Chapter 3 Secondary Research (due by 9.11)
3.1 Checklist for Week 3
please add a check mark or tick before each list item and post the listed items with check marks to the Discussion thread for Week 3.
1. () Extended deadline - Install Excel, R & Rstudio on your own laptop/PC
2. () Discussions and Annotations (graded) - I participated in the 5 discussion questions listed in this module (see the list of questions at the end of this module)
3. () In-class group discussions (non-graded/group work) - Class discussions often mirror the form of a tennis match between professor and students: each party plays an important role in facilitating the exchange of ideas and thoughts. That said, participating in class discussions is important to your success. Please participate in the in-class group discussion and post your responses to these questions to the discussion forum.
- Post your individual discussions and responses to one of your peers if you could not participate in the in-class group discussions (non-graded/required).
4. () Start working on your group project proposal (non-graded/required)
Please start a Google Drive folder, create a 3-slide proposal outline using Google Slides (w.g., about one slide per memeber), and share it with your in-group peers and the instructor
Everyone is required to add two comments to the original Google Slides (To get started, you might want to read this article:https://alicekeeler.com/2018/04/24/better-feedback-google-slides-commenting/)
Important note: In case you could not participate in the in-class discussions, you would still be responsible for answering the in-class discussion questions. Before each Friday, all you have to do is to answer the in-class discussion questions individually and respond to your in-group peers’ original post regarding two of the issues you found to be interesting.
3.2 Overview
Data is increasingly accessible to more people thanks to the Internet.
Firms need to know what is happening at present, what is likely to happen and what should be done to achieve better performance. Cravens and Piercy (2005) suggest that the business analysis stage includes such concepts as revenue forecasts, cost estimation, profit projections, risks assessment and the possible cannibalization of sales.
In general, there are two types of data you could use for marketing research. Primary research refers to research that you conduct using surveys, polls, focus groups, interviews, and experiments.
It is important to notice that more and more businesses are collecting social media data for the purpose of conducting primary marketing research. Keep in mind that Twitter users are "younger, more likely to identify as Democrats, more highly educated and have higher incomes than U.S. adults overall(Wojcik and Hughes, 2019).
When conducting new product or service research, Twitter might be a suitable channel for businesses to find highly-specific groups of professionals (Twitter 2020). Crimson Hexagon is a company that is focused on offering consulting services on branding, social media analysis, natual language processing, etc. However, there are free, open source programming languages (R, JavaScript, Python, etc.) avaiable for practical social media marketing research.
Secondary research is used extensively by our marketing managers. Secondary data is usually made available by government agencies, market research firms, and trade associations.
Before start collecting data for your research, it is important to think about the following questions (Simon Fraser University Library):
What do you need to know about the broad market for your type of product or for your industry?
What would you like to know about the competitors and alternative products?
Are the general business conditions likely to play a factor?
Do you need to know anything about the demographics and preferences of consumers?
3.3 Sources of Secondary Data
US Census: https://www.census.gov/
Data.gov: https://www.data.gov/
Ca Open Data: https://data.ca.gov/
The stock market data: https://finance.yahoo.com/
Nielsen Consumer Panel Data
Other types of data: https://www.qlik.com/us/products/qlik-sense/data-sources
3.4 Perform Secondary Data Research
Before performing a research study, it is important to define your research objective. More frequently, companies use marketing research to understand customers and their product offerings, study the competitors on a quarterly or more frequent basis (Lehenchuk 2019). For instance, the California Avocado Commission (CAC) launched the following dashboard and additional resources to help growers, producers, policy makers, retailers, and food services navigate the complexity of avocado production, pricing, sales, etc.
https://www.californiaavocadogrowers.com/marketing/marketing-dashboard
Data itself has little value. Marketing researchers have to constantly predict market trends for long-term strategic planning. Pricing and retailing decisions may affect stakeholders with different interests and different levels of influence (Bakucs & Fertő 2015; Crawford 2019).
To help you better understand how marketing research works and how it could benifit different stakeholders using secondary research, I designed the following case study with data from the Hass Avocado Association. See more details at Avocado Pricing at Retail: https://rpubs.com/utjimmyx/retailpricing.
The objective of this case project is to explain the price of avocados using some basic descriptive analysis.This analysis can be used by producers, retailers, and groceries to make decisions about their pricing strategies, advertising strategies, and supply chain stratgies among others. Some additional analysis may follow after this episode. Your feedback is highly appreciated.
It is also important to understand how secondary data research is conducted by government organizations, companies, and consulting companies. For instance, to help policy makers, health professionals, and the general public make better decisions, the California Government launched the COVID-19 dashboard:
(available at the CA government site: https://covid19.ca.gov/data-and-tools/):https://public.tableau.com/views/COVID-19CasesDashboard_15931020425010/Cases?%3Aembed=y&%3AshowVizHome=no
You may want to check out the sreenshot of this dashboard available here:
The following Miscrosoft BI dashboard is launched by the Kern County Public Health Department to track the COVID19 cases in Kern County:
https://kernpublichealth.com/covid-19_dashboard/
In May 2020, Times published an article that the US has flattened the curve (Wilson, 2020). To understand how Germany and the United States handle the COVID19 pandemic, I designed the following dashboard to see if it was the case:
https://rpubs.com/utjimmyx/newcovidusagermany
To find out how different companies are using Tableau or analytics solutions to drive performance, please click on the links below:
3.5 Annotations & Discussion questions
Why do companies use secondary data? Identify a data source you could possibly use for your course project.
According to Crawford (2019), what is the price range (the highest and lowest prices recorded) for an average avocado? Visit The Hass Avocado Board (https://hassavocadoboard.com/) and list at least three reasons different stakeholders could benefit from their marketing research.
Choose one question from either 3.a. or 3.b.
3.a. Visit the dataset available below, raise one question you could possibly answer with the data, and explain how a stakeholder could benefit from your research question. Try to answer your research question using the statistics (or Excel) skills you learned before.
Reference: https://www.californiaavocadogrowers.com/industry/industry-statistical-data
3.b. Open the dataset named “avocado.csv” available in Canvas (your LMS), raise one question you could possibly answer with the data, and explain how a stakeholder could benefit from your research question. Try to answer your research question using the statistics (or Excel) skills you learned before.
4.Pleasse add annotations to the following YouTube video. Once you finish the annotations, please make sure to repost your user name, date, and the original annotations to Canvans for grading.
Requirement: Please ask a question and also answer at least one question raised by one of your peers.
Here is a sample question:
What the video meant to you? What did the video teach you about hypothesis testing or marketing research / (impression it made on you)?
Adventures in test marketing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wx5B2p8qyg&t=54s
5.Pleasse add annotations to one of the following PDF files. Once you finish the annotations, please make sure to repost your user name, the PDF document you annotated, date, and the original annotations to Canvans for grading.
Requirement: Please ask a question and also answer at least one question raised by one of your peers.
https://www.ashokcharan.com/Marketing-Analytics/~st-t-test.php
https://www.sas.com/content/dam/SAS/support/en/sas-global-forum-proceedings/2018/2746-2018.pdf
https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/publication/documents/2018-02/intro_to_stats_2018.pdf
References
Crawford. 2019. Avocados remain huge retail draw https://www.supermarketperimeter.com/articles/3788-avocados-remain-huge-retail-draw
Bakucs, L. Z., & Fertő, I. (2015). Empirical tests of sale theories: Hungarian milk prices. AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS-ZEMEDELSKA EKONOMIKA, 61(11), 511-521.
Lehenchuk 2019. How To Research The Market And Identify Opportunities. https://producttribe.com/marketing-amp-partnerships/market-research-guide
Wilson, 2020. The U.S. Has Flattened the Curve. Next Up Is ‘Squashing’ It — and That’s Not Going Well. https://time.com/5827156/squashing-squash-curve-coronavirus-covid19/
Peterson, E. B., & Orden, D. (2008). Avocado pests and avocado trade. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 90(2), 321-335.
Simon Fraser University Library. https://www.lib.sfu.ca/help/research-assistance/subject/business/secondary-market
Wojcik and Hughes, 2019. Sizing Up Twitter Users. Pew Research. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-twitter-users/
https://business.twitter.com/en/help/campaign-setup/campaign-targeting/tailored-audiences.html