Topic Selection
Your project should address a marketing problem faced by an existing organization. The organization must be real (not “made up”) but the marketing problem may be defined by you as any issue that the organization might potentially want to conduct research on. Assume that the organization (which could be a commercial or non-profit or government organization) is your client and you are consultants hired to advise them as to the appropriate course(s) of action to take. You should pick organizations or products that you are familiar with.
The marketing problem may be defined broadly: for example, “how to increase customer satisfaction” or “how to increase sales”. Or it may be more specific, referring to certain marketing decisions or actions that are being considered, for example: “whether to launch a new product” or “whether to target the student market”. If you choose the former approach, use qualitative research to identify the appropriate marketing decisions before conducting your survey. Remember that the overall goal of your research is to make recommendations to management that will help resolve the marketing problem. Therefore you must identify the appropriate actions for management to consider, and use your research to evaluate them.
Once the marketing problem and decisions are identified, define appropriate research objectives for the primary research. The research objectives are the broad goals of the research (e.g., “to estimate demand for the new product”) or the questions that the research will answer (e.g., “which product configuration will be most appealing to consumers?”). Finally, you must identify the information needs, which are specific pieces of information corresponding to the research objectives (e.g., for the “product configuration” question, the information needs might be “perceptions, preferences and purchase intentions for alternative product configurations”). This sequence (Marketing problem & decisions > Research objectives > Information needs) constitutes the problem definition stage of the project.
To take another example, if the marketing problem is, “how can we increase market share?”, two possible marketing decisions might be whether a specific segment (e.g., young adults) should be targeted for the product, and how the product should be positioned for this segment. The corresponding research objectives would be to determine the level of demand in that segment and the appropriate positioning and marketing mix for that segment. The researcher can then identify the specific information needs (e.g., level of awareness, perceptions, preferences, desired benefits, frequency of purchase, likelihood of purchase etc.) that will help to select the appropriate target segment and marketing strategy.
Such segmentation/positioning studies are among the most common in marketing research. Segmentation studies typically seek to answer questions such as: what types of consumers buy this product and how do they differ from those who do not buy it? Are heavy users of the product different from light users and is a different marketing strategy required to attract them? Positioning studies (also sometimes known as image studies) seek to determine how present and/or potential customers perceive the firm’s products compared to those of its competitors, how important the different product attributes are to consumers, and the likelihood of purchase (or estimated demand) by specific segments.
Before deciding on your topic, there are two key criteria that you must consider:
(a) Can the marketing decision or problem be adequately addressed by your survey?
Some marketing problems or decisions may require data from experiments or observation, rather than from surveys; for example, evaluating the effects of an increase in advertising expenditure or a new ad campaign on sales would best be done by an experiment rather than a survey. Similarly, measuring market share would be best achieved by observation of actual purchases. Other marketing problems may require resources that you do not have; for example, testing consumer reactions to new food/beverage products requires product samples or prototypes (although in other categories a written description and picture of the product may suffice).
(b) Will the respondents in your proposed study be easily accessible?
If your project requires you to spend a lot of time finding respondents, you may not be able to complete the data collection in the time available (this is similar to the budget and time constraints that apply in real-world studies).
You must get your topic approved by me before you can proceed to the next stage. Present me with at least three ideas that you are considering, and I will help you choose the best one.
This is a sample (or template) of how I would like you to present your project ideas. Please format them as shown in the sample.
Next: conducting exploratory research and preparing the Project Proposal.
