UNIVERSITY OF CEBU (UC)

GRADUATE SCHOOL
Sanciangko St., Cebu City

REACTION PAPER IN
MARKETING MANAGEMENT (BM 207)

Masterand: Agnes C. Ampo Course: MBA

Professor: Dr. Eddie E. Llamedo Schedule: BL1 Sat, 12:00nn-4:30pm

Chapter 4 – Managing Marketing Information to Gain Customer insights

Introduction

It may sound funny to even ask this question, but how many businesses really

understand their consumers when it comes to developing new products and

services, or marketing those products to potential customers? This does not refer to

just understanding consumers in the traditional sense of how a product appeals to a

specific demographic group. It means really getting down to the nitty-gritty of

understanding why consumers act a certain way, how they share information with

each other, and what cultural influences are at work in shaping their perceptions and

understandings.

Topic Summary

What are customer insights? These are fresh marketing information-based

understanding of customers and the marketplace that become basis for creating

customer value, engagement and relationships. The most reliable source of fresh

customer insights is good marketing information. Marketing information system (MIS)

refers to the people and procedures dedicated to assessing information needs,

developing the need information, and helping decision makers to use the information

to generate and validate actionable customer and market insights. In assessing

information needs and developing data, MIS provides the information to the

company's marketing and other managers and external partners such as suppliers,

resellers, and marketing service agencies. The characteristic of good MIS is

balancing what the information users would like to have against what they need and

what is feasible to offer. In developing needed marketing information, marketers

obtain information from internal databases, marketing intelligence and marketing

research. Internal databases are collections of consumer and market information

obtained from data sources within company network. Marketing intelligence is a

systematic collection and analysis of publicly available information about consumers,

competitors, and developments in the marketing environment. Marketing research is

a systematic design, collection, analysis, and reporting data relevant to a specific

marketing situation facing an organization. There steps in marketing research

process. First is defining the problem and research objectives. This can be

exploratory, descriptive and causal research. Second is developing the research

plan. This outlines sources of existing data and spells out the specific research

approaches, contact, methods, sampling plans, and instruments to gather data.

Written research plan includes management problem, research objectives,

information needed, how the results will help management decisions and the budget.

Here you will need the secondary data, which is consists of information that already

exists somewhere, having been collected for another purpose, and primary data

which is consists of information gathered for special research plan. The research

approaches should be considered. This includes the observational research which

involves gathering primary data by observing relevant people, actions and situations;

ethnographic research which involves sending rained observers to watch and

interact with consumers in their natural environments; survey research which

involves gathering primary data by asking people questions about their knowledge,

attitudes, preferences, and buying behavior; experimental research which involves

gathering primary data by selecting matched groups of subjects, giving them

different treatments, controlling related factors, and checking for differences in group

responses; contact methods which is consists of inviting small groups of people to

meet with trained moderator to talk about the product, service or organization and

lastly the sampling plan where a segment of the population selected for marketing

research to represent the population as a whole. Third is implementing the research

plan which includes collecting the information, processing the information, analyzing

the information, interpret findings, draw conclusions and report to management. In

this stage, the customer relationship management should be carefully governed.

CRM involves managing detailed information about individual customers and

carefully managing customer touch points (customer purchases, sales force

contacts, service and support calls, web and social media sites, satisfaction surveys,

credit and payment interactions and marketing research studies) to maximize

customer loyalty. Information distribution involves making information available in a

timely, user-friendly way. This can be done via intranet ,which provides information to

employees and other stakeholders, and extranet , which provides information to key

customers and suppliers. There are also other marketing information considerations

like the marketing research in small businesses and non-profit organizations,

international market research, public policy and ethics which includes customer

privacy and misuse of research findings.

Recommendation

The reporter's voice was too faint. We can barely hear her voice from the

back. It would also best to give sample research with her report so we can try to
scrutinize its process and steps and also real life examples to understand more the

concepts presented.

Conclusion

To conclude, effective marketing starts with a strong knowledge of your

customers: the kind of knowledge that gives you unique insights into what they want

and how to satisfy them. This knowledge is an essential part of the marketing

decision making process needed by the business. These better marketing decisions will

result in campaigns or strategies becoming more effective and more efficient, resulting in

increased profitability.