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Tapping Existing Sources of Information Before diving into primary research for a marketing research project, it’s always wise to investigate whether there’s an existing body of relevant information that you can work with. It’s at least a place to start, and ...

What you’ll learn to do: describe the stages of the buying process Take a moment to think about the last time you bought something. What factors played a role in your decision to buy? What process did you go through on the way to deciding? Were you on autopi...

Buying Task The buying task refers to the consumer’s approach to solving a particular problem and how much effort it requires. The level of consumer involvement is an important part of the buying task: whether the buyer faces a high-involvement decision with ...

What, Exactly, Influences a Purchasing Decision? While the decision-making process itself appears quite standardized, no two people make a decision in exactly the same way. People have many beliefs and behavioral tendencies—some controllable, some beyond our ...

The consumer decision process helps you understand the steps people go through when they are deciding whether and what to buy. Many different factors can influence the outcomes of purchasing decisions. Some of these factors are specific to the buying situatio...

How Involved Are You? You’re at the grocery store, looking at the dog food selection. How long does it take you to choose a product, buy it, and get out the door? Change of scene. You’re on a car sales lot, looking at the selection of vehicles for sale. H...

What you’ll learn to do: explain the different buying processes for low-involvement and high-involvement decisions In our discussion of the consumer decision process, we noted that not all purchasing decisions go through all six stages of the process. Some co...

The Consumer Decision Process Figure 1 outlines the process a consumer goes through in making a purchase decision. Once the process is started, a potential buyer can withdraw at any stage before making the actual purchase. This process represents the steps pe...

The relationship between the customer (also called the buyer) and the provider (the seller) forms through a phenomenon called a market exchange. During the exchange process, each party assesses the relative trade-offs they must make to satisfy their respective...

THE HACK If you aren’t sure if you are understanding, reach out to a peer or a teacher for help. If you are embarrassed or worried what people might think of you because you reached out for help, try reaching out using technology, like email or chat message,...

Choosing the Right Primary Research Method When secondary research doesn’t provide all the answers, marketers often turn to primary research, which involves data collection that’s tailored to the specific problem or challenge you’re trying to ad...

Why learn about consumer behavior? Please welcome a new arrival At 1:26 a.m. this morning, in Houston’s Memorial Hermann Hospital, a consumer was born. His name is Finnegan Henry James. By the time he goes home three days later, some of America...

Back to Bookends Let’s pay Uncle Dan and his bookstore another visit, now that you’re a little further along in your understanding of marketing research. You’ll remember that you and Dan conducted both primary and secondary research to get a handle on who Bo...

Translating Marketing Information into Action With marketing information and research results collected, it’s now the responsibility of marketers to share this information internally with people who need to understand it. It’s standard practice to hold meetin...

What you’ll learn to do: use marketing information to inform the marketing strategy After you work through the process of identifying a problem, collecting and analyzing the best marketing information available, you arrive at the moment you’ve been waiting fo...

Marketing Information and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Earlier in this course, we cited the American Marketing Association’s definition of customer relationship management: “a discipline in marketing combining database and computer technology with...

What you’ll learn to do: explain how customer relationship management (CRM) systems can help organizations manage and gain customer insights from marketing information To round out our discussion of marketing information and research, we need to add one more ...

Marketing Information: Where the Data Is? Earlier sections of this module alluded to excellent sources of marketing data, many of which are freely available or carry minimal cost. Others are well-respected commercial sources of marketing data and customer i...

What you’ll learn to do: Identify major sources of available marketing data Marketing information and research are powerful tools to improve your understanding of your customers, competitors, and the industry and market in which you work. In today’s informati...

In addition to situational factors, there are also individual traits and characteristics that can shape purchasing decisions. These include things like demographics, life stage, lifestyle, and personality. Demographics Demographics are an important set of fa...