Page 124 - Marketing Management

CONDUCTING MARKETING RESEARCH | CHAPTER 4 101

RESEARCH APPROACHES Marketers collect primary data in five main ways: through
observation, focus groups, surveys, behavioral data, and experiments.

Observational Research Researchers can gather fresh data by observing the relevant actors and
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settings unobtrusively as they shop or consume products. Sometimes they equip consumers with
pagers and instruct them to write down what they’re doing whenever prompted, or they hold informal
interview sessions at a café or bar. Photographs can also provide a wealth of detailed information.
Ethnographic research is a particular observational research approach that uses concepts and
tools from anthropology and other social science disciplines to provide deep cultural understanding
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of how people live and work. The goal is to immerse the researcher into consumers’ lives to uncover
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unarticulated desires that might not surface in any other form of research. Firms such as Fujitsu
Laboratories, Herman Miller, IBM, Intel, Steelcase, and Xerox have embraced ethnographic research
to design breakthrough products. Here are three specific examples.
• Bank of America’s ethnographic research that followed female baby boomers at home and Ethnographic research with female
while they shopped yielded two insights—women rounded up financial transactions be- baby boomers helped Bank of
cause it was more convenient, and those with children found it difficult to save. Subsequent America launch its well-received
research led to the launch of “Keep the Change,” a debit card “Keep the Change” program.
program that rounded purchases up to the nearest dollar
amount and automatically transferred the added difference
from a checking to a savings account. Since the launch,
2.5 million customers have signed up for the program, open-
ing 800,000 new checking accounts and 3 million new savings
accounts in the process. 15
• To boost sagging sales for its Orville Redenbacher popcorn,
ConAgra spent nine months observing families in their homes
and assembling their weekly diaries of how they felt about various
snacks. In reviewing the results, ConAgra found a key insight: the
essence of popcorn was that it was a “facilitator of interaction.”
Four nationwide TV ads followed with the tagline, “Spending
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Time Together: That’s the Power of Orville Redenbacher.”
• When package design firm 4sight, Inc., was hired by PepsiCo
to come up with a new design for Gatorade’s 64-ounce pack-
age, its team initially assumed the package functioned as a
“family pack” to be used for multiple servings to multiple
users in the household. In watching moms in their homes,
however, team members were surprised to find them taking
the jug out of the refrigerator—for example, after a hard
workout—and chugging it right there on the spot! That in-
sight led to a totally different package design, one that could
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be easily gripped and grabbed.
Ethnographic research isn’t limited to consumer companies in
developed markets. In a business-to-business setting, GE’s ethno-
graphic research into the plastic-fiber industry revealed to the firm
that it wasn’t in a commodity business driven by price, as it had as-
sumed. Instead it was in an artisanal industry, with customers
who wanted collaborations at the earliest stages of development. GE
completely reoriented the way it interacted with the companies in
the industry as a result. In developing markets, ethnographic re-
search also can be very useful, especially in far-flung rural areas,
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given that marketers often do not know these consumers as well.
The American Airlines researchers might meander around first-
class lounges to hear how travelers talk about the different carriers
and their features or sit next to passengers on planes. They can fly on
competitors’ planes to observe in-flight service.

Focus Group Research A focus group is a gathering of 6 to 10
people carefully selected by researchers based on certain