Page 316 - Introduction to Business

290 PART 3 Marketing

develop new products. They will examine such performance variables as revenues,
profits, market share, repeat purchases, and market penetration levels to determine
the effectiveness of the MIS.
An MIS reports on a regular basis how well a firm is doing. It examines such per-
formance variables as revenues, profits, market share, repeat purchases, and pene-
tration levels. Company executives are especially interested when an MIS reveals
that their firm’s performance is not up to par. It is at this juncture that the firm will
usually call on its marketing research department to find out the reasons for the
poor performance. Thus, the major differences between marketing information
systems and marketing research are that
• MIS focuses more on the environment; marketing research more on marketing
performance.
• MIS provides information on a regular basis; marketing research as needed.
• MIS stresses the what of information gathering; marketing research the why.
• The use of MIS precedes marketing research; that is, marketing research is
employed after an MIS uncovers a problem.

Marketing Research
marketing research The process Marketing research is the process where marketers are provided with information
whereby marketers are provided with so that effective marketing decisions can be made. Decisions in the areas of meas-
information so that effective marketing uring market potentials, forecasting, product testing, sales analysis, market share
decisions can be made
analysis, and media research are often the focus of
marketing research. The marketing research process is
EXHIBIT 8.6
shown in Exhibit 8.6.
The Marketing Failure to accurately define the problem is disas-
Research Process
trous because time spent on the subsequent steps will
be wasted. Assuming that the problem for a floor clean-
ing product is that its sales have dropped 20 percent in
Define the problem
one year, let’s examine the marketing research steps.
preliminary investigation The step in The purpose of a preliminary investigation is to
the marketing research process get some idea as to what is causing the problem.
wherein companies try to get some Conduct preliminary
idea as to what is the cause of a investigation Researchers use a variety of sources in conducting the
problem preliminary investigation, such as reading newspapers,
business magazines, and trade association reports; ana-
lyzing internal company data; talking informally with
Develop hypotheses key executives; and talking directly with customers.
hypothesis Marketing researchers’ idea Researchers then develop hypotheses, or tentative
as to what is the cause of a problem explanations, as to what is causing the problem. In the
floor cleaning example, the hypothesis to be tested is
Design the
research study that the product’s offensive odor is causing its sales
decline.
research study design A The research study design is a comprehensive
comprehensive plan for testing an plan for testing an hypothesis. It involves two major
hypothesis, that includes planning the Analyze data aspects: planning the sample and collecting data. It
sample and collecting data
would be too expensive and time-consuming to get in
touch with all of the consumers in the United States
Draw conclusions who are no longer using the floor cleaning product to
find out if its odor is the problem. Fortunately, the
company can get a good idea by getting in touch with
only a small number of them. This is called a sample.
Make
recommendations Let’s assume that the company decided that the sam-
ple size would be 200. The company has a variety of
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