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CONDUCTING MARKETING RESEARCH | CHAPTER 4 103

Survey Research Companies undertake surveys to assess people’s knowledge, beliefs,
preferences, and satisfaction and to measure these magnitudes in the general population. A
company such as American Airlines might prepare its own survey instrument to gather the
information it needs, or it might add questions to an omnibus survey that carries the questions of
several companies, at a much lower cost. It can also pose the questions to an ongoing consumer
panel run by itself or another company. It may do a mall intercept study by having researchers
approach people in a shopping mall and ask them questions.
As we’ll discuss in more detail later in this chapter, many marketers are taking their surveys
online where they can easily develop, administer, and collect e-mail and Web-based questionnaires.
However they conduct their surveys—online, by phone, or in person—companies must feel the
information they’re getting from the mounds of data makes it all worthwhile. San Francisco–based
Wells Fargo bank collects more than 50,000 customer surveys each month through its bank
branches. It has used customers’ comments to begin more stringent new wait-time standards
designed to improve customer satisfaction.
Of course, by putting out so many surveys each month, companies may run the risk of creating
“survey burnout” and seeing response rates plummet. Keeping a survey short and simple and con-
tacting customers no more than once a month are two keys to drawing people into the data collec-
tion effort. Offering incentives is another way companies get consumers to respond. Both Gap and
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Jack in the Box offer coupons for discount merchandise or the chance to win a cash prize.
BEHAVIORAL RESEARCH Customers leave traces of their purchasing behavior in store
scanning data, catalog purchases, and customer databases. Marketers can learn much by analyzing
these data. Actual purchases reflect consumers’ preferences and often are more reliable than
statements they offer to market researchers. For example, grocery shopping data show that high-
income people don’t necessarily buy the more expensive brands, contrary to what they might state in
interviews; and many low-income people buy some expensive brands. And as Chapter 3 described,
there is a wealth of online data to collect from consumers. Clearly,American Airlines can learn many
useful things about its passengers by analyzing ticket purchase records and online behavior.

EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH The most scientifically valid research is experimental
research, designed to capture cause-and-effect relationships by eliminating competing
explanations of the observed findings. If the experiment is well designed and executed, research
and marketing managers can have confidence in the conclusions. Experiments call for selecting
matched groups of subjects, subjecting them to different treatments, controlling extraneous
variables, and checking whether observed response differences are statistically significant. If we

An important marketing research
tool is focus groups.