Marketing Management Orientations

Marketing management wants to design strategies that will build profitable relationships with target consumers. But what philosophy should guide these marketing strategies? What weight should be given to the interests of customers the organization and society? Often these interests conflict.

There are five alternative concepts under which organizations design and carry out their marketing strategies the production, product, selling, marketing and societal marketing concepts.

Marketing Research

In such situations marketing intelligence will not provide the detailed information needed. Managers will need marketing research.

Marketing research is the systematic design, collection, analysis, and reporting of data relevant to a specific marketing situation. For example, marketing research can help marketers understand customer satisfaction and purchase behavior. It can help them to assess market potential and market share or to measure the effectiveness of pricing, product, distribution, and promotion activities.

Some large companies have their own research departments that work with marketing managers on marketing research projects. This is how Procter & Gamble, Kraft, Citigroup, and many other corporate giants handle marketing research. In addition, these companies like their smaller counterparts-frequently hire outside research specialists to consult with management on specific marketing problems and conduct marketing research studies. Sometime firms simply purchase data collected by outside firms to aid in their decision making.

The marketing research process has four steps.

1. Defining the problem and research objectives.
2. Developing the research plan, for collecting information.
3. Implementing the research plan.
4. Interpreting and reporting the findings.

Interpreting And Reporting The Findings

The market researcher must now interpret the findings draw conclusions and report them to management. The researcher should not try to overwhelm managers with numbers and fancy statistical techniques. Rather the researcher should present important findings that are useful in the major decisions faced by management.

However interpretation should not be left only to the researchers. They are often experts in research design and statistics but the marketing manager knows more about the problem and the decisions that must be made. The best research means little if the manager blindly accepts faulty interpretations from the researcher. Similarly managers may be biased they might tend to accept research results that show what they expected and to reject those that they did not expect or hope for. In many cases findings can be interpreted in different ways and discussions between researchers and managers will help point to the best interpretations. Thus managers and researchers must work together closely when interpretations research results and both must share responsibility for the research process and resulting decisions.

Implementing The Research Plan

The researcher next plus the marketing research plan into action. This involves collecting processing and analyzing the information. Data collection can be carried out by the company’s marketing research staff or by outside firms. The data collection phase of  the marketing research process is generally the most expensive and the most subject to error. Researchers should watch closely to make sure that the plan is implemented correctly. They must guard against problems with contacting respondents with respondents who refuse to cooperate or who give biased answers and with interviewers who make mistakes or take shortcuts.

Researchers must also process and analyze the collected data to isolate important information and findings. They need to check data for accuracy and completeness and code it for analysis. The researchers then tabulate the results and compute statistical measures.

Developing The Research Plan

Once the research problems and objectives have been defined researchers must determine the exact information needed develop a plan for gathering it efficiently and present the plan to management. The research plan outlines sources of existing data and spells out the specific research approaches contact methods sampling plans and instruments that researchers will use to gather new data.

Research objectives must be translated into specific information needs. For example suppose Campbell Soup Company decides to conduct research on how consumers would react to the introduction of new heat and go microwavable cups for its Campbell’s spaghettiOs. Such packaging has been successful for Campbell’s soups – including its soup at  Hand line of hand – held shippable soups and its Chunky and Select soup line in microwavable bowl’s dubbed “M’m! M’m! Good! To Go!” The containers would cost more but would allow consumers to heal their SpaghettiOs in a microwave oven and to eat them without using dishes. This research might call for the following specific information.

• The demographic, economic and lifestyle characteristics of current SpaghettiOs users. (Busy working couples might find the convenience of the new packaging worth the price families with children might want to pay less and wash the bowls.)
• Consumer-usage patterns for SpaghettiOs and related products: how much they eat, where, and when. (The new packaging might be ideal for adults eating lunch on the go, but less convenient for parents feeding lunch to several children.)
• Retailer reactions to the new packaging. (Failure to get retailer support could hurt sales of the new package.)
• Forecasts of sales of both new and current packages. (Will the New packaging create new sales or simply take sales from the current packaging? Will the pakage increase Campbell’s profits?)

Campbell managers will need these and many other types of information to decide whether to introduce the new packaging.

The research plan should be presented in a written proposal. A written proposal is especially important when the research project is large and complex or when an outside firms carries it out. The proposal should cover the management problems addressed and the research objectives, the information to be obtained and the way the results will help management decision making. The proposal also should include research costs.

To meet the manager’s information needs, the research plan can call for gathering secondary data. Primary data, or both. Secondary data consist of information that already exist somewhere. Having been collected for another purpose primary data consist of information collected for the specific purpose at hand.