Marketing research: involvesall elements of marketing; has several steps; is systematic &objective.

Defining the research problem:Interact with the decision maker; Understand the problem, not symptoms;Detail research objectives; Be specific & verbalize/writie objectives.

Deciding when to do research:Finding value of information & odds of improving decision by collectingmore information through marketing research; Using decision theory.

Types of research designs:Appropriate research design for a study depends on how much is known abouta phenomenon; Exploratory research when little is known (focus groups; literaturesearch; experience surveys, etc.); Descriptive research when enough is knownto ask specific questions; Causal research when enought is known to specifythe cause & effect; Any research project may involve more than one phase;Starting with exploratory research is often useful.

Causal Designs: Experiments(Trade-offs between internal & external validity); Extraneous variablesin experiments that should be minimized/eliminated/kept in mind during interpretation.

Basic means of obtaining data:Communication & observation; Types of communication methods (2 by 2of structured-unstructured versus disguised-undisguised is a useful wayto think about methods); Structured method assumes knowledge of questions& responses; Undisguised method assumes respondents are able & willingto provide information; Methods of administration of questionnaires (phone,mail, direct).

Data collection forms: Questioningis a social process; Ethical principles in question asking (Right to privacy,informed consent, confidentiality); Questionnaire development is a processwith a sequence of steps; Questionnaire content (are respondents able/willing?); Response format - open-ended versus closed ended questions; Questionwording; Question sequencing; Physical layout, reexamination, & pretesting.

Types of scales: Likert, semanticdifferential graphic, etc.; Issues in scale construction (# of points, labeling,balanced/imbalanced, forced/nonforced, etc.).

Measurement: Rules for assigningnumbers to characteristics of objects/people/events; Types of measurementscales (Nominal, Ordinal, Interval, Ratio); Difficulty in measurement -conceptual versus operational definitions; Measurement error - Systematic& random error; Reliability - the extent to which a measure is freeof random error (equivalence and stability); Validity - does the measuremeasure what it aims to measure (content, pragmatic, construct validity);Developing measures - define the domain, generate items, collect data, purifymeasure.

Sampling: Benefits of sampling;Steps in sampling & sampling versus non-sampling error (frame, sampling,non-response, & response errors); Non-probability sampling procedures(convenience sampling, judgment sampling, quota sampling); Probability samplingallows estimation of sampling error; Simple random sampling (Sampling distributions,The Central Limit Theorem, Estimating confidence intervals); Stratifiedsampling (Proportionate - Disproportionate stratified sampling); Clustersampling.

Determining sample size: Samplesize for estimating means/proportions (when population variance is known/unknown);Absolute precision; Relative precision.

Nonsampling error: Non-coverageerror; Non-response error; Try to minimize total error.

Data analyses: Coding data;Using Cross-Tabulations to assess relationships.

Hypothesis Testing: The logicof hypotheses testing; Null versus alternate hypotheses; Types of errors(alpha and beta/Type 1 and Type 2 errors); Procedure in hypotheses testing;Examination of Differences: Hypotheses about 1 mean; Hypotheses about 2means.

More Data analyses: Correlation;Regression; Discriminant, Factor, and Cluster analyses.

Some trends & pitfalls in doing marketing research: Recent trends such as scanners provide quick and plentiful databut danger is in short term orientation.

Have a broad view of marketing research as any meansof learning that provides input for issues from developing product ideasto product modification, promotion, and distribution (e.g.listening to customer complaints, talking to "lead users"for high tech. products, getting a qualitative feel for market rather thanjust doing surveys).

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