Becamex Business School

Chapter 4

Managing Marketing Information to

Gain Customer Insights
Learning Objectives
OBJECTIVE 4-1 Explain the importance of information in gaining insights about the marketplace and
customers.
See: Marketing Information and Customer Insights ( pp 118–120 )
OBJECTIVE 4-2 Define the marketing information system and discuss its parts. See: Assessing
Information
Needs and Developing Data ( pp 120–123 )
OBJECTIVE 4-3 Outline the role of marketing research and the steps in the marketing research
process. See:
Marketing Research ( pp 123–136 )
OBJECTIVE 4-4 Explain how companies analyze and use marketing information. See: Analyzing and
Using
Marketing Information ( pp 136–140 )
OBJECTIVE 4-5 Discuss the special issues some marketing researchers fac
Marketing Information and Customer Insights

• To create value for customers and build meaningful relationships → marketers

must first gain fresh, deep insights into what customers need and want
• Customer insights come from good marketing information → develop a
competitive advantage
• Insights can be very difficult to obtain
• consumers themselves usually can’t tell you exactly what they need and why they buy

• Marketers must effectively manage marketing information from a wide range of

sources

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 Marketing Information and Today’s “Big Data”
• Companies can now generate and find marketing information in great quantities

• Marketing world: the brim with information from innumerable sources

• Consumers themselves are now generating tons of marketing information

• from the company’s marketing research and internal customer transaction data
• from social media monitoring, connected devices, and other digital sources (from real-time)

• Consumers now volunteer a tidal wave of bottom-up information to companies and to

each other
• smartphones, PCs, and tablets—via online browsing and blogging, apps and social media
interactions, texting and video, and geolocation data

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 Marketing Information and Today’s “Big Data”
• Most marketing managers are overloaded with data
• Big data refers to the huge and complex data sets generated by today’s
sophisticated information generation, collection, storage, and analysis
technologies
• nearly 2.5 quintillion new bytes of data every day → 90% of data in the world today has been
created in only the past two years

• Presents both big opportunities and big challenges

• glut of data can gain rich, timely customer insights
• accessing and sifting through so much data is a daunting task

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 Marketing Information and Today’s “Big Data”
• Marketers don’t need more information; they need
better information
• need to make better use of the information they already
have
• When it rains, you can’t just drink the water. It must be
collected, purified, bottled, and delivered for
consumption,”

• “Big data works the same way. It’s a raw resource that
is a few important steps away from being useful.”

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Managing Marketing Information
• The real value of marketing information lies in how it is
used—in the customer insights that it provides
• Fresh marketing information-based understandings of
customers and the marketplace that become the basis for
creating customer value, engagement, and relationships.

• Customer insights teams - develop actionable

insights from marketing information and work
strategically with marketing decision makers to apply
those insights

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Managing Marketing Information
• Marketing information system (MIS) consists of
people and procedures dedicated to assessing
information needs, developing the needed
information, and helping
• MIS begins and ends with information users—
marketing managers, internal and external partners,
and others who need marketing information and
insights

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Figure 4.1 The Marketing Information System

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Assessing Information Needs and Developing
Data

• Assessing Marketing Information Needs

• Developing Marketing Information

• internal data, marketing intelligence, and marketing research

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Assessing Marketing Information Needs

• A good MIS balances the information users would like to have against
• What they really need

• What is feasible to offer

• Obtaining, analyzing, storing, and delivering information is costly.

• Firms must decide whether the value of the insight is worth the cost.

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Developing Marketing Information

• Information needed can be obtained from

• Internal databases

• Competitive marketing intelligence

• Marketing research

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 How Macy’s is growing brand love and customer loyalty
with personalization at scale
• Macy’s customer database provides insights to personalize its customers’
shopping experiences.

• Goal: to increase revenue and brand loyalty through personalized

customer experiences and communications across channels — one
customer at a time

• “It’s not just about price. Shoppers need to feel that we’re listening and
responding to them.”

• Five priority focus areas

• Drive first to second purchase; ‘Complete the look’ with a complementary
purchase; Encourage online shoppers to shop in-store and in-store shoppers to
shop online; Increase Macy’s credit card usage; Re-engage churning high-spend
customers

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Internal databases

• Internal databases are collections of consumer and market information

obtained from data sources within the company network.

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Competitive Marketing Intelligence
• Systematic monitoring, collection, and analysis of information
• About consumers, competitors, and developments in the marketing environment

• Goal: improve strategic decision making by understanding the consumer environment, assessing
and tracking competitors’ actions, and providing early warnings of opportunities and threats

• Techniques
• Observing consumers firsthand
• Quizzing the company’s own employees
• Benchmarking competitors’ products
• Conducting online research
• Monitoring social media buzz

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Competitive Marketing Intelligence
• Help marketers gain insights into how consumers talk about and engage with their
brands (trained observers – to mix and mingle personally)

• Set up state-of-the-art social media command centers → routinely monitor real-time

brand-related online consumer and marketplace social and mobile media activity
• Centers can scour the digital environment, analyze brand related conversations in real time to gain
marketing insights, and respond quickly and appropriately.

• Monitor competitors’ web and social media sites (search and see what turns up)
• Gain early insights into competitor moves and strategies and to prepare quick responses

• Raise ethical issues

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Marketing Research
• Marketing research is the systematic design, collection, analysis, and reporting of data relevant to a specific
marketing situation facing an organization
• A wide variety of situations

• Marketing research gives marketers insights into customer motivations, purchase behavior, and satisfaction
• Assess market potential and market share or measure the effectiveness of pricing, product, distribution, and promotion
activities

• Large company’s own research departments that work with marketing managers on marketing research
projects

• Smaller counterparts—frequently hire outside research companies to consult with management on specific
marketing problems and to conduct marketing research studies.

• Sometimes firms simply purchase data collected by outside firms to aid in their decision making

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Traditional Marketing Research in Transition

• Traditional marketing research has undergone a major transformation

• Although still prevalent and powerful, are now giving way to newer, more
agile, more immediate, and less costly digital data gathering methods
• ranging from real-time social media, website, and online feedback monitoring to
mobile device tracking—pose a threat to traditional marketing research

• Fast and agile marketing information and research—call it just-in-time

research

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• Although its role is changing, however, traditional marketing research is still widely used and very important
• allow for deeper, more focused probing, especially into the whys and wherefores of consumer attitudes and behavior

• The rise of new digital research platforms also presents the marketing research industry with tremendous opportunities

• Combination: greatly enhance the marketer’s ability to gather, analyze, communicate, and gain insights from data about consumers
and markets

• Blend into a unified marketing information system that yields agile but deep and complete marketing information and insights
• immediate and affordable access to real-time data on the wants, whens, wheres, and hows of consumer buying activities and responses
• dig more deeply and rigorously into the whys

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Defining the Problem and Research Objectives
• Marketing managers and researchers must work together closely to define the problem
and agree on research objectives
• Managers understand: which information is needed
• Researchers understand: marketing research and how to obtain the information

• Effective research calls for a blend of both well-directed and open-minded analysis

• Data analytics can be more effective when directed toward well-considered problems.
• “must first ask smart questions,” then “wrangle the relevant data and uncover insights.”
• “you must approach it with an open mind and be willing to embrace new insights. A lot of this is
about turning over rocks and looking for little moments of surprise. That’s where you find the
magic.”

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Defining the Problem and Research Objectives
A marketing research project might have one of three types of objectives

• Objective of exploratory research is to gather preliminary information that will

help define the problem and suggest hypotheses

• Objective of descriptive research is to describe things, such as the market

potential for a product or the demographics and attitudes of consumers who buy
the product

• Objective of causal research is to test hypotheses about cause-and-effect

relationships
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Developing the Research Plan

• Must determine the exact information needed, develop a plan for gathering it efficiently, and
present the plan to management

• Outlines sources of existing data and spells out the specific research approaches, contact methods,
sampling plans, and instruments that researchers will use to gather new data

• Research plan should be presented in a written proposal

• Especially important when the research project is large and complex or when an outside firm carries it out
• Should cover the management problems addressed, the research objectives, the information to be obtained,
and how the results will help management’s decision making.

• The proposal also should include estimated research costs.

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Gathering Secondary Data
• Secondary data consist of information that already exists somewhere, having been collected for another purpose

• Companies can buy secondary data from outside suppliers

• Ex: Nielsen sells shopper insight information from more than 900,000 participating stores around the world

• Using commercial online databases, marketing researchers can conduct their own searches of secondary data sources
• ProQuest and LexisNexis

• almost every industry association, government agency, business publication, and news medium offers free information to those tenacious enough to find their websites or
app

• Internet search engines can also be a big help in locating relevant secondary information sources.
• However, they can also be very frustrating and inefficient

• Secondary data can usually be obtained more quickly and at a lower cost than primary data

• Secondary sources can sometimes provide data an individual company cannot collect on its own (not directly available or would be too expensive to
collect)

• Also present problems → Evaluate carefully relevant (fits the research project’s needs), accurate (reliably collected and reported), current (up-to-date
enough for current decisions), and impartial (objectively collected and reported)

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Primary Data Collection
• Primary data consist of information collected for the specific purpose
at hand

• Designing a plan for primary data collection calls for decisions on

research approaches, contact methods, the sampling plan, and
research instruments

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Implementing the Research Plan
• Involves collecting, processing, and analyzing the information.

• Data collection can be carried out by the company’s marketing research staff, marketing
managers, or outside firms.

• Researchers should watch closely to make sure that the plan is implemented correctly.
• must guard against problems with data collection techniques and technologies, data quality, and
timeliness

• Researchers must also process and analyze the collected data to isolate important
information and insights
• need to check data for accuracy and completeness, tabulate the results, and compute statistical
measures
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Interpreting and Reporting the Findings

• Researchers must now interpret the findings, draw conclusions, and report them to management*
• should not try to overwhelm managers with numbers and fancy statistical techniques
• should present important findings and insights that are useful in the major decisions faced by management

• Although researchers are often experts in research design, statistics, and data science, the
marketing manager knows more about the problem and the decisions that must be made

• Managers may be biased (accept what they expect and reject what not)

• Managers and researchers must work together closely when interpreting research results, and
both must share responsibility for the research process and resulting decision

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