Unit 3

Marketing Information
System (MIS)
A Marketing Information System (MIS) is like a
toolkit for businesses. It helps gather, study,
store, and share important information for
smart marketing decisions. MIS keeps
companies informed about the market,
customer needs, and what competitors are
doing.
• A marketing information system consists of a structured, interacting
complex of persons, machines, and procedures designed to generate
an orderly flow of pertinent information, collected from both internal
and external firm sources, for use as the basis for decision-making in
specified responsibility areas of marketing management.
• This suggests that marketing information systems are specially
designed procedures for gathering and distributing data to managers.
• A marketing information system can be defined as a process in which
data from the market environment is collected systematically and
comprehensively, evaluated in terms of its relevancy and accuracy,
transformed to make it useful and usable by the managers, and
conveniently stored or expeditiously transmitted to the managers.
• Included in the MIS is a series of particular and important tasks.
Unless each one is conducted properly, the system will not operate
effectively and efficiently
Tasks Performed by an MIS
Four tasks the MIS performs are;
Data Collection
Data Evaluation
Data Transformation
Data Transmission
Definition of Marketing
Research
• Marketing research refers to systematic gathering, recording and analysis of
quantitative and qualitative data related to issues of marketing products.
• It involves specifying data to address these issues, designing methods to
collect information, manage and implement data collection process.
• Once the collected data is analyzed, its results and implications are
forwarded to a team that will work on this analysis.
Marketing research is crucial for ensuring that a company can understand the
mindset of its customers. Based on the findings of these reports, they can
develop products that can fulfill customers’ requirements. They can also set
trends since they have a thorough analysis of current trends as well as
projections.
1. Identifying and Defining the
Problem
• This is the first step in the marketing research process, where
problems are clearly defined and identified. For this purpose,
researchers state marketing and business problems that need to be
addressed. For this, we require additional information to figure out
the solution. For this purpose, we need to understand the actual
research question that we need to explore.
• We also need to identify problems that we are seeking answers for in
the research outcome. Based on this analysis, we need to identify the
information that is missing. In this step, researchers generate
preliminary questions to base the research around it. It is extremely
important to accurately and adequately define the problem.
2. Determining and developing
an approach
• In this step, objectives or theoretical framework is formulated. Analytical
models are constructed, and research questions are generated. The
factors that can influence research design are also identified. In this
process, management and industry experts discuss simulations and case
studies. Secondary data is analyzed, and qualitative research takes place.
• In this process, the researcher states the general problem and identifies
specific components of the marketing research problem. For this step,
communication in the form of a research brief is necessary between
marketing researchers and decision-makers. Marketing researchers
respond to this research brief with the research proposal. This proposal
contains the vision of the solution to the research problem.
3. Developing a Research Plan
• Once you have developed an approach, research objectives, and set
of problem-related questions, researchers develop a research plan. In
this plan, you need to map out your requirements for thorough
research. This includes customer opinion, data requirements,
information on competitors, and market trends.
• Based on these factors, you can develop a research design. For these
details, researchers will have to conduct both primary and secondary
research. Primary research is conducted by communicating directly
with customers. For secondary research, documents are available.
4. Conducting Research
• It is the most important part of the marketing research process. Conducting research
is important since accurate and adequate information can be gathered only then.
First of all, existing research and data are reviewed to determine if it is relevant to
the problem. By reviewing existing material, one can gain insights into the problem
for which we are conducting research. This secondary research is always important
since it not only saves time but also efforts of conducting interviews in person. After
gathering data through secondary research, researchers must conduct primary
research to understand the market and what consumers demand.
• For this, different types of interviews, surveys, and polls are conducted. This is a
street-smart method to understand the actual condition of the market and
consumer behavior. There should be a proper way to obtain data from respondents.
For this, we need to design a sampling plan and questionnaire for the selection of
respondents for the study.
5. Data Collection
• Once the plan for research has been created, it is important to gather
data through surveys, interviews, and other methods. At this stage,
the researcher needs to decide the method of collecting the
information.
• The method must be selected in a way to avoid biased opinions of the
respondent. Professionals can conduct telephonic interviews, send
emails and surveys to collect the data. These professionals must be
trained and evaluated beforehand to minimize data collection errors.
6. Preparation and data analysis
• Once the data is obtained, it should be transformed into useful information
from just being primary and secondary data. This involves data editing,
coding, transcription, and verification. Every questionnaire is inspected,
edited, and even corrected. To represent every response in the questionnaire,
either number or letter codes are assigned. This data is transcribed or key-
punched on magnetic tapes, and disks are uploaded directly to the computer.
• Verification ensures that data from actual questionnaires is accurately
transcribed. The collected information should be organized in a way to obtain
some analysis. Several statistical techniques, such as advanced decision
models, measures of dispersion, and compute averages, are applied. When
there is a single measurement of every element or unit in the sample,
researchers should use univariate techniques
7. Reporting The Analysis and
Findings
• Professionals involved in the business should interpret the data since
they can identify the relevant insights and accordingly make
recommendations from the research finding. This report consists of both
analysis and data interpretation to address project objectives. The
findings are then presented to the top-level management so that they
can understand the problem and the way it is summarized.
• The findings should be in a comprehensible format so that they are easily
understandable by the business. Along with that, oral presentations using
statistics, graphs, figures and tables should be given more clarity. On the
basis of these report findings, the management makes decisions after
understanding the research and reasons behind choosing a new path.
Scope of Marketing Research (7
Areas)
1. Research on Products:
Products involve goods and services. This branch of marketing research covers all the issues
related to firm’s products.
It studies and solves the product-related problems, such as:
i. Study of products’ qualities and performance
ii. Study of physical and psychological characteristics of product
iii. Determining uses of the existing products
iv. Comparative study of competitive products
v. Detecting consumers’ problems related to the products
vi. Determining need for developing new products
vii. Assessing success of a new product in market, including market testing
viii. Product life cycle and consumer adoption study
ix. Study of branding, packaging, labeling, after-sales services, and remarking
2. Research on Market:
i.Defining and selecting target market
ii. Studying needs and wants of target market
iii. Study of size and location of current market
iv. Assessing the current market trends and
projecting the future trend
v. Analysis of territorial sales opportunities and
potential
vi. Setting sales territories and sales quotas
vii. Market share analysis
viii. Studies on relative profitability of different
markets
ix. Estimating demand of a new product
3. Research on Sales Methods
and Policies:
i. Study and analysis of sales records
ii. Analysis of sales territories in terms of products, size of orders, times,
terms and conditions and methods
iii. Study on activities and effectiveness of salesmen
iv. Evaluating existing selling methods
v. Sales force management including size, compensation, training, control,
etc.
vi. Study on effect of various promotional tools such as advertising,
personal selling, sales promotion, and publicity tools on sales
vii. Study on organisation structure of sales department
4. Research on Advertising:
i. Comparative study of various elements of promotion
ii. Study on advertising objectives, media and media
selection,
advertising message, theme, copy, and advertising agency
iii. Social aspects of advertising – negative and positive
effects of
advertising on society at large
iv. Advertising role in different stages of product life cycle
v. Government restrictions on advertising
vi. Study on costs and contribution of advertising or
evaluating advertising effectiveness
vii. Study of competitors’ advertising practices and
strategy
5. Research on Pricing:
i. Study on pricing objectives
ii. Study on effectiveness of pricing policies and strategies
iii. Study of various methods for setting price
iv. Quality v/s value analysis
v. New product and pricing policies
vi. Study on effect of discount, allowance, and seasonal
variables
vii. Pricing strategies on different stages of product life cycle
6. Research on Distribution:
1. Assessing role of distribution decisions in achieving marketing goals
2. Comparative study of between direct and indirect distribution
3. Physical distribution and ancillary services
4. Study on various types of channels of distribution
5. Study on relevant factors affecting channel decision/selection
6. Comparing company’s distribution strategies with competitors
7. Relevance of online marketing
8. Legal issues related to distributions
7. Research on Business
Environment and Corporate
Responsibility:
i. Business analysis including demand, national income, per capita income,
trade and industry, economic growth rate, fiscal monetary policies, and
export-import policy.
ii. Short-term and long-term business forecasting.
iii. Technological aspects.
iv. Availability and quality of productive resources.
v. Impacts of legal provisions and Acts.
vi. Study on consumerism and the consumer rights.
vii. Social and cultural values affecting business policy.
viii. Pollution and ecological imbalance, and social responsibility of business.