MGT301 Quiz Set 3

Theme No.4: Marketing Information System

Customer is the most important C among 5 C’s of marketing as all activities in a marketing system are circling the customer. Thus, successful organizations develop long-lasting relationships with their customers. To build strong and long-lasting relationships with customers it is very important to understand the needs of the customers. Organizations collect information through various sources about their customers’ needs and this information is called Marketing Information. As, marketing environment keeps fluctuating thus; marketers need to execute their marketing strategies based on fresh information about customer insight or dynamic marketing environment.

In today’s dynamic and digital marketing environment customer has become the part of generating marketing information. For example on social media sites customers provide opportunities to companies knowing their bio-data and grasp their needs. Thus, big data is available today for marketers to know the demographics of their targeted customers in the form of Marketing Information System. The information stored in marketing information system is used time by time by managers according to their needs to make decisions about various marketing concerns. All major decisions in any organization are based on the information that marketers collect from their marketing environment and this information becomes the part of the marketing database. This internal data helps marketers to take future decisions about their products. As far as external data is concerned Marketing Intelligence helps marketers in various marketing decisions i.e. improving sales, developing customer retention capabilities, monitoring competitors’ moves etc.

While talking about Marketing Research, it helps an organization maximizing profit, increasing sales, knowing the reason of declining sales, and assessing the feedback of customers before launching any product. Marketers go through the process of marketing research to make decisions based on systematic and logical conclusions. Marketing research department assesses that what kind of information about customers is required by seeking guidelines from Marketing Managers and other Information Users. Marketing research department collects this information from Marketing Environment (Target Marketing, Marketing Channels, Competitors, Publics, and Microenvironment forces) and afterwards the information is moved towards Internal Databases, Marketing intelligence, and Marketing Research process for the sake of developing analyzing and using the information. In the first step of marketing research process problem is defined and objectives of the research are designed. The marketing problems could be of various types i.e. a) newly launched product is not obtaining positive feedback from the users, b) advertisement policy is not working according to the advertising objectives, c) customers are complaining about any product, d) how competitors are influencing the product, e) what difficulties have been assessed in the pricing policy of the product. In the second step research plan is developed for the sake of collecting information. Information could be collected through interviews, surveys, and from published material. In the third step of research process research plan is implemented for the sake of collecting and analyzing the data. In the last step the interpretation and reporting of findings is conducted. For the purpose of implementing marketing research process different types of researches could be conducted according to the nature of the study. For example exploratory research that is among the three types of Marketing Research is used to investigate a problem that is not clearly defined. The research is carried out when the problem is at initial or primary stage. For example manager of a coffee shop feels that increasing the variety of flavors in the coffee may increase the customers and he carries out an exploratory research and hypothesizes that increasing coffee flavors will enable him to get more customers. While the purpose of descriptive research in marketing scenario usually is to know the profiles of customers and competitors. This type of research describes the characteristics of the population being studied; for example, an apparel brand intending to know the fashion trends of any particular region i.e. Islamabad will conduct a demographic survey of Islamabad, gather population data and then would conduct descriptive research on this particular segment. On the other hand Causal Research is conducted to test hypotheses about cause-and-effect relationship. Causal research assesses the effect of one variable on the other, for example, to know the reasons of downfall in the distribution network a firm would go through the process of causal research and would assess the effect of political policies, low incentives, or any other variable on the downfall of distribution channel. To conduct all the mentioned types of research marketers collect the first-hand or primary information through various methods like surveys, interviews, or experiments. For example if a company wants to check the response of consumers about its newly launched soft drink; the personnel of the company may go to different shopping malls and take interviews or ask questions about the taste of new soft drink. In this way the company collects primary data from the consumers; while the sources of secondary data could be newspaper, magazines, journals, and government databases. Although the information in the mentioned sources is published for various purposes but it could be used for research purpose taking in consideration the relevancy of the data. To collect primary data from customers various research techniques could be used i.e. in observational research technique the researcher observes the ongoing behavior of any subject in the natural setting. For example if any company offers free samples of tea whitener along with the tea; the researcher may go to any shopping mall and may record the responses of the customers by observing customer’s movements i.e. excitement, and eagerness to purchase the tea. On the other hand in ethnographic research researchers submerge them in the lifestyle of consumers to know depths and details about consumers. Ethnographic research may be conducted in person or installing cameras in participants’ homes or offices. Another type among research techniques the survey research is conducted through questionnaires, interviews. Surveys offer a quick way of collecting required information. Survey research is conducted in public areas or visiting targeted offices, schools, universities etc. You might have ever met any person coming to you to with a bunch of few papers to give your opinion about some problem discussed in that particular paper or questionnaire. Thus, different survey or contact methods could be used to collect the data from customers i.e. mail, telephone, personal contact and online contact. The forth type of research technique; the experimental research is about gathering primary data by selecting matched groups of subjects, giving them treatments, controlling related factors, and checking for differences in group responses. For example to test the effect of improving packing of deodorant on deodorant’s sales growth the researcher might keep all other factors i.e. odor, quantity and price of the deodorant constant/controlled. Thus, marketers find logical conclusion about any marketing phenomenon following the marketing research process and may store the collected information in Marketing Information database for future use as well.