Chapter 3

• Marketing research contributes to better decision making by helping to define the organization's current situation, identifying useful decision statements and related research questions, defining the firm's meaning, providing ideas for product improvements or possible new product development, testing ideas that will assist in implementing marketing strategy including innovations, and examining how well a marketing theory describes

  marketing reality.
• Marketing research reduces uncertainty and helps focus decision making.
• Research's role in the decision-making process includes recognizing the nature of the problem or opportunity, identifying how much information is currently available and how reliable it is, and determining what information is needed to better deal with the situation.
• A market opportunity is a situation that makes some potential competitive advantage possible.
• Stages in the Marketing Research Process can overlap chronologically and are functionally interrelated.
• Forward linkage in the research process means that earlier stages influence later stages.
• The stages in the Marketing Research Process are: defining the research objectives, planning a research design, planning a sample, collecting the data, analyzing the data, and formulating the conclusions and preparing the report.
• Uncertainty influences the type of research needed and determines the research methodology.
• Exploratory research is discovery oriented, productive, but still speculative and often in need of further research.
• In a cyclical process, conclusions generate new ideas.
• Each type of research produces a different type of result.
• The amount of uncertainty in a research problem determines the research methodology.
• Descriptive research is confirmatory oriented and results can be managerially actionable.
• Backward linkage in the research process means that later steps influence earlier stages.
• Research objectives must be stated formally, delineating the type of research needed, indicating what intelligence may result, and driving the rest of the research process.
• The Scientific Method is the way researchers go about using knowledge and evidence to reach objective conclusions about the real world, involving the analysis and interpretation of empirical evidence to confirm or disprove prior conceptions.
• A continuous variable is a variable that can take on a range of values that correspond to some quantitative amount.
• Research objectives are stated in a Research Objectives Statement, which delineates the required type of research, outlines the relevant results that the research is intended to produce, and expresses researcher and management agreement that the research objectives are appropriate and will produce deliverables (research results) that will assist in making informed choices required by the decision statement.
• A classificatory variable is another term for a categorical variable because it classifies units into categories.
• A dependent variable is a process outcome or a variable that is predicted and/or explained by other variables.
• An independent variable is a variable that is expected to influence the dependent variable in some way.
• A variable is anything that varies or changes from one instance to another; a variable represents differences in value, usually in magnitude, strength and/or direction.
• A theory is a formal, logical explanation of some events that includes predictions of how things relate to one another.
• A categorical variable is a variable that indicates membership in some group.
• When there are severe time constraints, these constraints override validity, resulting in choosing the fastest alternative.
• A Research Proposal is a written statement of the research design emphasizing what the research will accomplish.
• Situation: Twenty-year-old neighborhood swimming association: Membership has been declining for years, there is a new water park, and there have been demographic changes.
• Research Objectives are the goals to be achieved by conducting research.
• When money and human resources are more plentiful, the appropriate path differs and likely emphasizes validity over speed.
• Decision makers’ objectives are managerial goals expressed in measurable terms.
• Decision-making situations are characterized by the amount of certainty or ambiguity.
• The Iceberg Principle indicates that the dangerous part of many business problems is neither visible to nor understood by managers.
• Uncertainty influences the type of research, with complete certainty leading to Causal or Descriptive research, and absolute ambiguity leading to Exploratory research.
• Defining the Managerial Decision Situation involves clarifying the problem, opportunity, or monitoring operations.
• Market Problem is a situation that makes some significant negative consequence more likely.
• The researcher must choose among a number of alternatives during each stage of the research process.
• Exploratory Research is conducted to clarify ambiguous situations or discover ideas that may be potential business opportunities.
• Deliverables are the term used often in consulting to describe research objectives to a research client.
• The three types of Marketing Research are Exploratory, Descriptive, and Causal.
• Symptoms can be confusing.