Modern Marketing Information and Analysis (Week 1)
My first week as a second year at Bucks has come to a close today. My final class was with Vic Davies (Course Leader) and Ruth Hickmott (Senior Lecturer) regarding Modern Marketing Information and Analysis.
My first thought was "Woah! There's a lot of work". As I was taught by both Vic and Ruth in my previous year, I feel comfortable being taught by them and know if I ever have any queries or problems, they will always try to help with the best of their ability.
My fourth and final module requires three pieces of assessed work (including one exam). Personally, I much prefer assignment content and when I heard the word "exam", I was shaking in my boots a little. (For reference, the module exam will take place on Thursday 23 May, 2013)
But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it and prepare to revise like I've never revised before!
Similarly to Managing The Commercial Communications Process (these two modules often intertwine with one another), we are required to launch our own marketing agency for a local radio station in the Buckinghamshire area, Marlow FM. Coursework 1 and Coursework 2 are a hell of a lot of work and I have teamed up with my classmates Jasmin Hannington and Arran Williams to create "Black Sheep Marketing". The main aim of our agency is to gain more listeners to the radio station, gain more advertisers and generally improve the business. Keep your eyes peeled in the near future to hear about our strategic plan to help achieve Marlow FM's goals!
And now onto the theory...
The Modern Marketing Information & Analysis Module analyses the importance of effective research strategies in a given marketing situation. This can range from anything to Moore's Law* to Digital Collection of Research Data.
* - Founded in 1965 by Intel Co-Founder, Gordon Moore, the observation depicts the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit was invented. Moore predicted that this trend would continue for the foreseeable future. In subsequent years, the pace slowed down slightly, but data density had doubled approximately every 18 months, and this is the current official definition of Moore's Law. Most experts, including Moore himself, expect the Law to hold for at least another two decades.
Successful decision-making is a crucial aspect within the business industry. Marketeers need to set out what type of information is required in order to make these decisions whilst effectively implementing marketing strategies as a business tool. Next, this will be broken down into various groups appropriate for each business sector. Overall, organisational staff will need to review the type of market research (primary or secondary? quantitative or qualitative?) they will need to conduct (old or new style?) in order for the results to be reliable (i.e. are we talking to the right people/appropriate target market?).
Quantitative:
- Data Collection via Technology
- "Buy Product" of Other Activity - "Behavioural"
- Lower Paid Researcher (Student) with Digital Device that does the work
Qualtitative:
- New techniques in focus groups/depth interview
- Observation not Questioning
- Ethnographic
Digital has had an overwhelming impact on the market industry, particularly in recent years. It has numerous advantages such as;
- The production and completion process of conducting questionnaires can be much quicker, easier and cheaper to use. Just a few examples of effective questionnaire software includes SNAP, Survey Monkey and Smart Survey. Collection and analysis of data can also be easily transformed into pie charts, graphs and tables, allowing interpretation of the results easier to identify.
- Tracking Studies and Analytics can also be effectively implemented to use statistical techniques devised for monitoring digital performance to examine patterns and success rates of marketing campaigns and strategies. This can be achieved by identifying page views/followers on social media networks, sales figures, website traffic etc.
Vic and Ruth also explained a few other benefits digital technology offers;
- "Convergence created always 365247** on society = Pressure on time"
- "Consumers are more sophisticated and are less likely to take part in old style research, more likely to 'know the rules'"
- "Declining response rates for offline research"
** - 365247 means data is always coming in. As a result, ongoing tracking can be achieved by "Real Time Research". This gives the ability for marketeers to look at the results whilst the campaign is still ongoing.
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