Whiskas® meals have been satisfying cats since
1958. The brand is part of Mars Petcare and is a truly international brand well known by the distinctive purple colour and the advertising line: ‘Eight out of ten
owners said their cat prefers it’. A clear segmentation is
used by Whiskas®: cats are divided into kittens, adults (one or two years and above) and seniors (eight years and above). The products are divided into these three categories. Foods are available through distribution outlets as meat in cans, pouches, or as dry biscuits.
Numerous ingredients and flavours are offered including chicken, turkey, duck, rabbit, beef, lamb, cheese, green beans, peas, salmon, tuna, prawns, cod, trout, sardine, herring, and whitebait.
Whiskas® spends a great deal of energy bringing valuable information to cat owners and does much
of this over the Internet. The company uses visitor information to help plan promotional and business activities.
Compiled by Nigel Bradley 2012.
Sources:
http://www.whiskas.co.uk http://www.mars.com/global/brands/petcare.aspx
Questions
1 This is a role play situation where you are acting as Whiskas® for question 1. The company website will provide information on products. Create a research brief using the information above and making any reasonable assumptions. The objective is to generate new ideas for catfoods and the research should test a new concept of inviting customers to propose their own mixtures and recipes of catfood. At the basic level the website will allow them to choose from a selection of flavours, there will also be the opportunity to propose unique recipes on a message board and this will then lead to comments from other cat owners and become a lively forum in addition to a source of new product ideas.
2 For question 2 you are now taking the role of a research agency. In response to the brief you have written, develop an outline of notes for a proposal. You should include the usual parts of the proposal. Cover the research objective/s, chosen method, and respondent profile. Pay less attention to specific aspects of methodology such as the sampling method and sample sizes, data collection, analysis, reporting, and timing. These will be covered later in the book.
3 What assurances of validity, reliability, and ethics can you provide to your client?
Part 1 Research preparation
64
Further reading
• Birn, R.J. (2004) The Effective Use of Market Research, 4th edn. London: Kogan Page, MRS.
Practical book on planning research with examples of good briefs and proposals.
• McCarthy, E.J. (1960) Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach. Homewood, IL: Irwin.
Classic text that started the fashion for using the marketing mix.
• McGivern, Y. (2008) The Practice of Market Research. Harlow, Essex: Prentice Hall.
A practitioner textbook with a focus on social research.
Key web links
• The Research Buyer’s Guide http://www.rbg.org.uk
• Free marketing research resources http://www.researchinfo.com
• Google software and applications http://www.google.com/apps
Online Resource Centre
www.oxfordtextbooks.co.uk/orc/bradley3e/
Visit the Online Resource Centre that accompanies this book
to access more learning resources on this chapter topic.
References and sources
Anon. (1967) Pioneering with PERT, how to speed
entry into new markets, Business Management,
Sept, pp. 66–74.
Baskin, M. and Coburn, N. (2001) Two tribes divided
by a common language? The true nature of the
divide between account planners and market
researchers, International Journal of Market
Research, 43, pp. 137–169.
Bettman, J.R, Luce, M.F., and Payne, J.W. (1998)
Constructive consumer choice processes, Journal
of Consumer Research, 26, pp. 187–217.
Birn, R.J. (2004) The Eff ective Use of Market Research,
4th edn. London: Kogan Page.
Borden, N.H. (1964) The concept of the marketing
mix, Journal of Advertising Research, 4, pp. 2–7
(available in Schwartz, G. Science in Marketing.
New York: John Wiley & Sons, pp. 386–397).
Boruch, R.F. and Cecil, J.S. (1979) Assuring
Confi dentiality of Social Research Data.
Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania Press.
Chapman, R.G. (1989) Problem defi nition in marketing research studies, Journal of Services
Marketing, 3, pp. 51–59.
Culliton, J.W. (1948) The Management of Marketing
Costs. Boston, MA: Harvard University.
Dimbath, M. (1968) Theory of the marketing mix,
Southern Journal of Business, 3, pp. 21–36.
ESOMAR (2011) Global Prices Study 2010
ESOMAR Industry report. Amsterdam: ESOMAR,
19 pp.
Frey, A.W. (1956) The Eff ective Marketing Mix:
Programming for Optimum Results. Hanover, NH:
The Amos Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College.
Glaser, B.G. (1978) Theoretical Sensitivity: Advances in
the Methodology of Grounded Theory. Mill Valley,
CA: Sociology Press.
Goodwin, T. (1997) How the new geographic systems put Boots on the right footing, Research
Plus, May, p. 13.
Chapter 2 Planning research
65
Haig, M. (2003) Brand Failures: The Truth About the
100 Biggest Branding Mistakes of All Time.
London: Kogan Page.
Hess, J.D. and Lucas, M.T. (2004) Doing the right thing or doing the thing right: allocating resources between marketing research and manufacturing, Management Science, 50,
pp. 521–526.
Lawrence, R.J. (1982) To hypothesize or not to hypothesize? The ‘correct’ approach to survey research, Journal of the Market Research Society,
24, pp. 335–343.
McCarthy, E.J. (1968) Basic Marketing: A Managerial
Approach. Homewood, IL: Irwin.
McGarry, E. (1950) Some functions of marketing reconsidered, in Cox, R. and Alderson, W. (eds.)
Theory in Marketing. Chicago, IL: Richard D.
Irwin, pp. 263–279.
McGarry, E. (1951) The contractual function in marketing, Journal of Business (of The University
of Chicago), 24, pp. 96–113.
Mindak, W.A. and Fine, S. (1981) A fi fth ‘P’: public relations, in Donnely, J.H. and George, W.R. (eds.) Marketing of Services. Chicago, IL: American Marketing Association,
pp. 71–73.
Ofi r, C. and Simonson, I. (2001) In search of negative customer feedback: the eff ect of expecting to evaluate on satisfaction evaluations, Journal of Marketing Research, 38,
pp. 170–182.
Part 1 Research preparation
66
Part
2
Data collection
SNAPSHOT Tesco Clubcard 72
Research in focus Journals and archives 81
Research in focus Open data 88
Common mistakes Not planning 93
Common mistakes
Expecting access to data that exist 96
Ethical insight
Freedom of information or privacy? 95
Case study Daily newspaper delivery 102
Contents
Introduction 70
The nature of secondary data 73
Internal secondary data 74
External secondary data 74
The Internet 75
Sources of secondary data 77
Government sources 77
Academic sources 78
Industry sources 80
Market research report publishers and
aggregators 82
Competition and web activity analysis 84
Geodemographic systems 84
Private citizens 86
Planning desk research 86
Human searches 90
Computer searches 90
Evaluation and reverse researching 94
Recording and reporting sources 98
Secondary data
3
Learning outcomes
By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:
1 Explain the nature of secondary data
2 Outline the different sources of secondary data
3 Show the benefits and the limitations of using secondary data
4 List the features of a plan to carry out effective searches
Introduction Planning research Secondary data
Primary data Sampling Questionnaires and topic guides Qualitative research
Quantitative research Analysis
Reporting and presentation
Secondary data should form the basis of all research
projects. It allows us to refine our approach to collecting
primary data and it can also answer our questions. Desk
researchers should look for secondary data within the
client organisation and also outside. Data are available
both online and offline. Wherever the data are to be
found, planning your search is essential. You will learn
how to interpret published data and how to create search
records.
Chapter guide
Introduction
The term ‘primary data’ is used to describe information that is collected for a specific purpose. Secondary data are best remembered as ‘second-hand’, because such data are
‘old’ primary data. Good researchers start with secondary data before designing primary research studies.
Traditionally, secondary data was found in the form of paper documents. A market researcher of the past spent hours looking for these documents at dusty desks in libraries, and, for this reason, the term ‘desk research’ came about, and is still used. Secondary data has various uses: it may answer the research question; it may also help to refine objectives; it may help to design primary research; it can assist in sampling; it can help to supply pre-codes for questionnaires. Desk research can be used both to enhance understanding of results and to confirm results.
It must be emphasised that desk research involves more than consulting documents; it can also mean consulting the information stored in the heads of people. Fact-finding interviews and expert interviews, with leading figures in a particular marketplace, play a major role in desk research. This is reflected in the various names used for this method
of inquiry, including: fact-finding interviews, expert interviews, scoping, secondary searches, and measuring marketing metrics.
The marketer today can thank past researchers for the vast quantity of information available; they have worked tirelessly to leave their records. Where records were lost, important steps were taken to avoid this in future. One researcher was made famous for failing to leave records. For several decades at the start of the twentieth century, Sir Cyril Burt (1883–1971) carried out studies investigating various topics of great interest to psychologists. However, after his death, the findings looked suspect. Collaborators could not be found, the results he arrived at could not be replicated using similar approaches, and the data he had analysed were not available for reanalysis. This became known as the ‘Burt Scandal’ (see Fletcher 1991) and the major lesson that this taught the research community was to preserve raw data and make it available to other researchers. Processed data are useful, but researchers should be able to access first-hand records to replicate or extend the research. This lesson has meant that many archives are now open and that raw data sets are available for further manipulation. The ESRC Data Archive is a good example of this (see Lievesley 1993).
The evolution of storage media is important (see Table 3.1). Filing cards made from paper have long been used to store details; photographic techniques allowed masses of paper records to be reduced in size to become microfilm, or microfiche. The next step was to use electronic data transfer, which reduced documents to digital media and gave truly searchable items.
70
Notable events for desk research
Year Event
1910s Filing cards
1960s Computers available in large companies
1970s Microfi che and microfi lm became popular, many records transferred.
Burt Scandal. Aggregators emerged 1980s Electronic data transfer, World Wide Web
1990s Internet search engines and directories introduced
2000s Freedom of Information Act introduced to UK
Table
3.1
71
SNAPSHOT