Research For Marketing Decisions

Essentials of Marketing Research takes an applied approach to the fundamentals of marketing research by providing examples from the business world of marketing research and showing students how to apply marketing research results. This text focuses on understanding and interpreting marketing research studies. Focusing on the 'how-to' and 'so what' of marketing research helps students understand the value of marketing research and how they can put marketing research into practice. There is a strong emphasis on how to use marketing research to make better management decisions. The unique feature set integrates data analysis, interpretation, application, and decision-making throughout the entire text. The text opens with a discussion of the role of marketing research, along with a breakdown of the marketing research process. The text then moves into a section discussing types of marketing research, including secondary resources, qualitative research, observation research, and survey research. Newer methods (e.g. using blogs or Twitter feeds as secondary resources and using online focus groups) are discussed as extensions of traditional methods such. The third section discusses sampling procedures, measurement methods, marketing scales, and questionnaires. Finally, a section on analyzing and reporting marketing research focuses on the fundamental data analysis skills that students will use in their marketing careers. Features of this text include: - Chapter Openers describe the results of a research study that apply to the topics being presented in that chapter. These are taken from a variety of industries, with a greater emphasis on social media and the Internet. - A Global Concerns section appears in each chapter, helping prepare students to conduct market research on an international scale.This text emphasizes the presentation of research results and uses graphs, tables, and figures extensively. - A Statistics Review section emphasizes the practical interpretation and application of statistical principles being reviewed in each chapter. - Dealing with Data sections in each chapter provide students with opportunities to practice interpreting data and applying results to marketing decisions. Multiple SPSS data sets and step-by-step instructions are available on the companion site to use with this feature. - Each Chapter Summary is tied to the chapter-opening Learning Objectives. - A Continuing Case Study follows a group of students through the research process. It shows potential trade-offs, difficulties and flaws that often occur during the implementation of research project. Accompanying case questions can be used for class discussion, in-class group work, or individual assignments. - End-of-Chapter Critical Thinking Exercises are applied in nature and emphasize key chapter concepts. These can be used as assignments to test students' understanding of marketing research results and how results can be applied to decision-making. - End-of-chapter Your Research Project provides more challenging opportunities for students to apply chapter knowledge on an in-depth basis, and thus olearn by doing.

This book is about marketing models and the process of model building. Our primary focus is on models that can be used by managers to support marketing decisions. It has long been known that simple models usually outperform judgments in predicting outcomes in a wide variety of contexts. For example, models of judgments tend to provide better forecasts of the outcomes than the judgments themselves (because the model eliminates the noise in judgments). And since judgments never fully reflect the complexities of the many forces that influence outcomes, it is easy to see why models of actual outcomes should be very attractive to (marketing) decision makers. Thus, appropriately constructed models can provide insights about structural relations between marketing variables. Since models explicate the relations, both the process of model building and the model that ultimately results can improve the quality of marketing decisions. Managers often use rules of thumb for decisions. For example, a brand manager will have defined a specific set of alternative brands as the competitive set within a product category. Usually this set is based on perceived similarities in brand characteristics, advertising messages, etc. If a new marketing initiative occurs for one of the other brands, the brand manager will have a strong inclination to react. The reaction is partly based on the manager's desire to maintain some competitive parity in the mar keting variables.

This book looks at customer value creation through marketing decisions and analyses the critical phases of theoretical and methodological advancements in solving certain problems and customer-centric issues that firms face. The chapters highlight how theories have been borrowed from sociology, psychology and economics to understand phenomena such as customer preferences and decision-making, and how operations research and statistical tools have been applied to take optimal decisions on marketing-related issues such as channel management and pricing. The volume covers an array of topics including marketing orientation, consumer behaviour, and marketing mix comprising the elements of product, price, promotion and place. The articles offer both methodological and theoretical contributions, and also discuss some key results of implementation of marketing strategies by various firms. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of marketing, consumer behaviour, business management, economics, finance, international marketing, services marketing and international business.