Research Design in Marketing: A Comprehensive Guide

Posted on May 18, 2024 in Social sciences

TOPIC 2.1: Research Design

The Fourth Step in the Problem Definition Process

Research Design Definition – It is a framework or blueprint for conducting a marketing research project. It details the procedures necessary to obtain the information needed to solve the marketing research problem.

Research Design Components

  1. Define the information needed.
  2. Decide whether the overall design is to be exploratory, descriptive, or causal.
  3. Design the sequence of techniques of understanding and/or measurement.
  4. Construct and pretest an appropriate form of data collection.
  5. Specify the qualitative or quantitative sampling process and sample size.
  6. Develop a plan for qualitative and/or quantitative data analysis.

Research Design Challenges

  • Connect the decision-makers’ information needed with the target respondents. The information has to be accurate, current, sufficient, available, and relevant. These are ideal because there are always sources of error, budget, and time restrictions.
  • The target respondents are generally humans. The process of measuring and observing humans may cause them to change. The experimental design has limitations because you cannot control everything.

Research Design Classification

Exploratory (Understanding the Unknown)

  • Flexible Design (Unstructured)
  • Evolving approach
  • Marketing phenomena difficult to measure
  • Small samples

Conclusive (Drawing Specific Conclusions)

  • Specific Measuring (Structured)
  • Clearly defined marketing phenomena
  • Big samples

When to Use Exploratory Design

  1. To gain background information when nothing is known.
  2. To define problems further or formulate hypotheses for quantification.
  3. To explore concepts (product design or market communication).
  4. To reduce the number of alternatives for further research.
  5. To understand attitudes, values, motivations, or opinions of the target audience.
  6. To interpret the failures of quantitative research to explain a phenomenon.
  7. To address questions that are difficult to get answers to (embarrassment, sensitive, or unconscious).

When to Use Conclusive Design

  1. To describe characteristics of well-defined groups (salesmen, consumers, potential customers, organizations).
  2. To specify proportions within the population.
  3. To make inferences about population behavior from a sample of its individuals.
  4. To integrate data from different sources in Marketing Information Systems or Decision Support Systems.
  5. To understand and quantify relations between variables.
  6. To study a marketing phenomenon over time.
  7. To obtain results that can be replicated.
  8. To make predictions or forecasts.

Types of Conclusive Research

Descriptive

Its objective is describing the characteristics of the market or the marketing phenomena under study. Examples: Size of the market or how it is divided (Market Share) / Budget of the potential customers or general customer profiles / Product usage rates.

Cross-Sectional

Collecting information from a sample at a single time. In cross-sectional, there are two types: Single cross-sectional: One sample / Multiple cross-sectional: Several samples with the same characteristic or differences (Geographic, Time, or other characteristics).

Longitudinal

Fixed sample (or samples) measured repeatedly. Longitudinal can study trends and obtain more information accurately but can generate non-representative samples and response bias.

Causal

Its objective is understanding the relationship that exists between variables. Difficult to understand between what variables are the cause = difficult, but the most complete. Dependent Variables (it is caused) – Independent Variables (it is the cause). Assesses cause-effect relationships. The best approach is the experimental design (controlled environment). Unfortunately, in Social Science, doing experiments is difficult and/or costly.

Relation Between the Types of Research

The distinction between exploratory design and conclusive design (descriptive and causal) is not absolute. They can be used at the same time to serve different purposes. Exploratory can serve as a beginning point when we do not know possible attractive segments or too much about relevant product features. Then we can use descriptive only for the attractive segments or make emphasis on important points. Also, we can conduct causal research on the effect of regular consumption on long-term health, but if our hypothesis is not conclusive, maybe we can conduct exploratory research to re-evaluate our model.