English for Marketing Managers

puzzled. It turned out that the stores themselves were notproviding what the advertising promised.When the problem was carefully defined, the researchobjectives must be set. The research may be exploratory – inorder to gather information to better define the problem. It maybe descriptive – in order to describe market potential, customerattitudes, etc. Sometimes, it may be causal – to test hypothesesabout cause and effect relationships: for example, would a tenper cent decrease in price lead to significantly higher sales ornot?The second step involves developing a plan for collecting theinformation. The information may be available in the form ofsecondary data – i.e. it already exists somewhere or it needs tobe collected specifically for this project – primary data.Primary data collection calls for decisions about the researchapproaches, contact methods, sampling plan and researchinstruments.There are three main research approaches: the observationalapproach involves gathering information by observing relevantpeople, actions and situations. For example, a museum checksthe popularity of certain exhibits by noting the floor weararound them. This approach is most suited where the objectiveis exploratory. For descriptive research, surveys are best suited.These can be structured using formal lists of questions asked ofall respondents in the same way or unstructured where theinterview is guided by the respondent’s answers. Finally forcausal research, an experimental approach is most effective.Experiments involve selecting matched groups of subjects,giving them different treatments, controlling unrelated factorsand checking for differences in group responses. Informationcan be gathered either by mail, telephone, or personal interview. Another decision which has to be made concerns thesampling plan. There are three variables here: firstly the sampleunit, i.e. who is to be sampled? Secondly, the sample size, i.e.how many should be surveyed? Thirdly, the sampling procedure,...