Marketing research 

The New Edition—Helping You Learn Marketing
Research
Marketing research is an integral part of marketing. Its task is to assess information needs and
provide management with relevant, accurate, reliable, valid, and current information to aid

marketing decision making (see Figure 1.2). Companies use marketing research to stay competi-
tive and to avoid high costs of poor decisions based on unsound information.

If you are a marketing major, understanding your consumers, suppliers, channel partners,
employees, and competitors and the environment is your foundation for developing effective
marketing programs. You gain that understanding by conducting marketing research. This book
and course will help you succeed in your marketing career.
If you are not a marketing major, any company or organization you work for will use
marketing research information for making decisions. You will want to understand how to
generate such information and how to evaluate its relevance, accuracy, and usefulness. The

research process we describe in this book is very general and applies to any area of manage-
ment, not just marketing. Only the context in which we illustrate it is marketing. Therefore, this

course and this book will help you be more effective in your job, regardless of the specific area
in which you work.
Since research is best learned by doing, this book emphasizes a hands-on, do-it-yourself
approach. You will have many opportunities to see how marketing research affects management
decisions in chapter features including Real Research, Active Research, Experiential Research,
Decision Research, Project Research, cases, video cases, and extensive review questions, problems,
Internet and computer exercises, and activities (role playing, fieldwork, and group discussions). The
data analysis chapters illustrate in detail each step in running SPSS and SAS, and we’ve provided
four distinct ways in which you can learn these programs on your own. SPSS and SAS files are
provided for all data sets; outputs, demonstration movies, and screen captures are posted on the Web
site. This book provides students the most extensive help available to learn SPSS and SAS. Thus,
we prepared this textbook and all the additional materials to help you understand the fundamental
principles of marketing research and how to apply them in real-life marketing situations. 

Foreword xxi
Preface xxiii
Acknowledgements xxvii
About the Authors xxix
PART I Introduction and Early Phases of Marketing Research 1
Chapter 1 Introduction to Marketing Research 2
Chapter 2 Defining the Marketing Research Problem and Developing an

Approach 34

PART II Research Design Formulation 67
Chapter 3 Research Design 68
Chapter 4 Exploratory Research Design: Secondary Data 96
Chapter 5 Exploratory Research Design: Qualitative Research 132
Chapter 6 Descriptive Research Design: Survey and Observation 182
Chapter 7 Causal Research Design: Experimentation 222
Chapter 8 Measurement and Scaling: Fundamentals

and Comparative Scaling 254

Chapter 9 Measurement and Scaling: Noncomparative Scaling

Techniques 276

Chapter 10 Questionnaire and Form Design 302
Chapter 11 Sampling: Design and Procedures 338
Chapter 12 Sampling: Final and Initial Sample Size Determination 370
PART III Data Collection, Preparation, Analysis, and Reporting 397
Chapter 13 Fieldwork 398
Chapter 14 Data Preparation 416
Chapter 15 Frequency Distribution, Cross-Tabulation, and Hypothesis

Testing 446

Chapter 16 Analysis of Variance and Covariance 494
Chapter 17 Correlation and Regression 524
Chapter 18 Discriminant and Logit Analysis 564
Chapter 19 Factor Analysis 598
Chapter 20 Cluster Analysis 624
Chapter 21 Multidimensional Scaling and Conjoint Analysis 650
Chapter 22 Structural Equation Modeling and Path Analysis 702
Chapter 23 Report Preparation and Presentation 738
Chapter 24 International Marketing Research 764 

Note: Includes references and index.