Medium of Customer Responses
The responses can be provided through any of the following media: Face to Face Interaction – Face to face interaction is the most efficient medium and provides the probability to judge the emotions and body language of the respondent. When a customer visits the supplier’s premises and supplier receives him respectfully and spends some time […]
Getting Ahead of the Race in Service Industry
Service industry today dominates the economic scene in all the countries. Over a period of few decades we have seen the rise and unprecedented growth of service industry in almost all sectors including technology and telecommunications, health care, education, media, Utilities, financial and banking sector etc. Service industries growth has been characterized by focusing on […]
Analyzing Consumers Buying Behaviour
The core function of the marketing department is to understand and satisfy consumer need, wants and desire. Consumer behaviour captures all the aspect of purchase, utility and disposal of products and services. In groups and organization are considered within the framework of consumer. Failing to understand consumer behaviour is the recipe for disaster as some […]
Relationship Management is not a Marketing Strategy Alone
Customer Relationship management is a two way interaction. The Organisation has got to devise ways and means to reach out to the customer and more importantly receive the feedback received from the customer. There are two important aspects to be considered in a Customer Relationship Management. First is the customer interaction in terms of quality […]
Strategic Management – Meaning and Important Concepts
Strategic Management – An Introduction Strategic Management is all about identification and description of the strategies that managers can carry so as to achieve better performance and a competitive advantage for their organization. An organization is said to have competitive advantage if its profitability is higher than the average profitability for all companies in its […]
Research can be categorized either on the basis of technique (surveys, experiments, observation studies, etc) or on the basis of purpose. We will look at the techniques in the subsequent chapters. Now let us focus on the 3 methods of doing Marketing Research based on purpose:
As the name implies, exploratory research is the initial exploration done to get an idea and insights into the problem. Research is a relatively expensive process; exploratory research ensures that this process is not initiated without a thorough understanding of the problem. This study is qualitative (understanding the concept) rather than quantitative (providing precise measurement). Also, this type of research does not give conclusive evidence and subsequent research needs to be done.
Further, the following purposes justify the use of exploratory research:
A widely used method for executing exploratory research for this purpose is Concept Testing. Here, target consumers are introduced to an idea and asked how they feel about it, whether they are likely to use it, etc. It tests the likeability or acceptability of the new product before investing in its research and development.
This type of research is used when there is some comprehension of the problem, objectives are defined and the research questions are clearly formulated. Contrary to exploratory research, the proof descriptive research provides is used for formulating action plans. It helps answer the questions ‘when’, ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘where’, but not ‘why’.
Descriptive research typically gives a detailed account of the characteristics or behaviour of a population. Hence the research work usually involves some element of consumer profiling and market segmentation.
Experimental studies demonstrate cause and effect relationships. They try to decipher the outcome marketing actions might have. For example, it is used when the purpose is to determine the impact of increase in price on usage.
This research is used in succession to exploratory and descriptive research and hence sufficient knowledge is gained on the topic by then. Experimental research is also popularly known as causal research.
The extent of uncertainty also affects what type of method should be chosen. The more well defined the situation is, the more the research agency will move from exploratory to descriptive to experimental research.
Degree of Problem Interpretation
The following cases will further help understand the significance of each type of research:
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