Marketing Research is the formal process of gathering informa¬tion needed by managers to make decisions with respect to marketing opportunities and problems. Should a new product be introduced? Are customers satisfied with our service? What price should be charged for our brand? This course is intended to develop skills in the following areas so that students can competently implement effective marketing research projects in the real world: 1) translate a business decision into a research problem; 2) choose an appropriate research design; 3) collect secondary data using Internet and other sources; 4) conduct exploratory research such as focus groups; 5) construct an effective data collection instrument (questionnaire design); 6) select a cost-effective sampling plan; and 7) collect and analyze data using spreadsheets or statistical packages.
