Market Research
118 flashcards by MentisLibrary
Designing and running research that informs a decision: exploratory, descriptive and causal designs, qualitative methods, questionnaire and scale design, sampling and margin of error, experiments and A/B testing, analysis, and research ethics.
- What is market research?
- The systematic collection, analysis and interpretation of information about a market, its customers and its competitors, in order to reduce the uncertainty in a specific decision.
- What is the difference between a management decision problem and a research problem?
- The decision problem is what the manager must choose; the research problem is what must be measured or learned to inform that choice.
- What are the three broad categories of research design?
- Exploratory, descriptive and causal.
- What is exploratory research?
- Loosely structured research used to define a problem, understand a context and generate hypotheses rather than to measure anything.
- What is descriptive research?
- Structured research that measures who, what, how many and how often, without establishing cause.
- What is causal research?
- Research that establishes cause and effect by manipulating one variable while controlling others.
- What are the main steps of the research process?
- Define the problem, choose a design, decide on data sources and methods, design the instrument, sample, collect, analyze, and report with recommendations.
- What belongs in a research brief?
- The decision at stake, the specific questions to answer, the audience, existing knowledge and assumptions, the timeline, the budget and how the results will be used.
- What is the difference between primary and secondary data?
- Primary data is collected first-hand for the current problem; secondary data already exists, having been collected for another purpose.
- What is the classic tradeoff in research design?
- Cost, speed and accuracy: improving any two usually costs the third.
- What is a hypothesis in market research?
- A specific, testable statement about a relationship or a value, written before data collection.
- What is triangulation in research?
- Using two or more independent methods or data sources to check whether they point to the same conclusion.
- What is secondary data and where does it come from?
- Data already collected for another purpose, sourced internally from company records or externally from government statistics, trade bodies, industry reports and academic work.
- How should you evaluate a piece of secondary data before using it?
- Check who collected it, when, from what population, with what method, and who paid for it.
- What is the difference between internal and external secondary data?
- Internal secondary data comes from the organization's own records; external secondary data comes from outside sources.
- What is syndicated research?
- Research designed and run by a provider and sold to many subscribers, rather than commissioned by one client.
- What is a market sizing exercise?
- Estimating how much demand exists in a defined market, usually in units, revenue or number of buyers.
- What do TAM, SAM and SOM mean?
- Total addressable market is all demand for the need; serviceable addressable market is the part your offer and geography can serve; serviceable obtainable market is the share you can realistically win.
- What is the difference between top-down and bottom-up market sizing?
- Top-down starts from a published total and narrows it with shares; bottom-up builds from units, prices and customer counts.
- What is qualitative research?
- Research producing non-numeric data about meanings, motivations and context, usually from a small number of people studied in depth.
- What is a focus group?
- A moderated discussion among a small group of participants, used to explore reactions, language and disagreement.
- What is the moderator's job in a focus group?
- To follow a discussion guide, keep every participant contributing, probe answers without leading, and stop dominant voices from setting the group's view.
- What is groupthink in a focus group and how is it reduced?
- Participants converging on an early or confidently stated opinion; it is reduced by collecting private written responses before discussion and by probing dissent explicitly.
- What is an in-depth interview?
- A one-to-one conversation, usually semi-structured, that explores an individual's experience, reasoning and language in detail.
- What is a discussion guide?
- A structured but flexible outline of topics, opening questions and probes for an interview or group.
- What is laddering in a qualitative interview?
- A probing technique that repeatedly asks why an attribute matters, climbing from product features to consequences to personal values.
- What are projective techniques?
- Indirect tasks that let participants express views they cannot or will not state directly, such as word association, sentence completion, personification and collage.
- What is ethnographic research in a commercial setting?
- Observing people in their own context, doing the real task, rather than asking them to describe it.
- What is a shop-along or accompanied visit?
- A researcher accompanies a shopper through a real trip, observing and asking about decisions as they happen.
- What is a diary study?
- Participants record their own behavior, context and feelings over a period, usually with prompts.