Running Head: Statistics and Business Marketing Research

STATISTICS AND BUSINESS MARKETING RESEARCH METHODS

STUDENTS NAME:
INSTITUTION:
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Statistics and Business Marketing Research

Contents
Executive Summary ........................................................................................................................ 3
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 3
Business Research Topic ............................................................................................................. 3
Literature Review of the Research Topic ....................................................................................... 5
Brief Background ........................................................................................................................ 5
Consumer Behavior and Company Strategies ............................................................................. 6
Research questions for the identified problem................................................................................ 7
Research Methodologies and Techniques to use ............................................................................ 7
Gantt chart Research Process Time Line ...................................................................................... 10
Description of the research process, data collection and analysis methods .................................. 11
Brief Analysis of Exhibit 3........................................................................................................ 12
Developing an Email Marketing Pilot ....................................................................................... 12
Results and Analysis of the Email Marketing Pilot ............................................................... 12
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 14
Recommendations ......................................................................................................................... 15

Statistics and Business Marketing Research

Executive Summary

Students are always involved in research during their academic life in college, mainly for the
purpose of passing exams and contributing to academic literature. However, in this particular
research paper, the student tries to himself/herself in the shoe of a manager or research
consultant. You will need to imagine yourself in the role of management, needing to answer
questions in real time and carry out research to answer vital business questions.
In this research paper, you are a research consultant for an online based retail business called
Marcadia. This business offers a wide range of goods to customers through mail order delivery.
This business has been existence for six years and has experienced exponential growth in sales in
the last three years as more and more new clients signed up to their online store. However, the
business has recently experienced slower sales and profit growth.
The paper tries to explain the reason for this decrease in sales and profit by using effective
research methodology, and also find possible solutions by using statistical techniques that will
help and engage the management of Marcadia in understanding the business problem (Quinlan,
2011). The main research topic will highlight the Purchasing power behavior of Marcadia and
hence help the business make smarter decision in targeting new consumers and marketing of
their products.

Introduction
Business Research Topic
The topic of research for this paper involves an online based business Marcadia. This business
mainly sells a wide array of goods to clients online using mail order. Some the goods include

Statistics and Business Marketing Research

electronics and biotechnology lab equipments for corporate clients. As shortly explained above,
despite the good sales performance over the years, there has been a decrease in sales and slump
in profits.
Assuming you are a research consultant, the Managing Director of Marcadia has engaged you to
help her better comprehend the purchasing behavior and pattern of her consumers. The
Managing Director believes that getting a better understanding of customer purchasing can lead
to better consumer targeting and successful marketing.
An extract of the Directors view will help us in formulating the research topic and question. The
director tells you, Im sure that our most valuable customers have particular purchasing patterns
which we can identify to our advantage. If we can encourage more of our clients to adopt those
buying behaviors, we can then make them more valuable to us and this can inject a new source
of growth into our business.
So as a researcher, you exactly want to investigate the purchasing patterns of the consumers of
Marcadia and also see how the patterns and client purchasing behavior will help Marcadia
increase sales and profit. The business research topic or question will be How do we increase
business growth through target Marketing? This question is valid and fair and it is a common
question asked by many businesses across the world. The collection of data and information will
be collected in a fair and systematic manner in order to enhance the rigor of the analysis of the
research data.

Statistics and Business Marketing Research

Literature Review of the Research Topic
Brief Background
Many companies around the world have applied best methods of identifying target markets for
their products. The world is now a global market where there is competition and only the smart
businesses can win. It has closely become difficult for every competitor to survive in the market
for a prolonged time because business a competing aggressively more than ever. Smart
marketing strategies are helping companies achieve their objective of business growth and
customer retention.
For example, businesses periodically conduct survey in order to identify how to improve their
customer services and products. Competitive strategy has always been driven by constant
innovations. It usually means choosing to perform activities differently or to perform different
activities compared to business rivals in order to deliver a unique mix of value. Clients
satisfaction and retention plays a major role and it is identifiable with the managements goals
and objectives; the creation of value to customers (Samli, 2013).
Marcadia is trying to know their customers better in order to beat their competition. Reliable
marketing campaigns and strategies usually consist of a combination of various marketing
techniques that work and build synergy with the business in general. This include; improving
your business brand, decreasing sales resistance from new clients and creating desire and interest
and desire for your commodities (Quinlan, 2011).
.

Statistics and Business Marketing Research

Consumer Behavior and Company Strategies
By studying consumer purchasing patterns, a business will be in a better place to retain the
consumer and even offer additional products to these consumers. Consumer behavior involves
the feelings and thoughts people experience and the steps they take in the utility and
consumption process. The value that consumer behavior covers in the market and its importance
to sales people should be realized through innovations and consumer data analytics.
By identifying the concrete factors that influence actions, thoughts and feelings, it will be very
helpful in understanding how consumers behave in purchasing products. The main question for
marketer is: how do prospective and current clients react to various marketing stimuli that the
company might use? The business that clearly know how clients will respond to different product
characteristics, prices and advertising appeals will definitely experience more purchases from
their consumers and gain competitive advantages over their rivals (Quinlan, 2011).

Recently, businesses have started to research the relationship between consumer stimuli and
marketing stimuli. One example of effective model developed to interpret consumer behavior is
the stimulus response model. However, for the case of Marcadia a different research method and
data analysis will be used. The marketing stimulus is made up of the components called the
consumer black box. Just like an airplanes black box, this virtual consumer black box contains
vital information on how buyers make their purchasing decisions.
This black box is divided into two sections; the consumers traits affect their own view and
response to the stimuli generated from the environment and from businesses marketing
approaches. And secondly, the decision making process affects the overall outcome on the

Statistics and Business Marketing Research

number of purchases made. Moreover, it is important to note that consumers purchasing patterns
and decision are affected by several factors, both internal and external, such as social class,
culture, age, occupation, personality, beliefs, attitudes and perceptions.

Research questions for the identified problem

The idea of business research will always involve some context of theory or concept as well as
purely practical questions like how does targeting a specific market compare in terms of
contribution to profit? or which particular method of research and result implementation has
produced more output? These two questions have the potential for theory application as well as
applying easy numerical surveys; however, particular research constraints are more obviously
dictated by theoretical ideas (Samli, 2013)
.For instance, researchers who seek to compare or generalize one business with another: how
do marketing strategies differ in online based businesses in the industry? or what are the most
effective ways of introducing new online platforms that encourage more interactive purchases
from consumer? Since we have identified our area of research, we come up with a good lead
research question apart from the one questions mentioned above. The questions asked help with
managerial decision making and improved target marketing. So our lead research question will
be, how do we improve target marketing and sales growth by studying consumers purchasing
behaviors?

Research Methodologies and Techniques to use

Statistics and Business Marketing Research

Market research is usually essential in ensuring that a business provides what clients really want
and not what we think they want. Marcadia being an online based business, the most obvious
methods of research will primarily involve online surveys. Other approaches that might help in
marketing will include using secondary consumer data available at Marcadia. The online surveys
will be useful in getting a great deal of information.
By using open ended questions in the online survey, you as the research consultant will have the
advantage of unlimited number of responses from the current consumers. For example, asking,
when was the last time you purchased a product at Marcadia or how many purchases did you
make within the last two weeks? You will be able to create a simple model for studying
consumer behaviors at Marcadia.
By using online research methods, you as the researcher can send online surveys through clients
in order to get responses about their purchasing behavior. By using conditional branching based
on specific variables such as consumer income, family size and last transaction date, a computer
based survey will skip directly to relevant questions. In addition, the number of website page
visits can provide valuable ground for analysis.
Looking at the flow chart below, we see the essential variable that helps the researcher in
collecting data from their online surveys at Marcadia. Generally, consumers shopping record is
often joined with demographic information.

Statistics and Business Marketing Research

From the above it is possible to assess the relative impact of a number of issues on the clients
choice, for example:

How income level or family size play a role in purchasing patterns.

What Marcadias brand was popular or was bought more often during the last or series of
past purchase occasions.

Whether a coupon was utilized for purchase and if it was used, what value did it have?

Whether, and if so, how many times a client as made purchase after an advert was clicked
online or watched on television.

These will help in coming up with an effective online marketing method that will create growth
opportunities for Marcadia.

Statistics and Business Marketing Research

Gantt chart Research Process Time Line
ID

Activities

Who is responsible?

Time intervals
1.
7.

1.

Meeting with
Managing Director
Marcadia

(your Name)

2.

Collecting of
Transaction Data
for New
Customers

(Your Name)

3.

Brief Analysis of
Consumer
Transaction
Pattern

4.

Designing an
Email Marketing
Pilot

5.

Analyzing data
collected from
Email Marketing
Pilot

6.

Finalizing on the
entire Research
Project.

7.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Statistics and Business Marketing Research

Description of the research process, data collection and analysis methods

As describe in the previous paragraphs, the research process for Marcadia will involve collecting
consumers data from the Marcadia website transaction in order to help us in predicting the
target market and consumer behaviors of the most valuable customers. Using an online based
survey, the research consultant(s) collects data from a sample of 500,000 Marcadia customers
who signed up in the last calendar year. The data majorly describes how often the clients
purchased during the year.
Looking at Exhibit 3, from data collected, facilitated by Marcadias marketing team, the
customers are split into quintiles according to their one year customer value, from the lowest to
the highest. The one year customer value is described as the profit or growth made by Marcadia
on Purchases made by a client in their first year since they signed up in Marcadia website.

As you see also, presented is data regarding purchasing by customers in each quintile in their
first 90 days since signing up, notably the average number of purchase transactions and the total
revenue made by Marcadia from those particular transactions.

Statistics and Business Marketing Research

Brief Analysis of Exhibit 3

The Managing director of Marcadia believes that the company can become better at identifying
ways to encourage customers to spend more. A brief analysis if exhibit 3 can reveal that the
average customer makes between 2 and 3 transactions in the first 90 days since signing up.
Moreover, the average one year customer value is $7.90 and the purchasing by customers in their
first 90 days acted as an indicator of their worth to Marcadia in their first year.
Developing an Email Marketing Pilot

To help in further in depth analysis, you design an email marketing pilot for 100,000 new
customers who have made at least one purchase since joining. To help us is testing a relevant
hypothesis; the new customers are split into two equal groups: a pilot group and a control
group. The pilot group receives a specially designed email that encourages further purchasing,
while the control group does not receive the email.
Therefore, all emails are sent to the pilot group at the same time, and obviously to enrich results,
the emails are designed differently according to the demographics of the customer and his or her
previous purchasing behavior.
Results and Analysis of the Email Marketing Pilot

Statistics and Business Marketing Research

From the pilot outcomes, you come up with Exhibit 4. This exhibit highlights the lift in the
purchasing pattern of the pilot group in comparison to the control group after the specially
designed emails were sent to the pilot group.

All data in Exhibit 4 are expressed as percentages

Vertically, the information is divided according to what kind of commodities was purchased in
the customers first transaction. While horizontally, the information is divided in accordance to
how long ago the customer made their Marcadia transaction, measured from the time when the
emails were sent to the pilot group. Inside each box, the lower right portion indicates the lift in
the number of customers who made transactions, while the upper left portion shows the lift in the
number of transactions.

Statistics and Business Marketing Research

For a customer purchasing electronics, there was a 3.8% lift in transactions and a 5% lift in
number of customers making transactions. Therefore the number of transactions per customer
compared to the control group was

103.8%
105%

= 98.9%, 1.1% If for instance

10% of customers in the control group made transactions, how do we know the impact that has
on the pilot group. We can use the following hypothesis;
Null hypothesis(): Specially designed marketing lift business growth.
Alternate Hypothesis(1): Specially designed marketing has negligible or no effect on business
growth.
There are 100,000 customers in total in the email pilot design, and the control and pilot groups
are split equally as mentioned before, so 50,000 in each. If for instance, 10% of the control group
made transactions, this equals 10% 50,000 = 5,000 cutomers. From the bottom right hand
corner of 3, we can determine that the number of for the pilot was 1.7% higher, which
equates to 5000 101.7% = 5,085. Since 5,085 is greater than 5,000 we conclude that the
specially designed email marketing lifts business, that is, we accept the null hypothesis Ho.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there always constraint that makes the research outcome validity questionable.
The pilot in the special email design had no overall impact on the likelihood of making further
transactions among customer whose first purchase was in Clothing or Apparel. We can also see
that the pilot had its greatest impact among customers whose first transaction was in Electronics.
Furthermore, among customers whose first transaction was in Other, the pilot had greatest

Statistics and Business Marketing Research

impact among those whose first transactions was more recent. The pilot implies that there can be
positive growth for the business through target marketing; however, all new customers may have
received emails from Marcadia which were not related to the pilot.

Recommendations
As the Managing director, the point of concern would be the fact that sometime clients receive to
many emails from them. Customers who receive too many emails from the same company
usually become less inclined to open and read them. This point of concern question whether a
significant proportion of the pilot group read the emails there were sent. It is therefore best if
Marcadia minimized emails and newsletters sent to new customers in order to gain the desired
lift and growth to the business.

Statistics and Business Marketing Research

References
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Western Cengage Learning.

2. Zikmund, W. G. (2003). Business research methods. Mason, OH: Thomson/South-

Western.
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strategy. Homewood, IL: Irwin.

5. Hawkins, D. I., Coney, K. A., & Best, R. J. (1980). Consumer behavior: Implications for

marketing strategy. Dallas, Tex: Business Publications.

6. Samli, A. C. (2013). International consumer behavior in the 21st Century: Impact on

marketing strategy development. New York, NY: Springer.

7. Waller, D. L. (2008). Statistics for business. Amsterdam: Butterworth-Heinemann.
8. Dul, J., & Hak, T. (2008). Case study methodology in business research. Oxford (UK:

Butterworth-Heinemann/Elsevier.
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Waveland Press.