Marketing Problem Research Project Discussion The primary objective of the project is to provide you with experience in applying the concepts, framework, and research approaches discussed in class to a real marketing problem.
It involves:
- Selecting a product or service that is being offered by an organization (or a new product/service that an organization may wish to offer).
- Defining the Decision Problem and Research Problem: This will involve defining the marketing decision problem faced by the organization and the research problem (what information will be needed to help answer the manager’s question). You should also outline your broad research strategy (e.g., segmentation study, conjoint study) for this project.
Marketing Problem Research Project Discussion
- Analyzing the organizational and marketing context to understand the market opportunity and landscape of the business.
- Identifying the marketing decision(s) that need(s) to be made regarding this product/service. And outline your Study Objectives.
- Designing a questionnaire (or discussion guide) to obtain the necessary information to address the problem/decision at hand.
- Collecting, coding and analyzing the data.
- Writing a report and presenting the findings.
There are many different types of studies that can be conducted for this course. Some examples are:
Marketing Problem Research Project Discussion
ï Segmentation studies: developing profiles of heavy users and light users (users/non-users) of a product/service based on demographics, lifestyles, shopping behavior, attitudes, benefits sought, and media habits.
ï Attitude/preference studies: studying consumers preferences and attitudes about competing for products/services, identifying the attributes that are important, and determining whether consumer segments differ in their attitudes or in the attributes they consider important (e.g., conjoint studies).
ï Image studies: comparing the brand image of competing for products or services along with a number of dimensions, and determining whether different consumer segments have different images of the products/services (e.g., perceptual mapping, laddering).
ï Customer usage/satisfaction studies: useful in studying the purchase/usage patterns and the importance of different attributes of product /service quality on customer satisfaction and loyalty.
These studies are useful for making a variety of marketing decisions, e.g., in product positioning and repositioning, new product introductions, marketing mix decisions, market targeting, etc. You may choose any kind of product or service as long as it is not too difficult to get primary data about it.
Marketing Problem Research Project Discussion
Once you select a product/service and an organization, you should examine secondary sources such as magazines, newspapers and trade journals to get background information on the nature of the industry, the range of products being offered, and consumer characteristics, to analyze the organization and market opportunity. This may give you some ideas regarding the questions that need to be researched, and will also give you some basic information that
BUS 4260 ñ Sports Marketing ñ Syllabus (Spring 2019) Page 6 of 6 you may need for designing the questionnaire, such as the major competitors for your product/service, the attributes along which products are evaluated, etc.
You should plan on collecting data from at least 50 respondents if using a survey (though you would need fewer respondents if using a qualitative approach). Note that this need not be a random sample or even a representative sample of the target population. A convenience sample may be used. Regardless of the type of study, the product class and the sample size, you must link the research to some managerial decision that needs to be made (with respect to the 4Ps). In other words, you must be clear about the purpose of the study: what decision will this research help the organization make? This is important because after the data have been analyzed and interpreted, you must make your recommendations to the organization regarding what actions it should take.
REMEMBER: you’re writing this as if it were going to be printed in the
ìArtsî section of the newspaper; you will be graded in part on your ability
to get across what the concert experience was like as if I were reading
our description of it in the newspaper.
