Marketing research provides a window into the marketplace. It allows companies to understand the characteristics, needs, and behaviors of current and prospective customers. It helps managers to discover opportunities, generate new ideas, design new products that create value for customers, develop packaging and advertising strategies to communicate this value, and create distribution, pricing, and promotion plans to deliver this value at the point of purchase. And it predicts how customers will respond, reducing the risk associated with business decisions.

The goals of this course are to: (1) develop a disciplined analytical and conceptual base that will enhance your skills in marketing research, (2) provide you with hands-on experience applying state-of-the-art marketing research techniques and analysis tools to real-world business problems, (3) help you understand the assumptions underlying these methods and their limitations when applied in various contexts, and (4) enhance your ability to integrate research information with good judgment to develop actions plans for marketing management. This course is intended for students preparing for careers in marketing management, marketing research, and consulting. The tools and techniques discussed in this course are relevant to a variety of industry situations, including consumer, industrial, and service contexts.

The course will cover three major types of project-based marketing research techniques.

• Exploratory Research
  • Secondary Research
  • Observational Research
  • Focus Groups
• Descriptive Research
  • Survey Research
  • Preference Scaling
• Experimental Research
  • Marketing Mix Testing
  • Conjoint Analysis
  • Simulated Test Marketing
  • Field Experiments

The format of the course is a combination of lectures, case discussions, exercises, and readings. Each student is expected to prepare the assigned materials, to attend class, and to actively participate in class discussions. We will be using Excel and the SPSS statistical software package for data analysis.

The M503 and M549 courses are open to both first and second-year MBA students. It is recommended that students take the M503 before M549; M503 is not a formal prerequisite. (M503 provides background in the use of the SPSS statistical software package.)