INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT KOZHIKODE

Post Graduate Programme in Management

Course Outline

Course Code and Course Title Advanced Methods in Marketing Research

Course type Elective
Pre-requisites (if any) MM II
Course Credit Three
Total no. of sessions 30
Session Duration 60 min
Term Six
Year and Batch 2015- 16, PGP 18
Sections (if any)

Instructor(s) Dr Atanu Adhikari

Contact Details Atanu.Adhikari@IIMK.ac.in
Office Faculty block 2 room No. 3
Consultation Hours Flexible

Introduction

1. You know from your MM II course that how to measure the effect of advertisement
(explanatory variable) on purchase intention (Criterion variable). However, how to
measure if advertisement influence female more than male, meaning how if gender
moderates the effect of ad on purchase intention? There could be many more similar
situations!
2. A consumer goes to a retail outlet and selects a pack of Frooti but not Appy or
Real! in subsequent buying, he may select the same brand or some other brand.
Given only this much information (i.e. actual purchase, the maximum information
available to marketers) how to measure utility of each factors of the pack of frooti or
Appy or Real (brand, packaging, taste, flavour etc.) of every individual up to an
accuracy of more than 90%!!
3. You may think that individual consumer price sensitivity, preferences of a particular
product etc. is somewhat constant. But that is not correct! Your willingness to pay or
attribute preference changes based on the intensity and magnitude of previous
references. How do you capture such behavior through a scientific process?

Organizations constantly struggle to keep up with the dynamics of the market they operate in.
Ever changing consumer needs, demands and behavior make it imperative that both the
organization and the sales and marketing professionals keep with the latest tools and
strategies. The program is designed to equip participants with the knowledge and cutting-
edge marketing research concepts and techniques required to develop and implement
effective marketing strategies.

Learning Outcomes/Course Objectives

(1) This course will help you to take home the critical concepts of advanced methods in
marketing research, including methods used for segmentation, targeting and positioning,
discrete choice analysis, path analysis and analysis of customer choice.
(2) This course would clarify the scientific understanding about how to develop a
measurement instrument to measure consumers perception and behaviour..
(3) This course will help you to effectively apply the learned concept in real life scenario.

Textbooks and Learning Materials

This section lists out the text books, reading materials, cases and other resources to
supplement and support the learning process.

Text Book(s)

1. Marketing Research: An Applied Orientation, by Naresh Malhotra, latest edition.

2. Multivariate Data Analysis Hair et al. latest edition

Additional Reading(s)

1. Class handouts

Technology and Software (if any)

SPSS, AMOS and XLSTAT will be used in this course.

Other Resources (Journals, Internet Websites) (if any)

Nil

Pedagogy Used/Learning Process

1. The classroom is a forum for discussion. "Discovery through discussion" is a very

effective method. You will have the opportunity to exchange and explore ideas,
debate them, and jointly arrive upon solutions to problems.
2. Lectures: To clarify the readings, and to amplify them with illustrations and related
concepts drawn from other sources.
3. Exercises: These are important in helping you to assimilate principles. In the case
analyses and other assignments you discover concepts and apply what you have
learned. Further, you will be making decisions similar to the way you would in a
managerial situation.
Evaluation Components/Assessment of Student Learning
This section should focus on the various assessment/evaluation methods to be used, weights,
and a description about how the assessment would be done. In particular, why such
assessment methods are used.

Assessment Tool Percentage Description

Quizzes 20% These components are required to check
Midterm Exam Nil and evaluate the students
End term Exam 50% understanding of concepts and
application of appropriate tools and
techniques.
Class Participation (Case 15% Students are expected to work in teams
Analysis & Class Exercises) for case analysis as it would provide
them opportunities to explore diverse
perspectives for a business problem.
Project 15% This facilitates students to demonstrate
the ability to integrate the information
and the skills accumulated in their
course with the applied research in the
respective areas. This also gives them a
chance to show their skills in oral and
writing communication.

Session Plan
Serial Sessions Topic Chapter
no.
1 1 and 2 Introduction to Advanced
Marketing Research and its
need in decision making.
3 and 4 Recap B1 Chapter 17,19 and
21
2 5 and 6 Stepwise Regression B1 Chapter 21
3 6,7,8 Application of causal B1 Chapter 7 and 16
research in analyzing
consumer behavior. Use of
experimentation, handling
extraneous variables.
Marketing application to be
shown using appropriate
analytical technique.
4 9, 10 Understanding factors and B1 Chapter 18
its effects in discriminating
multiple customer
 segments. Finding
discriminating factors from
measures of latent variable.
5 11, 12 Analyzing consumers B2 Chapter 5
discrete choice (binary and
multiple) behavior through
multinomial logit analysis.
6 13, 14 Positioning of brand B2 Chapter 10
through perceptual
mapping
Multidimensional scaling.
7 15, 16 Presentation of project
proposal
8 17, 18, 19, scale development and B2 Chapter 11
validation to measure
consumer behavior and
perception: Confirmatory
factor analysis and its
application in marketing
decision
9 20, 21, 22, Concepts and use of B2 Chapter 11
23 Structural equation
modeling and Path analysis
in marketing decision
making.
10 24, 25 Choice based Conjoint B2 Chapter 7
analysis and its application
in deriving consumers
attribute specific utility,
consumers segments and
market share.
11 26, 27 Understanding issues of B2 Chapter 7
consumer heterogeneity
and its impact on buying
behavior. Marketing
decision for heterogeneous
 population.
12 28, 29, 30, Writing an effective Market
Research report and final
project presentation.

Additional Instructions (if any)

Group Project

Each self selected group of 5 will be asked to do a marketing research project involving a real
life marketing problem or decision situation pertaining to an organization / product / brand or
general marketing topic. To maximize learning the project must have a questionnaire based
primary data collection and analysis part. The groups need to present the project proposal in
the class.