Integrating Research Methods with Marketing Decisions - Assignment Example

Integrating Research Methods with Marketing Decisions Management Problem/ Marketing Research Problem Ford has come up with a new design for Taurus. It has added many new features to attract the customers but the additional benefits have pushed the price too high and as a result, Ford has lost its market share. It has also discovered that the average baby boomers are not going to be its target group as they are not willing to pay the price for the added features. Now Ford needs to decide its target market. If its target is the affluent yuppie crowd then it needs to study their psychology and position the vehicle in the best possible way to attract them. Research Design Selection of research method depends on various factors. One of these is availability of an earlier model. When such a model is not available then the research has to be based on exploratory method. Exploratory research method Exploratory research method comprises of Interviews, literature review, discussion etc. It is mostly qualitative and unstructured. Being qualitative in nature, it uses a small focus group instead of a larger population or interviews that are in-depth, or projective techniques. In the focus group method, a small group of people is interviewed on the topic. These people are free to interact with one another. This is a hurdle for the researcher as he has no control over the group. Many times it drifts towards irrelevant matters. The data also gets influenced by others. Another problem is that it is researcher dependent. The questions framed by the researcher lead in one particular direction. Projective techniques are indirect techniques that help understand the underlying beliefs without disclosing the actual aim of the research like word association, sentence completion , story completion, cartoon tests, role play etc. In-Depth Interviews are conducted on one-to-one basis. This helps in getting in-depth information and also to get to the hidden issues. Unlike survey interviews it may not have the same set of questions for all the participants. It is a time consuming process that may get influenced by the bias of the researcher. There are three techniques used in these interviews - One is Laddering, in this the questions start off with the external objects and slowly get to internal attitudes or feelings. Another way is Hidden issue questioning. In this the researcher concentrates on deeply seated beliefs and feelings. Third one is Symbolic Analysis. Here the researcher asks opposite questions and tries to understand their symbolic meanings In-depth Interviews are the best suited way for this research as it will help understand the underlying beliefs and attitudes that form the basis for buying a vehicle. This is the information needed by the company to remodel Taurus. Descriptive research method Descriptive research gathers data and then interprets it by tabulating and organizing the data. Description is used as a tool in organizing the data. It is very helpful to find out what is the best solution to the given problem with many variables. Once the research question is fixed, the descriptive research method can be decided upon. The methods of data collection could be surveys, interviews, observations and portfolios. Surveys draw conclusion based on the questionnaire and help to identify the factor that needs change. These surveys can be done through written questionnaires or personal interviews or telephone interviews. Interviews are most time efficient and help in getting in-depth information by creating a rapport with the participants. But it is time consuming and requires a lot of time to be spent in interviewing and in traveling for interviewing. In comparison, telephone interviews are less time consuming and less expensive but there is no visual input. Mailed questionnaire is even faster but has very low response rate and requires a very simple survey design. Observational research methods are based on direct observation that can give lot of information but can be very complicated. It can be either a structured observation or unstructured. Observation forms normally have a 3 point rating scale. It has questions about the cause. But it may not be possible to isolate the right variable therefore descriptive research helps in getting information from different perspectives. Since Ford wants to find out the basic consumer behavior for potential Taurus buyers, it will find observation and surveys helpful to find the solutions. As in-depth survey is also an option, observations will be the best option in descriptive research method, giving the participants a chance to rate the options. Carefully planned questions, offering limited answer sets, providing clarity of thought will get good results in collecting the data that can be analyzed later. Casual/Experimental research method Experimental research method is the most scientific method. It gives control over the situation which is not there in most of the cases. This method basically studies cause and effect. In this method only one variable is manipulated and all the others are kept constant. The aspect that is manipulated or varied is called the independent variable and it is varied in a very precise manner. The other factors are called the dependent variables and they depend on the independent variable. The researcher manipulates the independent variable and studies the change in the dependent variable. Other variables that may affect the results are called confounding variables or random variables. All these factors are kept constant as far as possible. Mostly the participants are divided into two groups called the experimental group and the control group. The change is introduced only in the experimental group and the change is measured or observed. This gives us quantitative results and very precise measures of cause and effect. But these experimental studies need an artificial environment. This itself may cause an artificial behavior of the participant. Another difficulty is demand characteristics where the human nature of the researcher and the participants interferes with the neutrality of the experiment. To overcome these shortcomings, sometimes the experiments are carried out in a field or sometimes in a natural setting but then there is no control on the variables and it is called a quasi experimental method. Ford can use the actual experimental method and study consumer behavior in context with Taurus. It can form the control group and the experimental group and induce different features in the experimental group and study their response to each of them. This will help them pinpoint the most effective features and the undesirable features. Questionnaire Development Interview methods used should overcome any bias in the data collection/interviewing process for best results. Ford can use both the in-depth interviews and the observation interviews. The in-depth interviews provide insight into the participant's minds and help understand their thinking process. But they are highly dependent on the researcher. On the contrary the observation method uses structured questionnaire and the participants have to give ratings on a 3 point scale. This is totally participant dependent and the researcher's role is to make an effective questionnaire. The results of both these techniques will cover up any possibility of bias in data collection and provide good data that can be analyzed further. Methods to obtain relevant survey respondents Next factor is to get the correct respondent. Since it is a survey related to vehicles, the data can be obtained from motor show rooms of the recent purchasers. The subscribers of car magazines can be another source who take keen interest in cars. Since Ford wants to find out the interest level of upper segment, the business class travelers can also be relevant and their data can be obtained from the airlines and luxury cruise operators. Apart from these the directory of professionals can also provides database of highly paid professionals who could be the target group for Taurus. Processes to ensure good response rate (to prevent bias from low response rate) After identifying the sources, it is important to ensure good response rates to get enough data. One way to improve this could be to involve the source people. For example if the data is of the purchasers of cars from a car show room, then if the show room is itself involved, it will give a better result. The source people can give permission to use their reference and the trust and relationship they have with their clients will improve response rates. Another factor is the capability and attitude of the researchers. They can borrow the trust from the source of data but to continue it further, they will have to develop a good rapport with the respondents to carry forward their research. Survey format and survey layout issues to maximize effectiveness of survey and show professionalism Since we have identified various research methods and we want to adapt them to maximize the possibilities of getting the right results, we will have to ear mark the data for different approaches. There are basically three methods selected so the data can be divided into three parts. Since there are many sources also, care should be taken to have a mix of each source in each part. This will eliminate any possibility of bias in the respondents and also give a wider spectrum of respondents. The researchers need to be trained properly to handle the clients as these methods are highly interactive and lack of professionalism can hamper results. Procedures to pre-test/pilot test survey A pilot survey is helpful to test out the format and close the loopholes if any. It helps to cross check the questionnaire also if it needs any modification. It also tests the time taken and any modification required in the either the researcher or in the format. Once the entire process has been finalized, a pilot should be run on 5% of the target data. The responses and the experience of the researchers should be analyzed and then modified if needed. After this pilot gets a green signal then the rest of the data can be carried forward. Information to be covered by survey questions and type of survey scales to be used The questionnaires must cover the concern areas. Since we need to identify the attitude and the thinking process of the buyers, the in-depth interview and observation interview should have questions related to that. There should be clarity of thoughts and none of the questions or wordings should create any kind of confusion. If there are any terms used in the questions, they should be defined. Apart from attitude, information is needed on the features expected by the buyers. This has to be the main core of the questions. For observation method the participants may be asked to put their response on a rating scale( 1 being the minimum and 10 being the maximum) where in they can give a number according to the importance they attach to a particular feature of a car. For covering all possibilities both open-ended questions and close-ended questions should be included. For example these are two sample open-ended questions that can be used - How much importance will you give to price and features while purchasing a car What would you like to improve in your existing car Examples of two closed-ended questions can be - Are you totally satisfied with your present car If you had to change one thing in your car what would that be Data Analysis We need to form hypothesis to analyze the data collected. There could be hypothesis like if the features are increased, the buyer is ready to pay more price versus if the features are increased the buyer is not ready to pay more. This is a cause and effect hypothesis. In statistics there are two kinds of hypothesis used- null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis. For example H 0 could be - Higher prices attract high segment buyers; where as H 1 could be - Higher prices do not attract high segment buyers. Using various statistical approaches we can find out which one of the hypothesis gets more support. In regression analysis the relation of the dependent and independent variables are examined. If we want to find out the relationship between the income level and the price of the car owned, we can find a formula that will explain the relation between the two factors. Once we have the numbers we can find a formula like the price of the car is 50% of the per annum income of the individual. This hypothesis can be proved right or wrong by the study. Another hypothesis could be the younger the age of the buyer the more likely is he to buy Taurus / the younger the age of the buyer the less likely is he to buy Taurus. If we are using ANOVA we can analyze the data on the following hypothesis - Ford users are more likely to buy Taurus / Non-Ford users are more likely to buy Taurus. Another hypothesis could be High price will make Taurus a prestige buy / High price will not make Taurus a prestige buy. Once the data is analyzed using various techniques and testing the hypothesis, we can get the required information to improve the viability of Ford's Taurus. Reference: Mc Nabb, C., Descriptive Research Methodologies, Retrieved from http://pangea.tec.selu.edu/cmcnabb/philosop/power.ppt#1 October 9, 2007. Read More