Coca-Cola Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Managing Marketing Information

Individual Assignment 

1. Read the opening vignette to the chapter. Think about the answers to the follow­ing questions:
1. What mistakes did Coca-Cola make with its introduction of New Coke?
2. Why were the mistakes made?
3. What intangibles did Coke’s research fail to take into account?
4. If Coke were to learn one things from past research failures, what would it be?

Think-Pair-Share

1. Consider the following questions, formulate an answer, pair with the student on your right, share your thoughts with one another, and respond to questions from the instructor.
1. In simple terms, what is a marketing information system?
2. How can a company use an internal database in its marketing efforts?
3. What is an example of marketing intelligence?
4. What is a data warehouse? What is data mining?
5. How is marketing research different from marketing intelligence?
6. What is the difference between exploratory, descriptive, and causal research?
7. What are the four contact methods in marketing research? Which is best if cost is an issue?
8. What is the value of single-source data systems?
9. What is the most important step in the marketing research process? Why?
10. What does a focus group do?
11. What is the objective of customer relationship management?
12. What do you think is the greatest problem today with respect to ethical business practices on the Internet? What solution would you offer? Explain.

Outside Example

You are now the Chief Marketing Officer of a company that wants to help families stay in touch in this fast-paced world we live in. You don’t have a product yet, but you do have an idea: allow communications among family members to be fast, easy, and device-independent; that is, you want Junior, who has a cell phone, to be able to message Dad on his Blackberry, Mom on her computer at work, and Sis, who is away at college. You want all their interfaces to be the same, no matter what type of interactive device they are working with. And, just to be certain everyone gets the message, you want to make sure it gets posted on the view screen of your new Internet-enabled refrigerator at home, because whenever anyone gets home, they go to the kitchen first.

There are lots of technology issues to deal with in this scenario, but your technical team will take care of them. Your charge is to understand the need in the marketplace—and if there even is one—and identify your target audience (who would use this). You want to further start defining how you will reach this audience to let them know about the service once it is available.

Using Figure 4.2 in the textbook as a guide, answer the following questions:

1. What is the problem you are trying to solve here?
2. Would you propose to use exploratory research, descriptive research, or causal research?
3. What should the specific research objectives be?
4. Develop a research plan outline that explains where you might be able to get existing data, whether you need to collect primary data, and if so, how you will contact potential respondents and what research instruments you might use. Table 4.1 could be useful in answering this question.