Page 123 - Foundations of Marketing

90 Part 2 | Marketing Research and Target Markets

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and/or food in exchange for their participation. Furthermore,
focus groups do not provide quantitative data, and are thus
best used to uncover issues that can be explored using quan-
tifiable marketing research techniques.
Because of their ease of use, online focus groups are
a growing research trend. Participants either sign in to a
website and insert their responses in the fields provided, or
log into a video chat. Online focus groups can be a cost-
effective way to gather data from large and geographically
diverse groups. Technology exists to make conducting
online focus groups easy and cost-effective. Take a look,
for example, at the advertisement for FocusVision. It is
a company that offers video transmission that enables
companies to conduct online video focus groups using its
platform, InterVu. The advertisement visually emphasizes
how the product brings disparate individuals together by
positioning them around a central focal point containing a
computer. Online focus groups are much more convenient
for the participants than traditional focus groups because
they can participate in their own homes, no matter where
they are located. However, this method is not well-adapted
FocusVision Worldwide, Inc. to asking participants about a product’s smell or taste,
so it is not suitable for all goods. When using a website
login, researchers also cannot observe the participants’
nonverbal cues and body language, which can often reveal
“gut” reactions to questions or topics discussed. Marketers
should keep these characteristics in mind when designing
Focus Groups
Companies like FocusVision help administer video-enabled online a research project for a particular product.
focus groups with the use of platforms such as InterVu.

Conclusive Research

Conclusive research is designed to verify insights through an objective procedure to
help marketers make decisions. It is used in the final stages of decision making, when
the marketer has narrowed his or her decision down to a few alternatives. Conclusive
research is helpful when a marketer requires a well-defined and structured research proj-
ect to help decide which of a set of approaches is best for a specific product and target
consumers. Conclusive research studies are typically quantitative, formal, specific, and
have verifiable methods. Two such types of conclusive research are descriptive research
and experimental research.
If marketers need to understand the characteristics of certain phenomena to solve a
particular problem, descriptive research can aid them. Descriptive research may range
conclusive research Research from general surveys of customers’ educations, occupations, or ages to seeking out spe-
designed to verify insights
through objective procedures cific information on how often teenagers consume sports drinks or how often customers
and to help marketers in mak- buy new shoes. For example, if Nike and Reebok wanted to target more young women,
ing decisions they might ask 15 - to 35 - year-old females how often they work out, how frequently they
wear athletic shoes, and how many pairs of athletic shoes they buy in a year. Such descrip-
descriptive research Research
conducted to clarify the charac- tive research could be used to develop specific marketing strategies for the athletic shoe
teristics of certain phenomena market. Descriptive studies generally demand significant prior knowledge and assume that
to solve a particular problem the problem or issue is clearly defined. Some descriptive studies require statistical analysis
and predictive tools. The marketer’s primary task is to choose adequate methods for col-
experimental research
Research that allows marketers lecting and measuring data.
to make causal inferences about Descriptive research does not provide sufficient information to allow researchers to make
relationships causal inferences (i.e., that variable X causes a variable Y ). Experimental research allows

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