Chapter 4-Managing Marketing Information
to Gain Customer Insights
CHAPTER 4:
Managing
Marketing
Information to Gain
Customer Insights
Customer insights: Fresh
understandings of customers and the
marketplace derived from marketing
information that become the basis for
creating customer value and
relationships.
Focus group interviewing: Personal
interviewing that involves inviting 6 to 10
people to gather for a few hours with a
trained interviewer to talk about a product,
service, or organization. The interviewer
“focuses” the group discussion on important
issues.
Sample: A segment of
the population selected
for marketing research
to represent the
population as a whole.
Customer relationship
management (CRM):
Managing detailed
information about individual
customers and carefully
managing customer touch
points to maximize customer
loyalty
Marketing information system (MIS): People
and procedures dedicated to assessing
information needs, developing the needed
information, and helping decision makers to
use the information to generate and validate
actionable customer and market insights.
Internal databases: Electronic collections
of consumer and market information
obtained from data sources within the
company network
Competitive marketing intelligence: The
systematic collection and analysis of publicly
available information about consumers,
competitors, and developments in the
marketing environment.
Marketing research: The systematic
design, collection, analysis, and
reporting of data relevant to a specific
marketing situation facing an
organization.
Exploratory research:
Marketing research to
gather preliminary
information that will help
define problems and
suggest hypotheses.
Descriptive research: Marketing research to
better describe marketing problems,
situations, or markets, such as the market
potential for a product or the demographics
and attitudes of consumers.
Causal research:
Marketing
research to test
hypotheses
Secondary data
Primary data
Online marketing research: Collecting
primary data online through Internet
surveys, online focus groups, consumers’
online behavior
Online focus groups: Gathering a
small group of people online with a
trained moderator to chat about a
product, service, or organization and
gain qualitative insights about
consumer attitudes and behavior
Observational research: Gathering
primary data by observing relevant
people, actions, and situations.
Ethnographic research: A form of observational
research that involves sending trained observers
to watch and interact with consumers in their
“natural environments.”
Survey research: Gathering primary data by
asking people questions about their knowledge,
attitudes, preferences, and buying behavior.