- Sometimes people are unable to answer survey questions because they cannot
remember or have never thought about what they do and why. Or people may be
unwilling to respond to unknown interviewers or talk about things they consider
private. Respondents might answer survey questions when they do not know the
answer in order to appear smarter or more informed.
- Experimental research: The gathering of primary data by selecting matched
groups of subjects, giving them different treatments, controlling related
factors, and checking differences in-group responses.
Contact Methods
- Information can be collected by mail, telephone, or personal interview.
- Table 4-4 Strengths and Weaknesses of three Contacts Methods (131)
- Personal Interviewing takes two forms- individual and group interviewing.
Individual interviewing involves talking with people in their homes or offices,
on the street, or in shopping malls. Such interviewing is flexible.
- Group Interviewing consists of 6-10 people gather for a few hours with a
trained moderator to discuss a product, service or organization.
- Focus group interviewing: personal interviewing that consist of inviting
six to 10 people to gather for a few hours with a trained interviewer to discuss
a product, service, or organization. The interviewer ?focuses? the group
discussion on important issues. The comments are recorded through written notes.
- Focus group interviewing has become one of the major marketing research
tools for gathering insight into consumer thoughts and feelings. However, focus
group studies usually use small sample sizes to keep time and costs down, and it
may be hard to generalize from the results.
- Computer Interviewing in which respondents sit down at a computer, read
questions from a screen, and type their own answer into the computer.
Sampling Plans
- Marketing researchers usually draw conclusions about large groups of
consumers by studying a small sample of the total consumer population. A sample
is a segment of the population selected to represent the population as a whole.
- Designing the sample requires 3 decisions: 1. Who is to be surveyed (what
the sampling unit)? 2. How many people should be surveyed (What?s the sample
size)? 3. How should the people in the sample be chosen (what sampling
procedure)?
- Using probability samples each population member has a known chance of
being included in the sample and researchers can calculate confidence limits for
sampling errors. But when probability sampling costs too much or takes too much
time, marketing researchers often take non-probability samples, even though
their sampling error cannot be measured.
Research Instruments
- In collecting primary data, marketing researchers have a choice of 2 main
research instruments ? the questionnaire and the mechanical devices.
- The questionnaire is by far the most common device. Questionnaires must be
developed carefully and testes before they can used on a large scale. When
developing a questionnaire the market researchers must first decide what to ask.
- Closed-end questions ? include all possible answers, and subjects make
choices among them.
- Opened-end questions ? Questions allowing respondent to answer in their
own words.
- Researcher should also use care in wording and ordering questions. They
should use simple direct, unbiased wording.
- Table 4-7 Types of Questions (136)
Presenting the Research plan
- The proposal should cover the management problems addressed and the
research objectives, the information to be obtained, the sources of secondary
information or methods for collecting primary data, and the way the results will
help management decision-making. It should also include, research cost, a
written research plan, and they should all agree on why and how the research
will be conducted.
Implementing the Research plan
- This involves collecting, processing, and analysing the information. Data
collection can be carried out by the company?s marketing research staff or by
outside firm. The data collection phase of the marketing research process is
generally the most expensive and the most subject to error.
Interpreting and reporting the findings
- The research must now interpret the finding, draw conclusions, and report
them to management. The researcher should not try to overwhelm managers with
numbers and fancy statistical techniques. Rather, the researcher should present
important finding that are useful in the major decisions faced by management. In
many cases findings can be interpreted in different ways, and discussions
between researchers and managers will help identify the best interpretations.
- Interpretations are an important phase of the marketing process. The best
research is meaningless if the manager blindly accepts wrong interpretations
from the research. Managers may have biased interpretations-they tend to accept
research results that show what they expected and to reject those that they did
not expect or hope for.
Other Marketing Research Considerations
Marketing research in small business and non-profit organizations
- Managers of small business and non-profit organization can obtain good
marketing information simply by observing things around them.
- Managers can conduct informal survey using small convenience samples.
- Managers can also conduct their own sample experiments.
- Small organizations can obtain most of the secondary data available to
large businesses. Many associations, local media, chambers of commerce, and
government agencies provide special help to small organizations.
International Marketing research
- International marketing research can pose some unique challenges, For
example they ma find it difficult simply to develop good samples.
- Difference in culture from country to country cause additional problems for
international researchers. Languages is the most obvious culprit.
- Responses then must be translated back into the original language for
analysis and interpretations. This adds to research costs and increase in the
risk of error.
- Transplantation a questionnaire from one language to another is anything
but easy. Many idioms, phrase, and statements mean different things in different
cultures.
- Consumers in different countries also vary in their attitudes towards
marketing research.
Chapter 5 ? Consumer Markets and Consumer Buyer Behaviour
- Consumers buying behaviour: The buying behaviour of final
consumers-individuals and households who buy goods and services for personal
consumption.
- All of these final consumers combined comprise the consumer market.
- Consumer Market: All the individuals and households who buy or acquire
goods and services for potential consumption.
Model of Consumer Behaviour
- The central questions for marketers are: How do consumers respond to
various marketing efforts the company might use.
Characteristics affecting consumer behaviour
- Consumer purchases are influence strongly by cultural, social, personal,
and psychological characterises.
Cultural Factors
- Culture: The set of basic values, perception, wants and behaviours learned
by a member of a society from family and other important institutions.
- Culture is the most basic cause of a person?s wants and behaviour. Human
behaviour is largely learned. Growing up in a society, a child learns basic
values, perceptions, wants, and behaviours from the family and other important
institutions.
- International marketers must understand the culture in each international
market and adapt their marketing strategies accordingly.
SUBCULTURE
- Subculture: A group of people with shared value system based on common life
experience and situations.
- Subculture includes nationalities, religions, racial groups, and geographic
regions.
(1) Native Canadians
(2) Canada?s Ethnic Consumers
(3) Mature Consumers
(4) Internet Users
- Internet Users ? Internet users are powerful and in control. The consumer
s one who choose to access a web site and marketers must adjust to the idea that
the Net is a means of two-way communication between a consumer and a vendor, not
the one-way street that media advertising represents, IN other words, ?They?re
not just listening to what the corporation wants to sell them, they?re
choosing the information that appeals to them.
SOCIAL CLASS
- Social classes are society?s relatively permanent and order division
whose members share similar values, interest, and behaviours.
- Social Class: Relatively permanent and ordered division in a society whose
members share similar values, interests, and behaviours.
- Social class is not determined by a single form, such as income, but
measured as a combination of occupation, income, education, wealth and other
variables.
- Table 5-2 Characterises of Seven Major North American Social Classes (page
162)
- People can move to a higher social class or drop into a lower one.
Social factors
GROUPS
- Groups: Two or more people whom interact to accomplish individual or mutual
goals.
- Groups that have a direct influence and to which a person belongs are
called ? Membership groups
- Primary Groups ? With whom there is regular but informal interaction ?
such as friends, family, neighbours, and co-workers.
- Secondary Groups ?, which are more formal and that, has less regular
interactions. These include organizations, such as religious groups,
professional associations, and trade unions.
- Reference Groups ? serve as a direct (face-to-face) or indirect points of
comparison or reference informing a person?s attitudes or behaviour. People
often are influence be reference groups to which they do not belong.
- Opinion Leaders: People within a reference group who, because of special
skills, knowledge, personality, or other characteristics, exert, influence on
others.
- Opinion Leaders are found at all level of society, and one person may be an
opinion leader in certain products areas and an opinion follower in others.
Marketers try to identify opinion leaders for their products and direct
marketing effort towards them.
FAMILY
- Family members can strongly influence buyer?s behaviours. The family is
the most important consumer buying organization in society.
- In Canada and the United States, the wife is traditionally has been the
main purchasing agent for the family, especially in the area of food,
households, products, and clothing.
- In the case of expensive products and services, husbands and wives more
often make joint decisions.
ROLES AND STATUS
- A person belongs to many groups-family, clubs, and organizations. The
person?s position in each group can be defined in terms of both roles and
status. A role consists of the activities that people are expected to perform
according to the persons around them. Each role carries a status reflecting the
general esteem given to it by the society.
Personal Factors
AGE AND LIFE CYCLE STAGE
- Taste in foods, clothes, furniture, and recreation are often age-related.
- Table 5-3 Life Cycle Stages (page 165)
OCCUPATION
- A person?s occupation affects the goods and services that he or she buys.
ECONOMIC SITUATION
- A person?s economic situation will affect product choice. Marketers of
income sensitive goods watch trends in personal income, saving, and interest
rates. If economic indicators point to a rescission, marketers can take steps to
redesign, reposition, and reprice their products.
LIFESTYLE
- Lifestyle: A person?s pattern of living as expressed in his or her
activities, interests, and opinion.
- Lifestyle is a person?s pattern of living as expressed in his or her
psychographics. It involves measuring consumers? major AIO dimensions
activities (work, hobbies, shopping, sports, social events), interests (food,
fashions, family, recreation), and opinions (about themselves, social issues,
business products). Lifestyles capture something more than the person?s social
class or personality; it profiles a person?s whole pattern of acting and
interacting in the world.
- Psychographics: The technique of measuring lifestyles and developing
lifestyle classification; it involves measuring the major AIO dimension
(activities, interest, opinions)
- VALS; Classifies people according to how they spend their time and money.
It divides consumers into eight groups on two major dimensions.
- Self Orientation Group includes principle-oriented consumers ? who buy
based on their views on the world. Status Orientated buyers ? who base their
purchase on the actions and opinions of others. Action-oriented buyers ? who
are driven by their desire for activity, variety, and risk-taking. Consumers
within each orientation are further classified into those with abundant
resources and those with minimal resources.
PERSONALITY AND SELF CONCEPT
- Personality: A person?s distinguished psychological characteristics that
led to relatively consistent and lasting response to his or her own environment.
Psychological Factors
- A person?s buying choices are further influenced by four major
psychological factors: motivations, perception, learning, and beliefs and
attitudes.
MOTIVATION
- Biological, arising from state of tension such as hunger, thirst, or
discomfort.
- Psychological, arising from the need for recognition, esteem, or belonging.
Most of these needs will not be strong enough to motivate the person to act at
any given them.
- Motive: A need that is sufficiency pressing to drive the person to seek
satisfaction of the need.
- Psychologists have developed theories of human motivation. Sigmund Freud
and Abraham Maslow
- Freud?s theory of motivation: Freud assumes that people are largely
unconscious about the real psychological forces shaping their behaviour.
- Abraham Maslow sought to explain why people are driven by particular needs
at particular times. In order of importance, they are psychological needs,
safety needs, social needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs. A person
tries to satisfy the most important first. When that need is satisfied, it will
stop being a motivator and the person will then try to satisfy the nest most
important need.
PERCEPTION
- A motivated person is ready to act. How the person is influence by his or
her perception of the situation.
- Perception: Is the process by which people select, organize and interpret
information to form a meaningful picture of the world.
- People can form different perceptions of the same stimulus because of three
perceptual processes: selective attention, selective distortion, and selective
retention. Selective Attention ? The tendency for people to screen out most of
the information to which they are exposed- means that marketers must work
especially hard to attract the consumer?s attention. Their message will be
lost on most people who are not in the market for the product. Moreover, even
people who are in the market may not notice the message unless it stands out
from the surrounding sea of other ads. Selective distortion ? describes the
tendency of people to interpret information in a way that will support what they
already believe. Selective distortion means that marketers must try to
understand consumer?s perspectives and how these will affect interpretations
of advertising and sales information. People will also forget what they learned
they tend to retain information that supports their attitudes and beliefs.
Because of Selective retention ? advertisers try to frame messages in ways that
are consistent with people?s existing beliefs. Example ?Jen is likely to
remember goods points made about the Harley and to forget good points made about
competing motorcycles.
LEARNING
- Learning occurs through the interplay of drives, stimuli, cues, responses
and reinforcement.
- Learning: Changes in an individual?s behaviour arising from experience.
- A drive is a strong internal stimulus that calls for action. Her drive
becomes and motive when it is directed toward a particular stimulus object.
- A cue are minor stimuli that determine when, where, and how the person
response.
BELIEFS AND ATTITUTEDS
- Beliefs: A descriptive thought that a person holds about something.