MARK1012

Marketing Fundamentals
Lecture 3
Marketing Environment and Marketing Research
Written by:

Nicole Lasky
Haodong Gu

Dr Mohammed Razzaque
Dr Jiraporn Surachartkumtonkun
Spoken by:

Nicole Lasky

Highlights of Lecture 3

Marketing environment:
Micro-environment
Macro-environment

Marketing research:
Marketing information system
Marketing research process
Ethics in marketing research

Marketing Environments
(Why)
In Lecture 2, we talked about corporate and marketing strategy:

Marketing Environments
(Why)
In Lecture 2, we talked about corporate and marketing strategy
Designing of marketing strategy is based on information
Think about: If you want to write a five-year marketing plan for
Qantas, what information do you need?
Annual sales data from Qantas and competitors;
The size of the market;
Relative advantage of the service provided by Qantas;

Influence of 2011 grounding;

Ticket price of Greyhound bus;
And so forth.
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Marketing Environments
(Categorisation)
Marketing environments can be categorised into Micro- and Macro-Environment

Marketing Environments
(Why Categorise)
Gathering the information required for a marketing plan:
Randomly:

Systematically

Usually, marketers have a huge amount of

information available to them, but useful information
only comes out of well-designed system.

Micro-Environment
(Categorisation)
Components of Micro-Environment

Micro-Environment
Components of Micro-Environment (Suppliers)
Suppliers are firms and individuals who provide the resources
needed by the company and its competitors to produce goods and
services

Important factors
in creating
customer value
e.g., cost of raw
material, labour strikes

Micro-Environment
Components of Micro-Environment (Company)

Micro-Environment
Components of Micro-Environment (Competitors)

Every organisation faces a wide range of competitors. The marketing concept

states that, to be successful, an organisation must provide greater customer

value and satisfaction than its competitors.
No single competitive marketing strategy is best for all organisations. Each

marketer should consider its own size and industry position compared with
those of its competitors.

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Micro-Environment
Components of Micro-Environment (Intermediaries)

Marketing intermediaries help an organisation to promote, sell and distribute

goods to final buyers.
Reseller (e.g., wholesalers & retailers)
Physical distribution firms
Help the organisation to stock and move goods from their points of origin to their
destinations (e.g., warehouse firms and transportation firms)
Marketing services agencies
Facilitating agencies (e.g., marketing research companies, advertising agencies,
media firms, and export agencies) to help to target & promote products
Financial intermediaries (e.g., banks, insurance and credit companies)

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Micro-Environment
Components of Micro-Environment (Customers)

The organisation can operate in

five types of customer markets:
1. Consumer markets
2. Business markets

3. Reseller markets
4. Government markets
5. International markets

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Micro-Environment
Components of Micro-Environment (Publics)

Stakeholders:
Financial publics (e.g., banks, investors, and share holders)
Media publics (e.g., newspapers, radio, and TV stations)
Government publics
Citizen-action publics (e.g., consumer and environmental groups)
Local publics (e.g., neighbourhood residents and community)
General publics (publics image of the organisation)
Internal publics (e.g., employees, volunteers, and managers)

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Micro-Environment
Summary:
The current categorisation of micro-environment provides a guideline for
information searching and collection;
The forces in micro-environment are not equally important to the company;
Whether a force should be given substantial attention depends on its relative
power over the company or the marketing department compared to the other
forces;
Porters Five Force Model:

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Micro-Environment
Think:
What are the important forces within the micro-environment of Qantas:

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Macro-Environment
(Categorisation)
Components of Macro-Environment
Textbook p. 80

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PESTLE

Macro-Environment
Components of Macro-Environment (Demographic)
Demographic: The study of human populations in terms of size, density, location, age,
sex, race, occupation and other statistics.

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Macro-Environment
Components of Macro-Environment (Economic)
Economic: Factors that affect consumer purchasing power and spending patterns.

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Macro-Environment
Components of Macro-Environment (Natural)
Natural: The natural environment involves natural resources that are needed as inputs by
marketers or which are affected by marketing activities.
Marketers should be aware of four trends in the natural environment:
Shortages

of raw materials

Increased

cost of energy

Increased

pollution

Raise

public concerns

Government

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regulations

Macro-Environment
Components of Macro-Environment (Technological)
Technological: Forces that affect new technologies, creating new product and market
opportunities.

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Macro-Environment
Components of Macro-Environment (Political & Legal)
Political and Legal: Laws, government agencies and pressure groups that influence and
limit organisations and individuals in society.

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Macro-Environment
Components of Macro-Environment (Cultural)
Cultural: The cultural environment is made up of institutions and other forces that affect
societys basic values, perceptions, preferences, and behaviours. People grow up in a
particular society that shapes their basic beliefs and values.

Swim wears in
Western culture

Swim suits for

Muslim women

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Macro-Environment
Think:
What are the important forces within the macro-environment of Qantas:

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Marketing Environments
Think:
Where can we obtain the information of micro- or macro-environment?

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Marketing Research
Marketing Research is a part of the Marketing Information System (MIS)

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Marketing Research
What information do you really need?
Questions to ask:

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Marketing Research
Information Sources:
Internal Records
Information gathered from sources within the company to evaluated marketing performance and
detect marketing problems and opportunities.
Internal records can be obtained more quickly and cheaply than other information but may be
incomplete or in the wrong form for making marketing decisions.

Marketing Intelligence (MI)

MI is the systematic collection and analysis of publicly available information about competitors
and developments in the marketing environment
MI is important and can be gathered from many sources including the organisations own
personnel (e.g., frontline staff, scientists, executives, etc).
Personnel are often busy and fail to pass on important information unless there is a formal
process for doing so.
The organisation needs important intelligence from suppliers, resellers and customers.

Marketing Research
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Marketing Research
Marketing Research Categorisation

Qualitative Research

Studies involving a small number of individuals, such as focus groups or in-depth one-to-one
interviews. The primary tool in qualitative research is the focus group, but this includes
modern variations such as online focus groups and teleconferences. One-on-one interviews
are used to delve deeply into the topic.

Quantitative Research

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Studies involving a lot of people. It used statistical average techniques such as mean
ratings, and statistical tools such as sampling error and standard error to analyse data.
There is no stated number of people who must be interviewed to make a study quantitative,
but samples of 100 or more are usually considered quantitative.

Marketing Research
Marketing Research Process

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Marketing Research
(Process)
Defining the Problem and the Research Objectives

Do not conduct a marketing research with no clearly specified objectives.

Setting objectives involves close cooperation between marketing managers and

researchers.

Defining the problem may be difficult as the manager may know there is a problem
without knowing or understanding the cause.

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E.g., Sale drop due to ineffective adv Research question (in fact, the problem is about
brand positioning)

Marketing Research
(Process)
Developing the Research Plan

The second step of the MR process is to determine the information needed, develop a
plan for gathering it efficiently, and presenting the research design to marketing
management in the form of a plan.

The plan outlines sources of secondary data and spells out the specific research
approaches, contact methods, sampling plans and instruments that researchers will
use to gather primary data.

Secondary data consist of information that already exists somewhere, having been
collected for another purpose e.g.

Primary data consist of information collected for the specific purpose at hand.

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Marketing Research
(Process)
Developing the Research Plan

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Marketing Research
(Process)
Developing the Research Plan (Primary Data Collection)

Exploratory
Gather preliminary information
that will help define RQ the
problem & suggest hypotheses

Descriptive
Describe things such as the
market potential for a product, or
the demographics and attitudes
of consumers who buy the
product

Causal
Test hypotheses about causeand-effect relationships

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Marketing Research
(Process)
Developing the Research Plan (Primary Data Collection)
Research Approach:

Observation

Mystery shoppers (check

store conditions &
customer service)

Checkout scanners

One-way mirror
observations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=Hatmm84sqm0

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Survey

Structured surveys employ

formal list of questions asked of
all respondents in the same way.

Unstructured surveys let the

interviewer probe respondents
and guide the interview
according to their answers

Experiments

Research to measure
causality in which one or
more variables are changed
by the researcher while
observing the effect of the
change(s) on another
variable

Marketing Research
(Process)
Developing the Research Plan (Primary Data Collection)
Sampling:

Customer Satisfaction Survey

Existing customers = 6 millions

Include everyone in the survey?

A sample is a segment of this population that has been selected to

represent the population as a whole.
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Marketing Research
(Process)
Developing the Research Plan (Primary Data Collection)
Sampling:
Probability Sample

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Convenient Sample

Snowball

Every element of the

population has an equal
chance of being selected;

Easy to contact;

Quick response;

Suitability?

Less or no control of the process.

Less sampling error;

Less expensive

Large scale and expensive.

Marketing Research
(Process)
Developing the Research Plan (Primary Data Collection)
Contact Method:

Mail questionnaires

Good for collecting large amounts of information at low costs but often low response rate.

Telephone interviewing

Quick & opportunity to explain questions clearly

Cost > mail questionnaires & hesitating to discuss personal questions

Focus group interviewing

In-depth answers

Small sample sizes

Online survey methods

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Online survey methods offer speed.

Privacy issue

Marketing Research
(Process)
Implementing the Research Plan

Putting the plan into action involves collecting, processing and analysing the

information.
Data collection may be carried out by the MR staff or by an outside agency.
Data collection stage is usually the most expensive and most prone to error.
Collected data are processed by machine reading or checked and coded

manually for computer analysis.

Software such as SPSS and/or AMOS are used to test the goodness if fit of

the data to the hypothesised model.

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Marketing Research
(Process)
Interpreting and Reporting the Findings

Interpretation should not be left only to the researchers, the marketing

manager may know more about the problem and the decisions that must be
made.
Interpretation is very important as even the best designed research is

meaningless if the manager blindly accepts wrong interpretations.

Managers must also guard against biased interpretations and not reject those

that are not as they hoped for.

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Marketing Research
Public Policy and Ethics in Marketing Research

When properly used, marketing research benefits both the sponsoring

company and its customers. It helps the company to make better marketing
decisions, which in turn results in products and services that meet the needs
of consumer more effectively. However, when misused, marketing research
can also abuse and annoy customers e.g.
Intrusions on consumer privacy.
Misuse of research findings.

In many countries codes of practice outline researchers responsibilities to the

general public.

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Summary of Lecture 3

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Marketing is about information;

Ask for information required for decision making;

Organise the information neatly;

Obtain the information through the marketing

information system;

Primary research is only one option of information

acquiring.