UC Berkeley's: Market Research

for Decision Makers

Course Details

• Module 1: Forming a Marketing Strategy: Getting Customer Insights
• Module 2: Translating Customer Insights into Marketing Strategy: Product Design, Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning
• Module 3: New and Advanced Research Techniques for Gathering Customer Insights

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Module 1: Forming a Marketing Strategy: Gathering Customer Insights

Day 1: Morning Session: Choosing the Right Research Method to Gather Customer Insights: Lessons Learned from the Introduction of New Coke
Professor Priya Raghubir

In this session we will discuss when it is appropriate to conduct research and what kind of research should be conducted (or purchased) based on research goals. Participants will learn how to articulate their research goals based on the business decisions they need to make using the Backward Marketing Research methodology. They will learn how to translate their research objectives into designing a research program to achieve valid, reliable, and generalizable data. Participants will be introduced to a wide range of research methods including in-depth interviews, focus groups, surveys, observational techniques, and experimental techniques. Broad strategic issues like identifying unmet market needs will be discussed, as will specific tactical decisions like assessing the effect of branding.

After this session, participants will understand what type of research to conduct to drive the business decision that they need to make.

The research done around the introduction of New Coke will be discussed to demonstrate the process that should go into selecting research methodologies and the risks associated with conducting research that is inappropriate for the business decision that needs to be taken. Participants will leave this session with the tools and templates required to develop their own research plan.

Day 1: Afternoon session: Using Observational Research to Identify Customer Needs and Motivations
Professor Sara Beckman

Innovation often comes from understanding the unstated. Successful firms integrate traditional and more “empathic” methods to understand ongoing customer needs and seize market opportunities as they arise. Ethnographic and observational research is at the core of creating this understanding.

This session focuses on “empathic methods”, especially the role of observation in understanding customers’ needs. We’ll talk about what you can expect to learn from observational research, what you should look for when doing observation, and how to process the information gathered from observational work to be shared with the broader organization.

This session will include an exercise in which participants will observe customers using a product, debrief their observations, and identify unexpected opportunities. We’ll use a case study to better understand the firms that do observational research, and talk about the pros and cons of outsourcing such research.

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Module 2: Translating Customer Insights into Marketing Strategy: Product, Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning

Day 2: Morning Session: Designing Products with a Customer-Focus
Professor Sara Beckman

Despite many years of research showing that companies regularly fail in their new product introductions because they did not sufficiently understand customer and user needs, firms continue to struggle with doing user-centered design. In this session we will focus on the tools and techniques that can be used to bring a user-centered focus to marketing and product development efforts throughout an organization. We will explore the many methods available to accessing good data about everyday users, and about how to share and communicate that information throughout the organization. Some of the concepts we’ll discuss include:

• Studying the “extremes” of a market
• Visualizing and creating empathy for the customer
• Using personas and mental models to guide design
• “Outcome-based” research methodology
• Experience prototypes

Day 2: Lunch Session: Using Focus Groups to Generate and Test Positioning Options
Kristin Kurth, Equibrand Consulting

Focus Groups are useful when introducing new products, when positioning or re-positioning a brand, and as an input to quantitative research, communication planning and message development. Participants will leave this session understanding when and how to conduct focus groups.

Day 2: Afternoon Session: Survey Design for Product Strategy and Customer Satisfaction
Professor Priya Raghubir

Assessing whether, why and to what extent a customer is satisfied is key to business success. In this session, participants will learn how to develop a survey to measure customer satisfaction. Participants will work in groups to design a survey and will learn how to:

• Word questions
• Construct open ended questions
• Determine the right number of questions for maximum participation and actionable results
• Identify the appropriate type of open-ended and closed-ended scale
• Order questions
• Get answers to sensitive questions

Day 3: Morning Session: Using Data Analysis to Determine Segmentation and Positioning
Professor Priya Raghubir

Segmentation (identifying how to group customers together), targeting (identifying one or more groups to market to), and positioning (delivering an overall benefit using the marketing tactics of product, price, placement and promotion) are fundamentals of a marketing strategy. This session will teach participants how to define and conduct research to drive these critical marketing decisions for optimal profitability.

Participants will learn how to identify the dimensions of segmentation (e.g., demographic, psychographic, and usage) that are most useful for categorizing customers into groups, how to use the data collected to identify which of the segments would be most profitable to market to, and how to market to them.

Participants will also determine how to position products vis-à-vis the competition. They will uncover how to research what customers think of the various offerings in the market and the value of different positioning approaches for different target markets.

Day 3: Afternoon Session: Customer Value Management
Professor Florian Zettlemeyer

Customer Value Management is for any company that needs better answers to such questions as:

• Why do we lose customers?
• Which ones should we keep?
• How do we keep them?
• How much should we spend to keep them?

Companies have more information than ever before about their customers. However, many struggle with using this treasure chest of information to identify their best customers, and deepen their relationships with these customers. Quantifying customer value helps them make better resource allocation decisions—for their product and service pipeline, and for their marketing budget.

Participants will take away from this session concrete tools and templates they can use immediately to optimize the mix of customer acquisition, customer retention, and customer value development strategies.

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Module 3: New and Advanced Research Techniques for Gathering Customer Insights

Day 4: Morning Session: Using Conjoint Analysis to Determine an Optimal Feature Mix and Product Price
Professor Ganesh Iyer

Ask a customer if they would like a product to be cheaper, and they will say “yes”. Ask a customer if they would like a product to have more robust features, and they will likely say “yes” again. However, if the cheaper product is less robust and the feature-rich product is more expensive, the answers will be less clear.

Conjoint analysis is the most widely used experimental market research tool. It allows Marketers and Product Managers to identify the value that customers assign to individual aspects of the product offering. Conjoint analysis gets at real preferences by requiring research respondents to make a series of trade-offs. Analysis of these trade-offs will reveal the relative importance of component attributes such as price or feature sets. Although this type of research is often outsourced, it is critical for product and pricing decision-makers to understand the value that this tool can provide.

Day 4: Afternoon Session: Using Multiple Research Methods to Forecast Demand: Lessons from the Product Development Process and Johnson Wax

We will discuss the research done by Johnson Wax which included a synergistic use of multiple primary research tools that helped them decide whether or not to introduce a new product, and how to position it. The case demonstrates how to use a combination of methods, sequentially and simultaneously, and mix them with a range of measures to forecast demand for a new product.

Day 5: Morning Session: New Directions in Marketing Research
Rashi Glazer

As we move into the age of interactive "one-to-one" marketing and product customization, market research increasingly involves collecting and analyzing information about individual customers. Interactive products already collect customer data that is used to market to individuals. In the future, the "customer information file" will become a key corporate asset and the "home" of marketing research data. Metrics such as the lifetime value of a customer and "customer share" or "share of wallet" will become paramount. This section will use case studies of internet and telecom companies whose products already collect customer usage data as inputs to key marketing decisions.

In this session, participants will learn (a) how to design 'smart products' which actually conduct market research on consumer bevavior and (b) how to use the information collected to make profitable marketing decisions.

Lunch Reception and Certificate Ceremony