Basic Marketing: A Global Managerial Approach

Perreault−McCarthy: Basic
Marketing: A
Global−Managerial
Approach, 14/e

8. Improving Decisions
   with Marketing
   Information

Text © The McGraw−Hill

Companies, 2002

Improving Decisions with Marketing Information 231

as a “fact” that applies to a broad target market. For example, it’s trendy for food

product firms in Japan to do focus groups with teenage girls. The logic is that girls

will be brutally honest about what they think and that they are good at predicting

what will be a hit. So based on a girl’s comments in a focus group, Meiji Milk Prod-

ucts substituted oolong tea for fruit juice in a new drink it was developing. The

suggested change might or might not be a good one. But there’s no way to know if

one girl’s point of view is representative.^12

To avoid this trap, some researchers use qualitative research to prepare for quan-

titative research. For example, the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra wanted to

broaden its base of support and increase ticket sales. It hired a marketing research

firm to conduct focus group interviews. These interviews helped the marketing man-

agers refine their ideas about what these target “customers” liked and did not like

about the orchestra. The ideas were then tested with a larger, more representative

sample. Interviewers telephoned 500 people and asked them how interested they

would be in various orchestra programs, event locations, and guest artists. Then they

planned their promotion and the orchestra’s program for the year based on the

research. Ticket sales nearly doubled.^13

As this example suggests, qualitative research can provide good ideas—hypotheses.

But we need other approaches—perhaps based on more representative samples and

objective measures—to testthe hypotheses.

When researchers use identical questions and response alternatives, they can

summarize the information quantitatively. Samples can be larger and more repre-

sentative, and various statistics can be used to draw conclusions. For these reasons,

most survey research is quantitative research—which seeks structured responses that

can be summarized in numbers, like percentages, averages, or other statistics. For

example, a marketing researcher might calculate what percentage of respondents

have tried a new product and then figure an average score for how satisfied they

were.

Structured questioning

gives more objective

results

CETIA is a European

manufacturer of minicomputers.

When it delivers a product, it

asks the customer to complete

this interactive customer

satisfaction survey, which is

located at CETIA’s Internet

website. The survey uses a

combination of fixed response

questions and open-ended

comments.