POST GRADUATE PROGRAMME IN MANAGEMENT

AY 2021-22 TERM: III

TITLE OF THE COURSE: MARKETING RESEARCH
CREDITS: 4 COURSE: CORE ELECTIVE NO. OF SECTIONS: 6

Name of the Instructors Office Email Ext.

Prof. Abhishek Mishra J-203 [email protected] 2439599
Prof. Sudipta Mandal J-222 [email protected] 2439449
Prof. Saripalli Bhavani Shankar B-204 [email protected] 2439548

Consultation Time: Every Saturday from 4 pm to 6 pm with prior appointment with respective
faculty members. For special issues, faculty can be contacted over email and be met at other
times.

COURSE DESCRIPTION:
Marketing research is an applied management discipline that is critical to understanding markets
and customers in order to make better marketing decisions. The key objective of this course is to
provide a learning environment for acquiring the essential working knowledge of when and how
to conduct marketing research and the most effective way to communicate marketing
information to support marketing decisions.

This course attempts a hands‐on opportunity for the students to learn about a critical marketing
management activity. The participants will have the chance to conceive a research project for a
real client, design the study, execute it, and report on the findings in a professional manner.

COURSE OBJECTIVES:
Upon completion of this course, the participants should be able to:

1. Understand the needs of marketing managers for marketing and market information;
2. Determine the objectives of the marketing research project;
3. Identify the type of research that will best help achieve the objectives;
4. Learn how to write a good marketing research proposal;
5. Discover how to develop suitable questionnaires;
6. Understand how to manage and execute survey fieldwork;
7. Determine how to best analyze survey data;
8. Learn how to turn statistical findings into marketing information that gets attention;
9. Learn how to write reports that convey marketing information simply and effectively and
encourage marketing action
PEDAGOGY / TEACHING METHOD:

The main learning platform in this course will be the term project. Classes will consist of lectures
and discussion of group projects. Lectures will elaborate and reinforce the assigned textbook
material as well as additional material which will be distributed in the class. For this reason, the
information will be covered quickly, allowing more time for examples and discussion. Therefore,
it is important that students complete the assigned readings before class.

PROJECT DETAILS:

Students will be required to work in groups for this project. The project would involve a problem
for a real/hypothetical client and needs to integrate all the concepts learnt in the class. Thus,
they would need to follow all the stages of conceiving and executing a new market research
study. Each class of this subject would also entail a discussion with the groups about how that
concept has been executed in the project in the subsequent session. The groups would need
submit a project report. The submission details will be communicated later by the faculty
member.

EVALUATION

Individual Component Group Component Weightage

Class participation 20
Group Assignments 40
Final Examination 40
Total 100%

ACADEMIC DISHONESTY

IIM Indore believes in Academic honesty.

Academic dishonesty or misconduct is cheating that relates to an academic activity. It is a
violation of trust between the Institute and its stakeholders. Plagiarism, fabrication, deception,
cheating and sabotage are examples of unacceptable academic conduct. Please consult the
Programme manual for the section on academic dishonesty.
SCHEDULE OF SESSIONS

Module I : INTRODUCTION TO MARKETING RESEARCH

Module Objective: What is marketing research and how does it work?

Session 1 The Marketing Research Environment

Objective: Introduction to marketing research and its role in decision making process
Chapter 1, Text Book. Introduction, Evolution and Emerging Issues (3-18)
Reading: Note on market and consumer research (1987), Ward and Reibstein,
HBS.579136
Case 1: Market Research: A background note (1991); Robert Dolan, HBS.592034
Nielsen: Market Research for Pantene (IMB419)
Session 2, 3 Problem formulation and Research Design
Objective: Discuss the types of research designs and suitable deployment for different
marketing problems.
Reading: Chapter 2-3: Text Book. Marketing Research Process & Research Methods
and Design (19-47)
Market Research: Listen and Learn (Ch. 3), Marketer’s toolkit: The 10
strategies you need to succeed (2006)
Case 2: Life in the fast lane (TB: Naresh Malhotra)
Session 4, 5 Qualitative Research*
Objective: Discuss the basic tenets of qualitative research and various methodologies
under it.
Reading: An introduction to qualitative research (2007); Hancock, Ockleford and
Windridge, NHS.
Case 3: Nike: Associating Athletes, Performance and the Brand (TB: Malhotra and
Dash)

*For sections of Prof Abhishek Mishra/Prof Sudipta Mandal, these are guest
lectures by Prof Aditya Deshbandhu
Session 6, 7 Measurement scales and Questionnaire Design
Objective: To understand scales and questionnaire framing techniques
Reading: Chapter 4: Text Book, Questionnaire Design (48-83)
Questionnaire Design and Development (1990), A.J. Silk, HBS 5900015
Case 4: Casual clothing preference of youth (TB: R. Nargundkar)
Module II DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

Module Objective: To expose the participants how to plan data collection, preparation and
analysis.

Session 8 Sampling Procedures

Objective: Discuss the various sampling procedures and their application to marketing
research
Reading: Chapter 5: Text Book. Sampling Methods (90-108)
Sampling and Statistical Interference (1996), Schiefler, HBS 191092
Case 5: American Wine Inc. (TB: Luck and Rubin)
Session 9 Fieldwork and data collection
Objective: To understand the process of effective data collection and fieldwork.
Reading: Text Book: Chapter 6. Field Procedures (109-112)
Smith, S.M. & Albaum, G.S. (2010). An Introduction to Market Research.
Chapter 5 (pp. 59 – 78).
Session 10, 11 Data preparation and basic statistics
Objective: To discuss data preparation techniques and generating descriptive statistics
along with basic analyses like z/t and chi-square tests.
Reading: Chapter 7-8: Text Book, Planning Data Analysis and Simple Tabulation and
Cross-tabulation (114-204)
SPSS Manual, Data Preparation (97-123)
Session 12, 13 Project Discussion in Groups: Class Exercise
Objective: In this session each group will get a chance to discuss their project proposals.
The discussion process will involve a peer-review process where other groups
will get a chance to critique each other’s work. Typical expectations for this
discussion needs the groups to be ready with their research problem,
research design and timelines for the project completion.

Module III APPLICATIONS FOR SOLVING MARKETING PROBLEMS

Module Objective: Expose the students to advanced methodologies concerning Segmenting,

Targeting and Positioning. Each of the next session involves performing the analysis on SPSS and
how to interpret the data for effective marketing research exercise. For each exercise, students
will need to follow the instructor on their laptops with a common dataset for effective learning.
 Session 14 Multiple Regression
Objective: To make the participants understand the process of exploring relationships
between variables using multiple regression through demonstration in SPSS.
Reading: Chapter 10: Textbook, Correlation and Regression (242-273)
Multiple Regression and Marketing Mix Models (2014), Venkatesan and
Gibbs, Darden Business Publishing UV6764
SPSS Manual, Bivariate Correlation (332-334) and Linear Regression (343-352)
Session 15 Factor Analysis
Objective: To make the participants learn how to reduce number of variables to explore
the underlying dimensions using Factor Analysis through demonstration in
SPSS.
Reading: Chapter 13: Textbook, Factor Analysis for Data Reduction (326-347)
SPSS Manual, Factor Analysis (395-401)
Session 16 Cluster Analysis
Objective: To make the participants learn to perform segmentation using cluster
analysis through demonstration in SPSS.
Reading: Chapter 14: Textbook, Cluster Analysis for Market Segmentation (348-393)
Cluster Analysis for segmentation (2014), Venkatesan, Darden Business
Publishing.
SPSS Manual, Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (412-416) and K-Mean Cluster
Analysis (417-419)
Session 17 Multidimensional Scaling
Objective: To make the participants learn perceptual mapping using MDS through
demonstration in SPSS.
Reading: Chapter 15: Textbook, Multidimensional Scaling for Brand Positioning (394-
416)
Methods for producing perceptual maps from data (2010), Wilcox, Darden
Business Publishing UV0405
SPSS Manual, Multidimensional Scaling (465-470)
Session 18 Discriminant Analysis
Objective: To make the participants learn to perform discriminant analysis through
demonstration in SPSS.
Reading: Chapter 11: Textbook, Discriminant Analysis for Classification and Prediction
(280-307)
SPSS Manual, Discriminant Analysis (387-393)
Session 19 Conjoint Analysis
Objective: To make the participants learn to perform conjoint analysis through
demonstration in SPSS.
Reading: Chapter 16: Textbook, Conjoint Analysis for Product Design (421-453)
Session 20 Design of experiments and analysis
Objective: To make the participants learn how to design experiments

Reading: Chapter 7: Causal Research Design (Textbook: Naresh Malhotra) (212-245)

NOTE: Cases 2,3 ,4 and 5 will be handed out in-class and are not part of reading material.
Please give the details of the book if students need to buy the book
Author Title Publisher Edition Remarks, if any
Nargundkar, R. Marketing Tata McGraw- Fourth
(2019) Research-Text & Hill Education
Cases

Additional Readings

The following books are recommended for supplementary reading:

 Malhotra, N.K. & Dash S. (2011). Marketing Research: An applied orientation. New Delhi:
Pearson Education.
 Green, P., Tull, D.S. &Albaum, G. (2013). Research for Marketing Decisions. New Delhi:
Prentice Hall India
 Luck, D. J., & Rubin, R. S. (1997). Marketing Research. Prentice Hall: New York.
 Pallant, J. (2001). SPSS Survival Manual: A Step by Step Guide to Data Analysis Using SPSS for
Windows (Versions 10 and 11): SPSS Student Version 11.0 for Windows. Milton Keynes, UK,
USA: Open University Press.

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