Chapter 4

• Organizational and ethical issues are a crucial part of marketing research.
• Knowing when research should be conducted externally and when it should be done internally is a key learning outcome in marketing research.
• Understanding the career opportunities and career paths available within the marketing research industry is a crucial part of marketing research.
• Chris Shallow has always received very positive feedback from both clients and participants in courses which he has run.
• Chris Shallow is a lecturer in marketing, specializing in financial, management, and marketing to Czech and Slovak managers at all levels, in international companies in a variety of industries including engineering, logistics, pharmaceuticals, and steel.
• Spyware is software placed on a computer without consent or knowledge of the user.
• Participant’s Right to Privacy states that research participants have the right to expect confidentiality.
• Implicit consent is when behaviors that are openly performed in public imply that one is willing to have others observe them.
• Researchers generally do not view unobtrusive observation of public behavior in places such as stores, airports, sidewalks and museums as an invasion of a person’s privacy.
• Confidentiality means that researchers will not share any individual’s information with others.
• Doing research with children can yield extremely useful information, but it is also more risky than doing research with adults.
• Kid’s Stuff is Complicated refers to COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which defines a child as anyone under the age of 13 and obligates anyone engaging in contact with a child through the Internet to obtain parental consent before a child can provide any personal information or identification.
• Confidentiality is defined as the information involved in a research will not be shared with others.
• Defining ethics and understanding how it applies to marketing research is a crucial part of marketing research.
• Anonymity assures respondents that they cannot be identified or linked to their response in any way.
• Becoming sensitive to the often conflicting relationship between marketing management and researchers is a crucial part of marketing research.
• The goal of Marketing Research is to provide technical assistance, such as running computer programs and manipulating data to forecast sales.
• Many large organizations have managers of customer quality research who specialize in conducting surveys to measure consumers’ satisfaction with product quality.
• Large firms have more than 500 employees and as marketing research departments grow, they tend to specialize by product or strategic business unit.
• Cross-functional Teams are employee teams composed of individuals from various functional areas such as engineering, production, finance, and marketing who share a common purpose.
• Organizational Structure of Marketing Research includes Research Assistants (or Associates) who provide technical assistance with questionnaire design, data analyses, and similar activities, a Manager of Decision Support Systems who supervises the collection and analysis of sales, inventory, and other periodic Customer Relationship Management (CRM) data, and a Forecast Analyst who provides technical assistance, such as running computer programs and manipulating data to forecast sales.
• Cross-functional Teams help organizations focus on a core business process, such as new-product development, reduce the tendency for employees to focus single-mindedly on an isolated functional activity, and help employees increase customer value since communication about the customer and their specific desires and opinions spreads across the firm.
• Appreciating the rights and obligations of research respondents, research clients or sponsors, marketing researchers, and society is a crucial part of marketing research.
• Institutional Review Board is another name for a human subjects review committee.
• Conflict Between Marketing Management and Marketing Research can occur when marketing managers try to use research to support their decisions and researchers try to use marketing management decisions to support their research.
• An Open Relationship with Research Suppliers involves ethical behavior between the buyer and seller.
• The Director of Marketing Research plans, executes, and controls the firm’s marketing research function, issues in directing research, is skilled in conducting research better than managing people, and the research management role is often not formally recognized.
• Debriefing is a session during which research subjects are fully informed and provided with a chance to ask any questions they may have about the experiment.
• A Forecast Analyst is an employee who provides technical assistance, such as running computer programs and manipulating data to generate a sales forecast.
• Experimental designs often involve some degree of deception.
• Human subjects review committee (Institutional Review Board) reviews proposed research designs to ensure that no harm can come to any research participant.
• Rights and Obligations of the Client Sponsor (User) are questions to ask to understand the responsibilities of the client sponsor.
• Mystery shoppers are research personnel that pretend to be customers while observing and recording data describing their treatment by service employees.
• Protection From Harm involves asking questions to avoid unethical treatment.
• Placebo is a false experimental effect used to create the perception of a true effect.
• Avoiding situations involving a conflict of interest in performing marketing research is a crucial part of marketing research.
• There is no difference in the satisfaction ratings of men and women.
• The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has indicated that it is illegal to use any plan, scheme, or ruse that misrepresents the true status of a person seeking admission to a prospect’s home, office, or other establishment.
• Service monitoring is contacting customers about their experience with a product, with no selling attempt.
• Misrepresentation of research can be avoided by honestly presenting results and reporting errors.