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| floor sweeper - There are two types of research: qualitative and quantitative. To gain a general impression of the market, consumers, or the product, companies generally start with qualitative research. This approach asks open-ended rather than yes or no questions in order to enable people to explain their thoughts, feelings, or beliefs in detail. One of the most common qualitative research techniques is the focus group in which a moderator leads a discussion among a small group of consumers who are typical of the target market. The discussion usually involves a particular product, service, or marketing situation. Focus groups can yield insights into consumer perceptions and attitudes, but the findings cannot be applied to the whole market, because the sample size is too small. Focus group results, then, are suggestive rather than definitive. The insights generated by a focus group are often explored further through quantitative research, which provides reliable, hard statistics. This type of research uses closed-ended questions, enabling the researcher to determine the exact percentage of people who answered yes or no to a question or who selected answer a, b, c, or d on a questionnaire. One of the most common quantitative research techniques is the survey in which researchers sample the opinions of a large group of people. If the sample group is large enough and is | representative of a particular group, such as executives who use cell phones, statisticians consider the findings statistically valid, which means that if all consumers in that particular category could be surveyed, the findings would still be the same. This means that quantitative findings are conclusive in a way that qualitative findings cannot be. Of all the forces affecting modern marketing, perhaps none is more important than globalization. Since the 1980s, technological advances such as global telephone and computer networks have reduced geographic and even cultural distance. As a result, companies can now buy supplies and produce and sell goods in countries far from their home offices. Products conceived in one country are now being manufactured and then sold in many others. For example, Sony (Japan), Nestlé (Switzerland), Bic (France), and Volkswagen (Germany) have become household words around the world. Although being able to market goods far from home presents corporations with many new opportunities, it also means they face new competition. Local companies that never even considered international competition now find foreign competitors stocked on shelves right alongside their own products. Some economists argue that local companies should be protected from such competition through legislation that regulates the flow of goods through trade barriers and other measures. |
