marketing mix. These questions are a useful jumping-off point for deeper conversations about new customer insights and how to put them into action.

Don’t Forget to Measure Impact

As marketers begin to apply the research findings and recommendations, it is essential to track the impact of the new strategy to determine whether the original problem or challenge is being addressed. If the original marketing problem was focused on improving the messaging associated with a product, for example, then the organization should start to see improved lead generation, inquiries, and/or sales once the new messaging is adopted and implemented. If the original marketing problem was focused on which segments to target and how to reach them, organizations should be able to track improvements in interest and sales among these segments after they have begun to implement a market mix focused on these segments.

This link between taking action and measuring results is important. It provides a continuing stream of marketing information to help marketers understand if they are on the right path and where to continue to make adjustments. Eventually this process will surface new marketing problems that warrant attention through the marketing research process. In this way, the process of using marketing information to solve problems becomes a continuous cycle.

What does this process look like in the real world? Let’s examine two examples.

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COPYRIGHT

This courseware was assembled by Christopher VanOosterhout from a variety of resources copyrighted and openly licensed by multiple individuals and organizations.  See our Copyright and Attribution page for additional details.  For details about permission to use please contact me at c@vanosterhout.com with the phrase  Courseware Usage Inquiry.  If you believe that this courseware violates your copyright, please contact me at c@vanoosterhout.com with the phrase Copyright Inquiry in the subject.  Details about the collector of these resources and Licentia LLC can be found at www.vanoosterhout.com

What you’ll learn to do: explain how customer relationship management (CRM) systems can help organizations manage and gain customer insights from marketing information

To round out our discussion of marketing information and research, we need to add one more important tool to the mix: customer relationship management (CRM) systems. These increasingly prevalent systems are the centerpiece in how many organizations make sense of and manage marketing data about current and prospective customers. A basic understanding of CRM systems can help you recognize their potential for helping organizations use marketing information more effectively.

The specific things you’ll learn in this section include:

• Define CRM systems and explain their purpose
• Describe the types of marketing information CRM systems can capture and why it is valuable for generating customer insights

Marketing Information and Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Earlier in this course, we cited the American Marketing Association’s definition of customer relationship management: “a discipline in marketing combining database and computer technology with customer service and marketing communications.” The AMA’s definition goes on to describe the ultimate goal of customer relationship management as the ability to provide “meaningful one-on-one communications with the customer by applying customer data (demographic, industry, buying history, etc.) to every communications vehicle.”^[1] Because customer relationship management (CRM) relies on customer data—and specifically the effective use of internal data—it’s important to discuss CRM systems in the context of marketing information and research.

CRM systems are powerful software systems that serve several essential functions for marketing, sales, and account management. Organizations use them to:

• Capture internal data about customers and customer interactions and house these data in a central location
• Provide business users with access to customer data in order to inform a variety of customer touch points and interactions
• Conduct data analysis and generate insights about how to better meet the needs of target segments and individual customers
• Deliver a marketing mix tailored to the needs and interests of these target segments and individual customers

Leading providers of CRM systems include Salesforce.com, Oracle (Siebel), and Microsoft, among others. These large, many-faceted systems include several components. Databases and data warehouses provide information infrastructure for storing and accessing customer information. Contact management capabilities allow organizations to track a variety of customer interactions, including how each customer or prospective customer relationship is progressing over time. CRM packages also include sophisticated analytical tools to help marketing and sales analysts examine the data and find patterns and correlations that help them better anticipate and address customer needs (with the goal of strengthening each customer relationship).

Does this analytical process sound familiar? It should. Marketing analysts working with CRM data follow the same basic process outlined previously for general marketing research activities: Identify a problem; develop a plan for the information and analysis needed to solve the problem; conduct research; analyze and report findings; and take action based on the results. The primary difference from traditional marketing research projects is that the CRM inquiries may be more self-contained because of the breadth of marketing information and tools these systems provide.

The CRM system is especially effective at helping to surface a marketing problem, and it can provide the internal data needed for an analysis, which, in turn, is used to solve the problem. CRM systems are designed to capture data across the customer life cycle, starting with the initial contact point and progressing through each conversation and interaction that moves a prospective customer toward a purchasing decision. CRM systems also capture sales and spending data, and they enable analysts to project future spending patterns and lifetime value based on broader patterns in the customer data. These systems may also incorporate data about customer satisfaction and support, with accompanying insights into what is driving satisfaction ratings and customers’ perceptions of the company. In addition to bringing together disparate customer data, CRM systems can recommend an analytical approach and provide research tools to complete the analysis. Many CRM systems have mechanisms for reporting results, orchestrating plans for taking action on the results, and even evaluating the effectiveness of those actions.

 

https://www.ama.org/resources/Pages/Dictionary.aspx?dLetter=C ↵

COPYRIGHT

This courseware was assembled by Christopher VanOosterhout from a variety of resources copyrighted and openly licensed by multiple individuals and organizations.  See our Copyright and Attribution page for additional details.  For details about permission to use please contact me at c@vanosterhout.com with the phrase  Courseware Usage Inquiry.  If you believe that this courseware violates your copyright, please contact me at c@vanoosterhout.com with the phrase Copyright Inquiry in the subject.  Details about the collector of these resources and Licentia LLC can be found at www.vanoosterhout.com