Marketing AS level-top 30 revision terms(6)

Quantitative research:means research using pre-set questions among a large enough sample size to provide statistically valid date. In practical terms that means using a questionnaire to poll at least 200 consumers within each segment of a market. It is a way of discovering date such as:

• a product' s consumer profile
• the way a market can be segmented
• probable sales at a given price level
• estimated sales of a new product
• the results of a blind product test

Large firms tend to use group discussions (see qualitative research) to help understand customer views and then write a questionnaire based upon them.Interviewers can then be employed to conduct the survey upon a representative sample of the population. The three main ways of drawing a sample are: random,quota and stratified.
Sample:a group of respondents to a market research exercise selected to be representative of the views of the target market as a whole. There are four main methods of sampling:random , quota, stratified and cluster. In consumer research, the quota sample is the one used most commonly.
Secondary date:is information collected from second-hand sources such as reference books, government statistics or market intelligence reports.Such date can provide information on market size and market trends for most product categories. It may be accessible publicly and therefore free, but is in any case not as expensive to gather as primary date.See the entries for: Annual Abstract of Statistics, Business Monitors, Economic Trends, Economist Intelligence Unit, employers' association, Mintel.
Significance testing:checking the statistical validity of a sample result, usually in relation to an objective of 95% certainty. An example would be checking whether a 54% preference for product A is statistically significant compared with the 46% choice for product B. If the sample size is very small, this difference is of no significance since it can be explained by purely random factors.
Unique selling point (USP):the feature of a product that can be focused on in order to differentiate it from all competition. The USP should be based on a real product characteristic, such as the advertising slogan used by Mars for one of their chocolate bars:'topic - a hazelnut in every bite'. Stronger still are USPs based on a patented technical advantage.Many firms, however , attempt to create USPs that are based purely on advertising imagery.This can be effective (better to be the sexiest chocolate bar than the hazelnutties) but usually at the cost of extensive TV advertising support.(See product differentiation).