BUSI 331 Week 2 Discussion Board Forum 1 Example

Discussion Board Forum 1: Exploratory Research and Research Design

BUSI 331 Marketing Research, Discussion Board Forum 1 (Thread and Replies)

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The prompt and the classmates are composites; the textbook, research and Scripture cited are real.

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A marketer should listen to customers in their own words before writing a survey. In the scheme Malhotra (2015) lays out, exploratory work is for understanding a fuzzy problem and conclusive work is for testing and measuring once the problem is clear. Skipping the first step risks a well-designed survey that asks the wrong questions.

Qualitative methods are suited to that first step, within limits. Calder (1977) argued that focus groups serve different purposes depending on their aim: exploratory groups generate ideas and hypotheses, clinical groups probe motives and phenomenological groups reveal how customers describe their own experience. He cautioned that focus group findings should not be treated as measurements of how common a view is. That caution defines their place: they find the questions, and the survey counts the answers.

Evidence suggests this need not be expensive. Griffin and Hauser (1993) studied how many interviews were needed to identify customers' needs for a product and found that 20 to 30 one-on-one interviews uncovered about 90 percent or more of the needs, and that individual interviews were about as effective per hour as focus groups. A handful of good conversations can save a survey from asking about the wrong things.

Scripture warns that answering before listening is folly and shame (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Proverbs 18:13). For a researcher, that principle translates into a design choice: hear customers before deciding what to ask them.

For my credit union study, this means interviewing ten or twelve members who downloaded the app but stopped using it before finalizing the questionnaire. Their reasons may include worries I have not considered, such as how the app handles a rejected deposit, which the survey can then measure across the whole membership. Interviews also help with wording. If members describe the problem as not knowing when money will show up, the survey should use those words rather than the credit union's term, funds availability, which members may not recognize. Griffin and Hauser's finding that a modest number of interviews captures most needs means this step can be done in a week without delaying the survey.

Reply to Marcus

Marcus, your plan to survey the gym's members through an online panel is efficient, and Malhotra presents online surveys as fast and inexpensive. My concern is whether the members who answer will represent those who do not.

Groves (2006) reviewed studies of nonresponse and found that response rates by themselves were a poor guide to nonresponse bias; what matters is whether the reasons people do not respond are related to what the survey measures. If members who rarely visit the gym are also the least likely to open a survey email, the results will overstate satisfaction. Hulland et al. (2018) reviewed survey research in marketing journals and recommend practices such as checking respondents against known characteristics of the population and reporting response details openly.

Scripture treats a crooked measure as an offense to God (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Proverbs 20:10). A survey that silently overrepresents happy members is an unequal measure, even if no one intends it, and the decisions built on it inherit the distortion.

Could you compare your respondents' visit frequency with the gym's check-in records to see whether infrequent members are underrepresented? If they are, weighting the results by visit frequency, or sending a short follow-up survey by text to infrequent members, could reduce the distortion before you draw conclusions about satisfaction.

Reply to Hannah

Hannah, your exploratory plan for the outdoor brand used two focus groups, which is a sound start. I would add a source of qualitative data that already exists: what customers say to each other online.

Kozinets (2002) developed netnography, a method for studying online communities in which consumers discuss products in their own words, and showed how it can reveal the meanings and language customers use. Schweidel and Moe (2014) found that the sentiment people express about a brand differs systematically across social media venues, so listening in only one place, such as one platform, can give a distorted picture. Together, these studies suggest reading discussions in several online communities before designing focus group questions.

The letter of James tells believers to hear readily and speak sparingly (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, James 1:19). Listening in online communities applies that principle before a single question is asked.

Which online communities would you study first, and how would you choose among them? I also wonder whether the brand's own customer service chats might be an overlooked source of the same kind of insight, since customers describe problems there in their own words and the records already exist at no extra cost. It might help to start where your brand's most committed customers gather, such as hiking forums, and then compare with general platforms where casual buyers post, since the two groups may describe the brand very differently.

References

Calder, B. J. (1977). Focus groups and the nature of qualitative marketing research. Journal of Marketing Research, 14(3), 353-364. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224377701400311

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Griffin, A., & Hauser, J. R. (1993). The voice of the customer. Marketing Science, 12(1), 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.12.1.1

Groves, R. M. (2006). Nonresponse rates and nonresponse bias in household surveys. Public Opinion Quarterly, 70(5), 646-675. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfl033

Hulland, J., Baumgartner, H., & Smith, K. M. (2018). Marketing survey research best practices: Evidence and recommendations from a review of JAMS articles. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 46(1), 92-108. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-017-0532-y

Kozinets, R. V. (2002). The field behind the screen: Using netnography for marketing research in online communities. Journal of Marketing Research, 39(1), 61-72. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkr.39.1.61.18935

Malhotra, N. K. (2015). Essentials of marketing research: A hands-on orientation. Pearson.

Schweidel, D. A., & Moe, W. W. (2014). Listening in on social media: A joint model of sentiment and venue format choice. Journal of Marketing Research, 51(4), 387-402. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.12.0424