Four ways to make Marketing Research pay

Four ways to make Marketing Research pay

Four ways to make Marketing Research pay

Department store magnate John Wanamaker once said: half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is I don’t know which half.” Wanamaker’s conundrum vexes marketers to this day. With the exception of direct marketing the relationship between message and consumer behavior is still maddeningly elusive.

Conventional research tools are ill-suited to assess the impact of marketing investment on behavior, mainly because it’s nearly impossible to track all the steps from the moment someone sees an ad to the moment when they make a purchase. As a result, marketing researchers have had to settle for metrics like awareness and attitudes – essentially asking actual and potential customers about how they feel about a given product or advertisement – which aren’t necessarily predictive of behavior. Just because someone thinks a BMW is the best care out there does not mean she’s going to buy one. On the flip side, just because someone has a low opinion of his home insurance company does not mean he’s going to make the effort to switch. By asking yourself following 4 questions, you make smarter decisions about how to spend your precious research dollars.

Can the question you are asking be answered by a given research methodology

Most marketers conduct marketing research with the intent of evaluating whether or not their campaign will work. Often that means measuring how much of what people saw they actually understood or could recall. What they’d really like to know is whether messaging and media will translate into action – not at all the same thing.

Just because you can research it, is it worth finding out:

It might be nice to know that the number of people who think of your financial services company as intelligent has increased 8.7% year over year. Then again, what if there’s no measurable link between perception of intelligence and the decision to invest in a variable annuity? When it comes to your research budget, “nice to know” is not enough.

Is Qualitative research yielding actionable insight?

Qualitative research methods such as focus groups are best suited to generating interesting ideas, not hard conclusions. A show of hands of, say, eight people around a table has a precise statistical value.

Why research when you can track instead

Tracking can reveal that an ad generated a demonstrable increase in intention to purchase, but that conversion was low because somewhere between the ad and the cashier the engagement broke down

AMR Group is an expert in Vietnam and its markets. The team is local but with international training and experience, operating to global standards. AMR Group helps brands bloom in Vietnam through lean, focused & reliable marketing research from VINAMR Marketing Research & Consultants; marketing & brand strategy with AMR. VINAMR Marketing Research & Consultants provide world class lean, focused and reliable research through deep understanding of the brief, international quality field, professional data handling & decision-orientated analysis, action focused recommendation. AMR use insights from VINAMR Marketing Research & Consultants to deliver effective marketing & branding consulting, retail consulting & training, seminar & training: Brand War

Compiled by AMR Group (Marketing Research in Vietnam-Nghien Cuu Thi Truong Viet Nam) on 2014

Source: Forbes

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