Anwar Hasim wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> The following article is a good example for those who are doing their
> current research and/or assignment on Customer Behavior. The point is:
> don't
> focus your observation in a limited area. You have to broaden it
> somehow. In
> many cases, odd factor does exist and surprisingly.. it works!!!
>
> Having read the article, I have the interest to know further about
> Customer
> Behavior. How is the research actually done (in a step-by-step
> process,
> please)? Can anyone recommend some FREE (if possible) good online
> sources
> for this purpose?
>
> Thanx in advance.
>
> Anwar
1) A research report that attrributes associations with parts of
women's bodies is suspect. For starters, who wrote it, and who asked
the Questions? What was their gender? I could go on, but you get the
point.
2) To your real question. Consumer desire for a product is part of a
system. A system has inputs and outputs. The customers desire to
acquire an item is an output. Marketing people would like to control
the inputs [factors] so as to maximize the desire. All we need to know
is, 'what are the relationships between the inputs and outputs?' I can
write this as an equastion, if that would make it more clear.
How do we discover those nifty little relationships, in any situation?
We observe, we sometimes gain insights, we perform tests and analysis.
Large coefficeints (relationships) are obvious. People in the USA will
pay almost anything for gasoline, because they love what they can do
with it - drive places in individual modules called cars. When the
large factors are cared for, the small factors become significant in
terms of making the sale. Some people try to purchase only one brand of
gasoline. These small factors are harder to discover, due to alternate
interpretations. I. e., poorly designed experiements, or confusingly
designed ones, cause problems.
A focus group is essentially one way to discover what the factors are.
A test market effort is a trial run, confounded by a great many other
things. What did the competitor do when our test started, for example.
Monitoring sales on a weekly/daily basis is essentially an SPC chart of
consumer demand/consumer capability. A conjoint analysis (NOT the first
test to perform!) can be a well designed expeirment which reduces those
alternate interpretations.
The reports you see of reasons for choosing mellon size, or any other
mkt report, are giving you a result and a small piece of the mechanism
(those relationships again). They are necessarily sketchy. What elese
did the focus group discuss, what factors did the respondents consider
or dismiss, and how did the focus group analysts validate the words
these people gave them? When I do an experiment in the plant, I am
equally interested in what it says is not significant, as in what it
says is significant. I can do things with that 'not significnat'
factor.
In a conjoint analysis method study I performed once, we found that low
sale price was not high on the list of consumer concerns, and certain
features were way up. So we put in the features and charged
accordingly. Sales went up. Prof. Green documents some like that, of
his own.
You asked for a step-by-step procedure for market studies. You got 2
years? try a textbook on the specific subject. Just keep in mind that
we are looking for those coefficients, those relationships, which
determine the behavior of the system.
Jay
--
Jay Warner
Principal Scientist
Warner Consulting, Inc.
4444 North Green Bay Road
Racine, WI 53404-1216
USA
Ph: (414) 634-9100
FAX: (414) 681-1133
email:
quality@a2q.com
web:
http://www.a2q.com
Power to the data!