MKTG 570 - Final Draft - Perri

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Feb 20, 2024

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MKTG570 Course Project MKTG 570 – Course Project Emily A. Perri DeVry University MKTG570 – Marketing Research

MKTG570 Course Project 2 Table of Contents What is Market Research Pg 3 What’s the Problem Pg 3 Primary and Secondary Research Pg 4 Research Design Pg 4 Data Collection Pg 5 Sampling Pg 6 Qualitative and Quantitative Data Pgs 6-9 Research Proposal Information Pg 9

MKTG570 Course Project 3 MKTG570 – Course Project What is marketing research? Marketing research is the process of evaluating business decisions, new products, or services through research that is conducted with prospective customers (Drury, 2023) . Marketing research is important to any and all firms and is valuable to their growth and success. Marketing research gives crucial information about a firm’s market and its business landscape. There are many different ways research can be conducted such as surveys, focus groups, experiments, and ethnography (Hair, Ortinau, & Harrison, 2023) . Combining primary information, which is gathered directly from consumers, and secondary information, data from external sources; marketing research is used to address many problems, and a lot of the problems are visible in the marketing mix (Hair, Ortinau, & Harrison, 2023) . A specific problem I would be looking at would be centered around price. What questions should we be asking and what research needs to be conducted through primary and secondary information? What’s the problem? Pricing of products is one of the most important things to firms because it shows the value of your products, it’s how your firm makes your income, and how you know that you are successful. Some questions that we can look at and answer with marketing research include: 1. How large is the demand potential in that specific target market and at various different price points? 2. What are the suspected sales forecasts at various price points? 3. Are there opportunities to adjust prices? (Hair, Ortinau, & Harrison, 2023) Pricing is the reflection of everything a firm does, everything is second to pricing, and pricing plays a huge impact on profit margins. So properly researching

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MKTG570 Course Project 4 pricing and making sure that your firm has the right price point is vital (Bhatt, 2022) . Marketing research can be done in many different ways to make sure pricing is proper for your product. Primary and Secondary Data Primary and secondary data are research techniques used in marketing research. Primary data is information that is gathered specifically by the firm to address a current problem or upcoming opportunity. Primary data can be qualitative data or quantitative data, and mixed methods studies collect both qualitative and quantitative data (Hair, Ortinau, & Harrison, 2023) . During primary data collection firms can conduct interviews, asking shoppers at a store what their price range is for the product in question. Firms can gather a focus group of their target market and discuss the product the pros and cons and different price points and review who would be interested based on the answers. Secondary data is information that has already been gathered and is readily available. One of the biggest sources of secondary data is the internet. Firms can use online sources to research products similar to theirs and at the same price point in order to set their price. Most firms will start with secondary data because it is more cost-effective and less time-consuming. Firms can determine their price based on information that was received through this research. Research Design Research design is the overall plan of the different methods that are used to collect and analyze the data needed. Picking the best and most effective research design is important for the research objectives (Hair, Ortinau, & Harrison, 2023) . There are three different categories of research designs: exploratory, descriptive, and predictive. It isn’t uncommon to sometimes use a combination of exploratory, descriptive, and/or predictive techniques in order to meet the overall research objectives (Hair, Ortinau, & Harrison, 2023) . When determining price for a firm the most

MKTG570 Course Project 5 appropriate research design that should be used would be predictive research. Predictive research collects data that allows the firm’s decision-makers to investigate nonexperimental relationships between two or more variables (Hair, Ortinau, & Harrison, 2023) . Predictive research’s primary goal is to try to explain what could happen in the future and predict values and possible outcomes. Data Collection & Sampling Pricing products are one of the most important decisions firms can make. When firms are trying to determine a price for a product, they have to complete research. In our situation, we are trying to determine the best price for a product that we are going to launch. The firm needs to assess how much perspective customers are willing to pay for the product and how the product compares to other similar products. So, we need to complete a bit of research using data collection and sampling using the above means, in order to effectively determine and market our product. Data collection methods involve gathering all the essential information for the market and putting it all together. Data collection can be gathered via surveys, interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, and online surveys (Hair, Ortinau, & Harrison, 2023) . Sampling uses part of the population in order to estimate things based on the entire population. Sampling is getting opinions from a number of people from a specific group to determine how the whole group would vote, what they would say, or what their opinion would be (Pathak, 2021) . Using Data Collection When determining the price of a product, a firm can do multiple things to research what the best price would be for that product. Conducting a survey either in person or online can be one way a firm can poll the population to determine price. Surveys are probably the best way to find out what a potential customer is willing to pay and to assist in determining the link between the willingness to pay at different price points, purchase frequency, and the amount that

MKTG570 Course Project 6 customers will likely spend with you. Online surveys are best to send to your existing customers because they are a great source of information since they already know your brand and are already loyal to you. The survey questions you might ask could include the customers’ perceptions of your current pricing, their ideas about what they feel the product quality is compared to their value for money, and their reactions to certain loyalty programs, sales tactics, discounts, or promotions (Williams, 2023) . Sampling When firms look at sampling, they want to target the market that will be their potential customer base. In order to determine what the best price point should be the firm should gather a few people from each financial demographic, low class, middle/blue collar, and high class. The firm can ask questions using an interval scale. The firm researcher could list a range of prices and then the field agents could interview potential consumers or hold focus groups for each demographic and describe the product and see what they would be comfortable paying for that specific product and then once the interviews are done the firm could average the outcomes and determine the price. The interval scale allows for the collection of numerical data and allows you to calculate the mean, median, mode, and standard deviation of the scale. This would give the best affordable price for the firm. Qualitative and Quantitative Data Product decisions and determining prices are all different according to your firm. Once a product is created it's time to determine the price, in order to do so this often involves a great deal of research identifying the appropriate price range, and then developing an appropriate marketing mix for new products. Pricing decisions involve establishing price levels in test marketing and modifying prices for existing products if needed (Hair, Ortinau, & Harrison, 2023) .

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MKTG570 Course Project 7 In order to do so firms need to gather their data and that includes qualitative and quantitative data. Qualitative and quantitative data are essential, it's hard to conduct successful data analysis without including qualitative and quantitative data (Robinson, 2021) . Qualitative data is information that is descriptive, textual, and visual; whereas quantitative data is that can be measured, counted, quantified, and given a numerical value. Qualitative analysis is usually ongoing and continuously monitored, where firms observe and then interpret the data. Quantitative analysis is conducted by researchers, and it is typically done prior, and results are measured and tested (Hair, Ortinau, & Harrison, 2023) . Qualitative data tells you how or what happened or helps you understand why. Quantitative data involves calculations and tells how much, how many, or how often (Robinson, 2021) . Qualitative Data When determining the price for a product by using qualitative data one will primarily focus on understanding why the customer is willing to pay that price. The research will be conducted by hosting a focus group with interview questions for customers. The interview questions will need to be open-ended but still focus on pricing and why someone would a specific amount. Questions also need to be probing, probing questions will help to have the potential customer open up concerning their basic needs which will ultimately help them relate to the product at hand. Customers involved in the focus group should be those who are current customers of the firm, as well as potential customers. It’s important to have a good mix of loyal customers and potential future customers to effectively have a level playing field. During the focus group, it should be important to remember to record the interviews so that you can go back later and review the data gathered. Once the focus group is concluded coding, analyzing, and interpreting the information collected is the last step then all information is provided to the firm

MKTG570 Course Project 8 for price determination. Qualitative research is good because it’s flexible when it comes to understanding different customers' influences and needs and it provides a deeper understanding of economic value and customer satisfaction. Where qualitative research falls short is being able to interpret the customer's behaviors is time-consuming and subject to interpretation. Also, qualitative research is a lot less structured. Quantitative Data Quantitative data is data that can be counted, focuses on numbers, and can be measured. When discussing price firms can still follow the same as with qualitative research. They can assemble a focus group with interview questions. The interview questions in this situation will be more multiple choice which will allow the firm to narrow down more specific answers instead of broad open-ended answers that are up for interpretation. These sets of questions can include things like: 1. What price would make you consider this product to be priced too high? 2. What price would make you consider this product a bargain? 3. What price would make you most comfortable? Each of these questions can have a few multiple-choice answers that are all around the same or a range of prices. You could even add more price range questions to the questionnaires for the focus group. Once the focus group is complete researchers could compile the information and use an interval scale that would focus on the mean, median and mode to determine the best price for the product (Hair, Ortinau, & Harrison, 2023) . The data collected could also be used to plot points on a price sensitivity map, where the x-axis could represent the price and the y-axis could represent the percent of customers that selected that price, once all the data has been entered you could evaluate the data based on where the points intersect. Where these points intersect at one

MKTG570 Course Project 9 and two would be the point of marginal cheapness and then at two and four would be the point of marginal expensiveness, the in-between would be the acceptable price range. With quantitative research, there are more options to obtain more specific data. Quantitative data is quick and easy to collect and draw conclusions from. Lastly, quantitative data can be replicated because the research is tangible and measurable. When it comes down to it both qualitative and quantitative both have their benefits in determining price. Qualitative research will explain to a firm why a customer will pay the price and will show the attachments that customers have towards the product and their potential loyalty. Quantitative research is a numbers game and is objective. Quantitative research will provide a generalized look at a target market. In this situation when determining the price for a product the best and most effective type of research would be quantitative research. Research Proposal Information After all the research is done compiling everything into a report for the firm’s executives is the next step in order for decisions to be made. First, as researchers we will present the question/problem, which will be pricing a product and what should the price be. In this case, to determine the price for a product, our researchers will need to compile the primary research and secondary research into the report. For the secondary research, we will need to include the market research that they have done for similar products. Who are our competitors? What are the competitors priced at? Who is our target market, and who is buying the product? Once the secondary data is all complied into the report then we will move on to the primary data. Primary research includes all the research that has been done and encompasses a vast majority of the next steps to follow. Research design for determining price would best be done through predictive research which collects data that allows the firm’s decision-makers to investigate

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MKTG570 Course Project 10 nonexperimental relationships between two or more variables (Hair, Ortinau, & Harrison, 2023) . Predictive research is used to explain what could possibly happen in the future and predict outcomes and variables. During the sampling phase, we decided to use the interval scale where we list a range of prices and then the field agents interviewed consumers from different demographics and describe the product and see what they would be comfortable paying for that specific product and then once the interviews are done the firm could average the outcomes and determine the price. From here go into qualitative and quantitative data. We held different focus groups for both qualitative data and quantitative data. The qualitative data groups were asked open-ended questions that would state why they purchased items what they love about products, what they want to see in products, and what they would pay for certain products. During the quantitative data groups, we asked very similar questions, but they were not open-ended, they were multiple-choice questions with limited options. The results from the focus groups are compiled along with all of the other results and placed into the proposal, showing that the quantitative data focus groups gave us the most answers that we were looking for. Once everything is in the proposal then it is all presented to the board and a decision can be made to determine the price for the product that will be launched. Limitations would include variation in the price of products that are similar, the target market's income level, understanding the customer, and understanding the competitors. References

MKTG570 Course Project 11 Bhatt, S. (2022, June 06). Importance of Pricing: Why Pricing is Important for SaaS and Beyond . Retrieved from Paddle: https://www.paddle.com/blog/importance-of-pricing Drury, A. (2023, April 14). How to Do Market Research, Types, and Example . Retrieved from Investopedia: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/market-research.asp Hair, J., Ortinau, D., & Harrison, D. (2023). Essentials of Marketing Research. McGraw Hill Higher Education. Pathak, V. (2021, September 13). Importance of Sampling in Market Research . Retrieved from Unimrkt Research: https://www.unimrkt.com/blog/importance-of-sampling-in-market- research.php#:~:text=Sampling%20can%20not%20only%20help,as%20per%20their %20current%20requirements. Robinson. (2021, October 05). Qualitative vs. Quantitative Data: What's the difference? Retrieved from Fullstory: https://www.fullstory.com/blog/qualitative-vs-quantitative- data/#:~:text=Quantitative%20data%20is%20numbers%2Dbased,what%20happened %20behind%20certain%20behaviors. Williams, J. (2023, July 22). Top 5 pricing methods to help price your product . Retrieved from Survey Monkey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/market-research/resources/top-pricing- methods-to-help-price-your-product/#:~:text=Customer%20survey%20data.,will %20likely%20spend%20with%20you.

MKTG 570 - Final Draft - Perri

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