Marketing 11 - Marketing Research

PRESCRIBED LEARNING OUTCOMES

It is expected that students will:

• explain why businesses conduct marketing research
• identify the elements of marketing research
• describe ways in which businesses use data from marketing research
• conduct marketing research using appropriate data sources and technologies
• analyse marketing-research techniques for effectiveness and bias
• use marketing research to identify target markets for a variety of products and services

SUGGESTED INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES

• Encourage students in groups to brainstorm and discuss several business case studies in which marketing research could provide useful information. From the discussion, challenge students to list several marketing-research problems. Then have each group select one problem and design a research study to solve it.
• Have students choose a specific product or service they believe is not marketed well. Ask them to develop market research surveys designed to establish the effectiveness of current marketing strategies for the products or services. Ask students to discuss their surveys and to identify sources and examples of bias on the survey designs.
• Invite students to identify sources of primary and secondary data about their community. Then have them use those sources to gather actual demographic data that could be used to determine where to locate a retail store selling products to young people.
• Ask students, individually or in pairs, to design and administer a survey to determine the general characteristics (e.g., age, interests, shopping habits) of peers who would comprise a target market for a school ring or similar object. Have students analyse their results and present them, with appropriate graphics, to small groups as if they were marketing consultants reporting to clients.

SUGGESTED ASSESSMENT STRATEGIES

• Form pairs and have each pair develop marketing-research plans for a specific product. For example, students may choose to find out ways of enhancing a product's market share or to discuss whether its current advertising campaign reaches the target market effectively. Review the plans for evidence that students:
  • recognize steps in the marketing-research process (problem definition, exploratory research, formulation of hypotheses, research design, data collection, interpretation)
  • describe the activities involved in each step
  • select suitable data sources and data-collection methods to ensure that information is valid and reliable
  • identify possible sources of research bias and how they are addressed
• Observe as students select resources and tools to locate secondary data about market information (e.g., retail sales in Kamloops for the past year; disposable income of Canadians between 14 and 19 years of age; preferences of market segments for specific products and services such as Internet cafés, health-food magazines, sport utility vehicles). Note evidence that students:
  • can explain why they selected a resource or technology for a particular task
  • are able to locate needed information in an effective manner
• Following a discussion about the ways businesses use marketing-research findings, provide students with existing codes of ethics for marketing research from professional associations (e.g., American Marketing Association, Canadian Association of Broadcasters). Have students generate a class code of ethics to use for self- and peer assessment as they plan, conduct, and report on their own marketing research.

• Co-operative Development
• Contemporary Marketing Plus, Eighth Edition
• Marketing Today: A Retail Focus, Second Edition
• State of the Art Marketing Research

• The Advantage: Service Quality
• Marketing Products and Services
• Target Marketing? Bullseye!
• Venture: Flops

• Canadian Marketing in Action, Third Edition
• Marketing, Canadian Edition

• E-Stat

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