Managing Marketing Information

If a company calls itself a marketing-oriented company, it has to invest

money, people, facilities Time

in collecting information on its proposed target market.

A company also needs information on what is going on inside the

Company suppliers, wholesalers, retailers, Competitors PEST factors

in collecting information on its proposed target market.

It consist of people, equipment and procedures to gather, sort, analyse,

information decision makers. This system of information gathering has to be dome on an on-going basis

evaluate and distribute needed, timely and accurate information to marketing

The MKIS collects information and the information is only given to the marketing department for decision making

The Management Information System (MIS) gathers information and gives it to all departments across the company for decision making

Assessing marketing information needs

the MKIS would want to know what exactly is the type of information that the marketing manager and the marketing department looking for.

MKIS is responsible to give the marketing manager the type and quantity of information which will allow the marketing manager to carry out the work

Developing marketing information Internal data

Marketing intelligence Marketing research

the data that is available inside a company.

refers to publicly available information about competitors and developments in the marketing environment. the company gather the data through primary research.

It is the systemic design, collection , analysis and reporting of data The data is relevant to a specific marketing situation facing an organisation. Companies use marketing research in a wide variety of situations. For example, a company assess the: market potential of a market, understand customers needs & purchase power measure the effectiveness of its 4P plans

Step 1: Defining the problem-

it is important for a company to know exactly what is the problem the company is facing and its cause. The company will make a decision through the previous errors

 STEP

2: Research Objectives

Developing the Research Plan based on the type of research objective a company will be able to decide the type of information it is looking for

There are three types of research objectives a company can choose:

Exploratory research Descriptive research
a researcher will gather preliminary information that will help define the problem and suggest hypothesis a researcher will describe things such as the market potential for a new product or the demographics of consumers who buy the product

Causal research

a researcher will gather data to test hypotheses about cause-and effect relationships

STEP 3: Developing the Research plan

the researcher must determine the exact information needed, develop a plan for gathering it efficiently and present the plan to the management The research plan outlines sources of existing data, spells out the specific research approaches, contact methods, sampling plans and any instruments that the researchers will use in gathering the data

STEP 4: Gathering secondary data

Sources of secondary data-

this is data that already exists. A researcher only needs to know where the data is kept and access it form there online database, government agencies, business publications and public libraries

Advantages can be obtained quickly, it is relatively cheap to obtain it is quite convenient for the researcher to obtain it

Disadvantages the data may be outdated, the original researcher may have collected the data in order to prove a certain point and data may be kept in the wrong form

STEP 5: Primary data collection

research approaches, contact methods, sampling plan and research instruments

three research approaches are available to a researcher: Observation research

Survey research

the researcher gathers data by watching people, actions or situations

Experimental research

gather descriptive data. For example would use to gather data on peoples knowledge, attitudes, preferences or buying behaviour it is best used when a researcher wants to gather data to prove a relationship between two or more variables.

Contact methods:

Mail questionnaire the researcher prepares a questionnaire and mails it to peoples houses. The respondents fill up the questionnaire and mail it back to the researcher Telephone interviewing the researcher uses the telephone to reach members of the population he wants to do research on Personal interviewing the researcher collects data by face to face interviews with members of the population he is interested in. The researcher can either interview one person at a time or get a group of six to eight people and carry out the interview

Probability sampling: Simple random sampling

Stratified random sample

every member of the population has a known and equal chance of being selected to be a part of the sample the population is divided into mutually exclusive groups e.g. age, location, race the population is divided into mutually exclusive groups e.g. blocks and the researcher draws a sample of the groups to interview

Cluster sample-

Non-probability sampling: Convenience sampling

the researcher selects the easiest population members from which to obtain information

Judgment sample
the researcher uses his own judgment to select the sample of the population from whom he will obtain information

Research instruments: The questionnaire Galvanometer

in person, by phone or through the mail it can detect the degree of sweating of a subject when he or she is exposed to an advertisement or a picture. It can also measure a persons strength of interest or emotions when a subject is exposed to an advertisement or a picture they study a subjects eye movement when he or she is exposed to an advertisement or a picture it flashes an advertisement or picture on to a screen in front of a subject and then the subject is queried by the researcher as to what he or she saw

Eye camera

Tachistoscope

STEP 6: Implementing the research plant

The researcher puts the research plan into action. This involves collecting, processing and analysing the information. Data collection can be carried out by the companys marketing research staff or by an outside research agency. This is possibly the most expensive stage in the marketing research process.

STEP 7: Interpreting and reporting the findings The researcher has to interpret the findings, draw conclusions and report them to the management. The researcher should not try to overwhelm the managers with too many numbers and fancy statistical tools. It is far more important for the researcher to present findings which a manager can use in making the major marketing decisions. It would be ideal if the researcher and the marketing manager could work together to interpret the findings of the research