Marketing research is the systematic design, collection, analysis and reporting of data findings relevant to a specific marketing situation facing the organization.
Olala is providing to its customers consultancy, solutions and services throughout the process of marketing research:
- defining the problem and research objectives
- developing the research plan
- collecting the information
- analysing the information
- presenting the results
Defining the problem and research objectives is about defining the problem specifically with their objectives:
exploratory research – its goals to gather preliminary data to shed light on the real nature of the problem and to suggest possible solutions and new ideas
descriptive research – it seeks to ascertain certain magnitude
casual research – its purpose is to test a cause-and-effect relationship
The marketing research plan can gather secondary data, primary data or both. Secondary data is data that were collected for another propose and already is in customers possession. Secondary data provide a starting point for research and offer the advantage of low cost and ready availability. Primary data is data gathered for the specific propose of research project. When the data needed for research do not exist or are dated, inaccurate, incomplete or unreliable, the primary data have to be collected.
Primary data can be collected in following ways: observation, focus group, surveys and experiments.
While observation and focus groups are best suited for exploratory research, surveys are best suited for descriptive research and experimental research is best suit causal research. Companies undertake surveys to learn about people’s knowledge, beliefs, preferences, satisfaction and so on, and to measure these magnitudes in the general population.
Experimental research is about selecting matched group of subjects, subjecting them to different treatments, controlling extraneous variable and checking whather observed response difference are statistically significants. The propose of experimental research is to capture cause-and-effect relationships by eliminating competing explaniotion of the observed result.
The research instrument used in collecting primary data is the questionnaire. A questionnaire consist of a set of questions presented to respondents for their answers. There are two type of questions:
Open-end questions:
- completely unstructured: a question that respondents can answer in an almost unlimited number of ways
- Word association: words are presented, one at the time, and respondents mention the fist word that comes to mind
- Sentence completion: an incomplete sentence is presented and responders complete the sentence
- Story completion: an incomplete story is presented and respondents are asked to complete it
- Picture completion: a picture of two characters is presented, with one making a statement. Responders are asked to identify with the other and fill the empty baloon
- Thematic apperception test (TAT): a pictures is presented and responders are asked to make up a story about what they think is happening or may happen in the picture.
Close-end questions:
- Dichotomous: a question with two possible answers
- Multiple choice: a question with three or more answers
- Likert scale: a statement with which the respondent shows the amount of agreement / disagreement (strongly disagree, disagree, neither agree nor disagree, agree, strong agree)
- Semantic differential: a scale connecting two bipolar words. The respondent selects the point that represents his or her opinion
- Importance scale: a scale that rates the importance of some attribute (extremely important, very important, somewhat important, not very important, not at all important)
- Rating scale: a scale that rates some attribute from “poor” to “excellente’ (excellent, very good, good, fair, poor)
- Intention to buy scale: a scale that describes the respondent’s intention to buy (definitely buy, probably buy, not sure, probably not buy, definetely not buy)
