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| MARK0723-3 | Marketing Research
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| Duration : | 30h Th, 15h Pr |
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| Number of credits : |
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| Lecturer : | Alexandra Streukens |
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| Substitute(s) : | Céline Brandt |
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Language(s) of instruction :
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| English language |
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Course contents :
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| 1. Body of the course :
The importance of marketing research as a management tool for business decision-making continuous to increase. This is not only due to the fact that marketing as a business function has gained importance, but also due to recent changes in market characteristics that have led to a growing importance of marketing research. Companies are facing growing competition, rapid technological developments, and dynamic and fragmented markets. This results in more complex and dynamic decision-making. Hence, providing information is necessary to support planning, implementation and evaluation of all business activities.
A marketing research project consists of the following steps:
(1) Problem definition
(2) Development of an approach to the problem
(3) Research design formulation
(4) Field work or data collection
(5) Data preparation and analysis
(6) Report preparation and presentation
2. Contents (techniques, litterature)
- Introduction to marketing research
- Essentials of marketing research problem definition
- Qualitative research techniques
- Measurement theory
- Surveys, experiments, and questionnaire design
- Sampling design
- Univariate data analysis techniques
- Multivariate data analysis techniques
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Learning outcomes of the course :
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| The aim of this course is it to provide students with an introduction to marketing research. As a consequence, students will be confronted with problems with conducting a marketing research study. After completing this course, students should be able to design and conduct a limited-scale marketing research study. More specifically, this leads to the following objectives:
1. To obtain a detailed understanding of the stages involved in conducting research.
2. To get an overview of the various research designs available
3. Deciding which research design / approach is most appropriate for the situation at hand.
4. To obtain an understanding of some main statistical techniques available for analyzing the data obtained via marketing research.
5. Deciding which statistical technique is most appropriate for solving the research questions at hand
6. Drawing conclusions from your research and summarize the most important findings. |
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Prerequisites and co-requisites/ Recommended optional programme components :
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| · Basic course in Marketing
· Basic course in Statistics (i.e. you must be familiar with issues like means, variance, t-tests and simple regression analysis).
· Sufficient knowledge of the English language in word and writing. |
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Mode of delivery (face-to-face ; distance-learning) :
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| Organization :
- 7 lectures (Theory on the abovementioned topics)
- 4 meetings (Discussion of assignments and research projects)
- 2 computer lab sessions (Data analysis skills)
- Assignments
- Students have to conducts their own small-scale research, write a report on it (max. 20 pages A4 1.5 spaced) and give a presentation.
- Written final exam
Course Planning :
Week 38 (from 20/09/07) to week 50 (till 13/12/07) (to be confirmed)
de 9h00 à 11h00 au B31 (à confirmer)
Depending on the number of students, and therefore the number of student teams, it may be possible that there will be several time-slots for the group meetings and computer lab sessions in order to give each student/team the attention they need. As much as possible we try to stick to the abovementioned times for the group meetings.
The date and time of the final exam will be made available asap (it will be between 13/12/07 and Christmas).
All materials such as lecture slides and assignments are made available via the e-campus website (http://campus.hec.ulg.ac/). |
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Recommended or required readings :
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| Syllabus / référence du livre utilisé comme base du cours / notes de cours en ligne
· The following book is obligatory:
Malhotra, N.K. & Birks, D.F (2007). Marketing Research: An Applied Approach (3rd European edition). ISBN-10: 0273706896 /ISBN-13: 9780273706892
There is also a French version of the book available:
Malhotra, N.K., Décaudin, J-M., & Bouguerra, A. (2007). Etudes Marketing avec SPSS (5e édition). ISBN-10 : 2744072303 ISBN-13 : 9782744072307
Students who use older versions of Malhotra and Birks or the French version by Malhotra, Décaudin, and Bouguerra are themselves responsible for differences with the newest version of Malhotra and Birks. The presentations must be based on Malhotra and Birks (2007), furthermore the final exam is based on Malhotra and Birks (2007)
· Lecture slides are made available approximately 1 day before the lecture. Students are advised to print them and take them to the lecture.
· A STATISTICA user guide will be made available throughout the course. Students also have the option to use SPSS for their data analysis assignments (unfortunately SPSS is not standard available via the HEC-ULg). Students who do have a copy of SPSS and who look for a user guide, I advise to use the following book.
Green, S.B.& Salkind, N.J. (2007), Using SPSS for Windows and Macintosh: Analyzing and Understanding Data.
Regarding the book by Green and Salkind older versions are also adequate. |
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Assessment methods and criteria :
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| · Assignments Student teams (approx. 5 persons) have to make assignments and conduct their own small-scale research project. The assignments, research report (max. 20 pages A4 1.5 lines spaced) and the accompanying presentation make up 50% of the final grade.
To stimulate cooperation within each team a grade is given to the entire team. Subsequently the team may decide themselves on how to divide this grade to reflect the contribution of each member. For example: a team consisting of 5 persons is given an evaluation of 8, the total amount of grades is then 5*8 = 40 points. If all people made an equal contribution, the team may decide that everyone gets 8 points. If in an extreme case, 4 people did all the work and the 5th person tried to take a free-ride, the team may decide that 4 people deserve a score of 10 and the free-rider gets zero credits.
· Final exam The other half of the final grade comes from a written exam containing multiple choice questions and one open question on data analysis.
In order to pass an individual score of 5.5 or higher on both the assignments
and the final exam is required. |
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Organizational remarks :
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| This course is offered in English. Please note that the exam and assignments (including research report and presentation) need to in English as well. |
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Contacts :
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| Dr. Sandra Streukens
sandrastreukens@hotmail.com
(ULg email address will follow asap)
Assistante: Muriel Toussirot
Muriel.Toussirot@ulg.ac.be |
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