chapter 4 marketing

• Marketing Information System

  System that manages information about individual customers from various sources in order to maximize customer loyalty
• Marketing Information System Functions

  • Assessing information needs
  • Developing information
  • Information analysis
  • Marketing research
  • Marketing intelligence
  • Customer Relationship Management
  • Distributing and Using Marketing Information
• Assessing information needs

  Balancing information managers would like to have against that which they really need & is feasible to obtain
• Too much information can be as harmful as too little
• Internal records

  • Accessed more quickly & cheaply than other sources, but may be incomplete or in the wrong form for marketing
  • Data also age quickly; keeping the database current requires a major effort
• Marketing research

  • Measurement of market potentials
  • Market-share analysis
  • Determination of market characteristics
  • Sales analysis
  • Studies of business trends
  • Short-range forecasting
  • Competitive product studies
  • Long-range forecasting
  • Marketing information systems studies
  • Testing of existing products
• Marketing intelligence

  Set of procedure and data sources used by marketing managers to sift information form the environment that they can use in their decision making
• Information analysis

  Collection of analytical models that will help marketers make better decisions
• Customer Relationship Management


  System that manages information about individual customers from various sources in order to maximize customer loyalty
• Distributing and Using Marketing Information

  A centralized systems provides managers with regular performance reports, intelligence updates and reports on the results of studies
• Defining the Problem and Research Objectives

  • Managers must work closely with researchers to define the problem & research objectives
  • Managers must know enough about marketing research to interpret the findings carefully
  • Marketing researchers can help the manager define the problem and use the findings correctly
• Types of marketing research

  • Exploratory research
  • Descriptive research
  • Causal research
• Designing research plan

  • Researchers can gather secondary data, primary data, or both
  • Secondary data consist of information already in existence somewhere, having been collected for another purpose
  • Primary data consist of information collected for the specific purpose at hand
• Research approaches

  • Observations
  • Surveys
  • Experiments
• Observational research

  • Gathering of primary data by observing relevant people, actions, and situations
  • Can yield information people are normally unwilling or unable to provide
  • Cannot capture feelings, beliefs, and attitudes that motivate buying behavior
  • Cannot capture long-run or infrequent behavior
• Survey research

  • Best suited to gathering descriptive information
  • Structured surveys use formal lists of questions asked of all respondents in the same way
  • Unstructured surveys let the interviewer probe respondents and guide the interview according to their answers
  • Sometimes people can't answer questions as they don't remember or never thought about what they do & why
• Experimental research

  • Designed to capture cause-and-effect relationships by eliminating competing explanations of the observed findings
  • The most scientifically valid research
  • Experiments call for subjecting matched groups of subjects to different treatments, controlling extraneous variables, and checking whether observed response differences are statistically significant
• Implementing research plan

  1. Collecting

  2. Processing

  3. Analysis
• Interpreting and Reporting the Findings

  • The researcher should avoid overwhelming managers with numbers, statistical techniques, and focus
  • Findings can be interpreted in different ways, and discussions between researchers and managers will help point to the best interpretations
  • Interpretation is an important phase of the marketing process, as the best research is meaningless if a manager blindly accepts wrong interpretations
  • Managers may also have biased interpretations