Researching Target Markets

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International Market Research

Week 4 - Introduction

Market research is any organized effort to gather information about target markets or customers. It is a very important component of business strategy. The term is commonly interchanged with marketing research; however, expert practitioners may wish to draw a distinction, in that marketing research is concerned specifically about marketing processes, while market research is concerned specifically with markets. ( Wikipedia )

Marketing research [...] is the systematic gathering, recording, and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data about issues relating to marketing products and services. ( Wikipedia )

Week 5

In sociology, quantitative research refers to the systematic empirical investigation of social phenomena via statistical, mathematical or numerical data or computational techniques. ( Wikipedia )

Qualitative research is a method of inquiry employed in many different academic disciplines, traditionally in the social sciences, but also in market research and further contexts. Qualitative researchers aim to gather an in-depth understanding of human behavior and the reasons that govern such behavior. The qualitative method investigates the why and how of decision making, not just what, where, when. Hence, smaller but focused samples are more often used than large samples. ( Wikipedia )

Week 6

A field of applied statistics, survey methodology studies the sampling of individual units from a population and the associated survey data collection techniques, such as questionnaire construction and methods for improving the number and accuracy of responses to surveys. ( Wikipedia )

Week 7

A survey involves interviews with a large number of respondents using a predesigned questionnaire ( Teacher )

A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions and other prompts for the purpose of gathering information from respondents. Although they are often designed for statistical analysis of the responses, this is not always the case. ( Wikipedia )

Questionnaire construction regards questionnaires. It is a series of questions asked to individuals to obtain statistically useful information about a given topic. ( Wikipedia )

Quantitative marketing research is the application of quantitative research techniques to the field of marketing. It has roots in both the positivist view of the world, and the modern marketing viewpoint that marketing is an interactive process in which both the buyer and seller reach a satisfying agreement on the "four Ps" of marketing: Product, Price, Place (location) and Promotion. ( Wikipedia )

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Week 12

• In statistics, quality assurance, & survey methodology, sampling is concerned with the selection of a subset of individuals from within a statistical population to estimate characteristics of the whole population. ( Wikipedia )

• A Data sample is a set of data collected and/or selected from a statistical population by a defined procedure. ( Wikipedia )

• A sampling frame is the source material or device from which a sample is drawn. It is a list of all those within a population who can be sampled, and may include individuals, households or institutions. ( Wikipedia )

• Sampling is the use of a subset of the population to represent the whole population. ( Wikipedia on w:Nonprobability sampling )

Probability sampling, or random sampling, is a sampling technique in which the probability of getting any particular sample may be calculated.

Nonprobability sampling does not meet this criterion and should be used with caution. Nonprobability sampling techniques cannot be used to infer from the sample to the general population. ( Wikipedia )

• Systematic sampling is a statistical method involving the selection of elements from an ordered w:sampling frame. ( Wikipedia )

• Stratified sampling: In statistical surveys, when subpopulations within an overall population vary, it is advantageous to sample each subpopulation (stratum) independently. Stratification is the process of dividing members of the population into homogeneous subgroups before sampling. ( Wikipedia )

• A simple random sample is a subset of individuals (a sample) chosen from a larger set (a population).

Each individual is chosen randomly and entirely by chance, such that each individual has the same probability of being chosen at any stage during the sampling process, and each subset of k individuals has the same probability of being chosen for the sample as any other subset of k individuals. This process and technique is known as simple random sampling, and should not be confused with systematic random sampling. A simple random sample is an unbiased surveying technique. ( Wikipedia )

Week 16

• Primary research consists of a collection of original primary data collected by the researcher. It is often undertaken after the researcher has gained some insight into the issue by reviewing secondary research or by analyzing previously collected primary data. ( Wikipedia )

• Secondary research (also known as desk research) involves the summary, collation and/or synthesis of existing research rather than primary research, where data is collected from, for example, research subjects or experiments. ( Wikipedia )

• A Back-translation is a translation of a translated text back into the language of the original text, made without reference to the original text. ( Wikipedia )

• The European Society for Opinion and Market Research (ESOMAR) is a world association for market, social and opinion researchers.

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Statistical Methods

Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation and presentation of data. It deals with all aspects of data including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments ( Wikipedia )

Calculus is the mathematical study of change in the same way that geometry is the study of shape and algebra is the study of operations and their application to solving equations.

It has two major branches, differential calculus (concerning rates of change and slopes of curves), and integral calculus (concerning accumulation of quantities and the areas under curves); these two branches are related to each other by the fundamental theorem of calculus. ( Wikipedia )

A time series is a sequence of data points, measured typically at successive points in time spaced at uniform time intervals. ( Wikipedia ) An example are the closing values over time of stock market index ( jubo-jubo )

In data processing, a pivot table is a data summarization tool found in data visualization programs such as spreadsheets or business intelligence software. Among other functions, a pivot-table can automatically sort, count total or give the average of the data stored in one table or spreadsheet. It displays the results in a second table (called a "pivot table") showing the summarized data. ( Wikipedia )

Week 4 - Introduction

• Population
• Census
• Unit (sampling unit)
• Sample and Sampling
• Variable
• Data matrix

One row for one unit

One column for each variable

There are different levels of measurement

• Nominal scale
• Ordinal scale
• Interval scale
• Ratio scale

• The mode is the value that appears most often in a set of data. ( Wikipedia )

Week 6

In statistics and probability theory, the median is the numerical value separating the higher half of a data sample, a population, or a probability distribution, from the lower half. ( Wikipedia )

In descriptive statistics, the quartiles of a ranked set of data values are the three points that divide the data set into four equal groups, each group comprising a quarter of the data. A quartile is a type of quantile( Wikipedia )

• w:Quantiles are points taken at regular intervals from the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of a random variable.

A percentile (or a centile) is a measure used in statistics indicating the value below which a given percentage of observations in a group of observations fall. ( Wikipedia )

In arithmetic, the range of a set of data is the difference between the largest and smallest values. ( Wikipedia )

A Likert scale is a psychometric scale commonly involved in research that employs questionnaires. It is the most widely used approach to scaling responses in survey research, such that the term is often used interchangeably with rating scale, or more accurately the Likert-type scale, even though the two are not synonymous. The scale is named after its inventor, psychologist Rensis Likert. ( Wikipedia )

Later weeks

• In statistics and probability theory, the standard deviation (SD) (represented by the Greek letter sigma, σ) shows how much variation or dispersion from the average exists.

A low standard deviation indicates that the data points tend to be very close to the mean (also called expected value); a high standard deviation indicates that the data points are spread out over a large range of values. ( Wikipedia )

• The coefficient of variation (CV) is a normalized measure of dispersion of a probability distribution or frequency distribution. ( Wikipedia )

• A histogram is a graphical representation of the distribution of data. It is an estimate of the probability distribution of a continuous variable and was first introduced by Karl Pearson. ( Wikipedia )

Week 11

• Correlation and dependence - In statistics, dependence is any statistical relationship between two random variables or two sets of data. Correlation refers to any of a broad class of statistical relationships involving dependence. ( Wikipedia )

• Bivariate data is data that has two variables. The quantities from these two variables are often represented using a scatter plot. ( Wikipedia )

• A Scatter plot, scatterplot, scatter diagram or scattergraph is a type of mathematical diagram using Cartesian coordinates to display values for two variables for a set of data. ( Wikipedia )

• Statistical inference is the process of drawing conclusions from data that are subject to random variation, for example, observational errors or sampling variation. ( Wikipedia )

• Independent variables vs. Dependent variables

• Independent variable on columns
• Dependant variable on rows ( Teacher )

• Cross tabulation (or crosstabs for short) is a statistical process that summarizes categorical data to create a contingency table. They are heavily used in survey research, business intelligence, engineering and scientific research. They provide a basic picture of the interrelation between two variables and can help find interactions between them. ( Wikipedia )

• A contingency table (also referred to as cross tabulation or cross tab) is a type of table in a matrix format that displays the (multivariate) frequency distribution of the variables. ( Wikipedia )

Contingency coefficient:

if 0 < C < 0,3 => no correlation

if 0,3 > C => is correlation

• Spearman's rank correlation coefficient is a nonparametric measure of statistical dependence between two variables. ( Wikipedia )

• Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (sometimes referred to as the PPMCC or PCC or Pearson's r) is a measure of the linear correlation (dependence) between two variables X and Y, giving a value between +1 and −1 inclusive, where 1 is total positive correlation, 0 is no correlation, and −1 is total negative correlation. It is widely used in the sciences as a measure of the degree of linear dependence between two variables. ( Wikipedia )

=correl(array 1;array 2) in Excel ( Teacher )

• Regression analysis is a statistical process for estimating the relationships among variables. It includes many techniques for modeling and analyzing several variables, when the focus is on the relationship between a dependent variable and one or more independent variables. ( Wikipedia )

• Coefficient of determination, denoted R² and pronounced R squared, indicates how well data points fit a statistical model – sometimes simply a line or curve. ( Wikipedia )

It is a statistic used in the context of statistical models whose main purpose is either the prediction of future outcomes or the testing of hypotheses, on the basis of other related information. It provides a measure of how well observed outcomes are replicated by the model, as the proportion of total variation of outcomes explained by the model. ( Wikipedia )

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Further studies in statistics - Toolkit for Quantitative Surveys (MET8LF001-11) Mon-Fri - The concept of w:statistical inference is covered. Download SPSS from MyNet.