Research Design

1. Course: MBA
Subject: Research Methodology
Unit:2.2
RESEARCH DESIGN

2. • Understanding Research Designs
• Qualitative and Quantitative Research
• Primary and Secondary Methods of Data
Collection –
• Surveys
• Observation and Experimentation
• Others

3. Sources of Secondary Data
There are two major sources of secondary data
• Internal: Internal records in the company comprise information
about the product being researched, its history, company
background and history, market share, and competitor information.
These types of information are usually maintained by the marketing
department, sales department, or a corporate cell for marketing
intelligence in the company.
• External: External information sources include syndicated
reports such as retail sales data, or market share data, or industry
analyses. Some of this information may be available from public
sources such as business newspapers , magazines, industry
associations or trade bodies, or the net.

4. Prominent sources for information
• CMIE (centre for monitoring Indian economy)-
monthly
• The Hindu- daily news paper- annual survey of
Indian Industry
• Syndicated research studies such as the NRS
(National Readership Survey) or IRS (Indian
Readership Survey)

5. Creating a Mechanism for Gathering Secondary Data
• Most useful way to gather relevant secondary data on a given
industry is to have a cell within the company to monitor and keep
cuttings from business magazines such as Advertising and
Marketing, Business India, Business Today and Business World.
• This can be supplemented by newspaper reports from The
Economic Times, Business Line or other business dailies. Over a
period of a few years, this method ensures that we can easily look
back and get a perspective on our brands, industry, competitors etc.
• This also creates reference material for new employees or trainees
who are hired to do their internship or summer projects in the
company. It is now possible to keep electronic clippings from the
websites of many of these newspapers and magazines.
• The marketing research agency can also use this gathered material
as background information, and quickly launch into designing and
conducting the primary research based on what is known.

6. Disadvantages of Secondary Data
• It may be outdated. we may have cuttings which are 2 years old, about
consumer preferences, and these may have changed over time.
• It may be done for a different purpose and therefore be slanted or biased. It is
important to note who has collected the data, and for what purpose, before
making a judgment on its usefulness.
• The sample or the methodology may be different from, or unrepresentative of,
the target population we are studying. For example, the earlier study may have
studied only teenagers, whereas we are looking at all adults and teenagers.
• The units of data aggregation may be different from what we need. For
example, we may want to know reactions from different sexes (male and
female separately), and these may not be reported separately. Or, only region
wise data may be reported, not centre-wise or city wise. Or, the way income
groups are formed may be different from what we want to study.

7. Advantages of Secondary Data
• Better prepared primary researchers
• Serving as a cross check for other secondary data
• Provoking thinking about methodology and its
impact on results of research
• it is much less expensive than primary research.
• Note: In the age of the internet, it is worthwhile
to at least download and look at what is available
on the product and industry, before venturing out
into the field for doing primary research.

8. Exploratory Research
• It does not directly lead to marketing decisions being made.
• It may be undertaken for knowing a little more about the
problem or the consumer, or the way questions should be
formulated, which factors should be included in the study,
or in general, to help design a follow-up “conclusive”
research study. As the name indicates, a study which seeks
to explore any of these subjects is called an Exploratory
Study.
• There is no separate methodology for doing exploratory
studies. The same process and methodologies that are
available for regular research are also used in exploratory
studies.

9. Conclusive Research
• Conclusive research does lead to major marketing decisions being
taken.
• as the name indicates, seeks to draw conclusions about effects of
marketing or consumer variables on other variables like sales or
consumer preferences.
• This is usually done through a proper research methodology,
rigorously designed sampling plans and field work, and appropriate
analytical techniques.
• Conclusive research may follow exploratory research in cases where
the area of investigation is new.
• It is more likely to use statistical tests, advanced analytical
techniques, and larger sample sizes, compared with exploratory
studies.
• Conclusive research is also more likely to use quantitative, rather
than qualitative techniques.

10. Major Qualitative Research Techniques
• Many qualitative techniques are used for
various purposes by marketing researchers.
We will look at three of them in some detail.
These are –
• Depth Interview
• Focus Group
• Projective Techniques

11. Depth Interview
• Unstructured and longish interview on the given subject
• Most questions are open-ended
• Ask for opinions, anecdotes, feelings about products,
services, occasion of use and so on.
• The discussion is rich in personal detail, which is
individualistic.
• Compared to a regular structured interview, a depth
interview has only minimal instructions for the interviewer,
and the respondent is free to respond in any way he likes,
not constrained to a set of multiple responses or
predetermined categories. But it could also be more
difficult for the same reason, for both the interviewer and
the interviewee.

12. Cont..
• The expectation of the respondent from a regular
survey is easy to answer, non-intrusive questions which
do not probe too far.
• It is different with depth interviews.
• Every selected respondent may not feel comfortable
being open with a stranger interviewing him, and this
may hinder the process.
• The interviewer also must have the required training to
make a focused, but unstructured conversation over a
period as long as an hour or more.

13. Cont..
• An example of a depth interview would be to try and
probe the feelings of a car owner about his car:
• what it means to him?
• how he feels when he is driving it?
• who generally he takes out with him or who else he
allows to drive it?
• how he perceives other people who drive the same
brand, and other brands or models?
• why he would or would not consider other brands?,
etc.

14. Focus group
• a group discussion on a given subject conducted by a
trained moderator.
• The purpose of this is to create a less than formal situation,
where people can exchange views, bringing out their
opinions, attitudes, feelings about the given subject.
• To bring out a fruitful discussion, the subject has to be
carefully thought out, and moderated if it veers away from
the given subject. The participants have to be called to the
venue, and a system of video or audio recording should be
used to record the discussion for later analysis.
• The moderator and the “analyzer” of a focus group can be
different persons.

15. Cont..
• The sample is selected as usual from a target
population which is specified by the needs of the study.
• Usually, a group consists of about 6-10 persons.
• The length of the discussion can be about an hour to
an hour and a half, or until the group has nothing left
to add.
• This technique is used frequently to check out opinions
about new concepts, before a product is launched, and
in general, as an exploratory research tool. It is
sometimes also used for conclusive research, or in
combination with a survey, as a cross-check for the
important findings from the survey.

17. Projective Techniques
• There are many different techniques which
can be called “projective”.
• One popular method is to show a respondent
a picture and ask him to describe the persons
or objects in the picture.
• A particular product or brand can be shown
being used, or displayed, and the respondent
can be asked to guess the type of consumer
who would use the product shown.

18. rolls-royce-phantom

19. Cont..
• This is essentially a technique which seeks to get
indirectly at the underlying motivations, attitudes
or emotions of the respondent, which he would
not reveal under direct questioning.
• This method of questioning overcomes some
common inhibitions of respondents such as the
wish to give socially desirable responses, or giving
answers “acceptable” to the interviewer.

20. Word Associations
• Another variation of projective techniques is
to ask respondents to associate brands with
one word - a person, a celebrity, or an animal,
which they associate with the brand.
• Interpretation of such association is best left
to a psychologist, or a researcher with a
psychoanalytical background and experience.

21. Sentence Completion
• Another type of projective technique is to give an incomplete
sentence to the respondent, and asking him to complete it.
For example, “People who use Brand B coffee tend to be
……….”
• This method is similar to word associations, and may result in
surprising or unexpected associations. It is equally difficult to
interpret, and needs a trained hand to do it.
• Indirect methods such as projective techniques have proved
themselves useful in many classic research situations, where
direct methods proved unsatisfactory

22. Validity of Research
• Let us assume that we changed the price of a `brand of
pen, and its sales were affected in the following week.
• Can we conclude that the price change was responsible
for the change in its sales?
• We cannot be really sure, unless we know what else
remained the same and what else changed during the
period.
• An experiment could be designed to draw a "valid"
conclusion that price was a major cause of change in
sales. Validity of a result refers to it generalisability and
its robustness.

23. Cont..
• Is the result of an experiment occurring merely by chance?
• is it due to the intervention of some variables we have no
data on?
• is it a valid relationship between the variables under study?
• To obtain a reasonably valid result, a researcher must be
aware of all likely variables (assume these are a, b and c)
affecting the variables being studied (let us assume these
are Price and Sales), be able to control or keep constant a, b
and c, and vary the independent variable (price) to find its
impact on the dependent (sales).

24. Experiments
• Experiments can be conducted with varying designs and varying
amounts of controls or rigour. Laboratory experiments typically
have the best controls, and field experiments have the least.
• Simulations done on a computer can control any variable, which
may not be possible when we deal with human beings in a
contrived setting in an experiment designed to measure the effect
of price, packaging and promotion on sales.
• Human or psychological factors such as the effect of brand name,
ambience of the simulated store etc. may affect human
respondents participating in an experiment.
• Test Marketing is the name used for a class of controlled
experiments in marketing research. Its objective is to predict sales
(either absolute in terms of units, or relative in terms of market
share), based on changes in marketing variables such as price,
distribution, promotion, advertising etc.

25. Disadvantages of Test Marketing
• Novelty of the product being tested may result in high one-time sales due to
curiosity. Once having tried the product, there may be no repeat sales of the same
magnitude as trial sales.
• Another disadvantage that when you are test marketing, your competitors become
aware of your product design, and may counter your efforts by introducing a
similar product before you.
• For example, before Procter and Gamble could launch their concentrated
detergent Ariel in the Indian market and while they were test marketing it a few
years ago, Hindustan Lever launched their brand called Surf Ultra.
• There have also been allegations of an outright sabotage of test markets by
competitors. For example, they may buy up big quantities of your brand to give the
impression of a huge success, and mislead you into launching a product nationally.
• It is also a common tactic for a competitor to launch special promotional offers in
your test market area to reduce your sales. There is also the question of which
centre or centers to use for test marketing, because the wrong choice of centers
can affect the generalisability of your interpretation, leading to wrong estimates of
national sales.

26. STM( Simulated test Marketing)
• In a simulated test market for FMCG products, consumers are shown
product information, are sometimes exposed to commercials
(advertisements) for the brand, and then given money or coupons to buy
the products made available in a simulated store containing all the major
competing brands in the product category.
• Non-purchasers of the sponsor's brand are given free samples. After a use
period, the users are interviewed to gauge reactions and repeat purchase
intention.
• A computer model is then used to predict real world market share and
penetration based on simulated data on many market and product
variables.
• A few years ago, Mahindra and Mahindra, the multi-utility vehicle
manufacturer, did a Simulated Test Marketing exercise for their new brand
called ARMADA.

27. References
• Marketing research by Rajendra Nargundkar