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MBA Marketing Research Project Guidelines

This document communicates the guidelines and expectations for the marketing research project.Additional details may be provided depending on the nature of your particular project.

A Consumer Behavior Focus

The vast majority of marketing research dollars are spent in an effort to describe, explain, and/orpredict consumer behavior. The reason is simple – consumers are a complex phenomenon – farmore complex than any business model, financial market, tax code, supply chain, or organizational chart. The truth is that most companies and organizations are terrified that they don’t really know who their customers or potential customers are or what these customers “really” want. There is an underlying fear that competitors understand the customer better and, in doing so, will serve them better. Keeping up with consumers is hard. Their perceptions, emotions, beliefs, and preferences are constantly evolving as they navigate myriad cultural, social, spiritual, physical, and cognitive environments. No degree of logic, expertise, or experience can provide a magical portal into their hearts and minds. If we hope to create and nurture relationships with consumers, we must stay close to them, interact with them, listen to them, and learn how to respond to their needs appropriately. Only research can provide organizations with the requisite information.

Accordingly, we shall focus our projects on elucidating aspects of consumer behavior. Someprojects may have a more applied focus, such as understanding how consumers respond to onlineconsumer reviews or how gift cards impact spending behaviors. Other projects may focus more on improving the tools we use to try to understand consumers (i.e., “research on research”). Research firms and departments routinely conduct both kinds of research, as managerial projects pay the bills and “research on research” creates and enhances one’s ability to produce value-added insights in managerial projects.

Most, if not all of your projects will execute an experimental or quasi-experimental methodologyand will employ some form of qualitative and/or archival research. (We will do questionnaire development as a class). The types of data analysis used may vary significantly from project to project depending on the research questions at hand.

I. Overview of Project ActivitiesBelow is an overview of the activities that comprise the project. This is not an outline of theproject report but rather an organized list of things that we will be doing to produce the report. It is intended to give you a sense of the scope and nature of the project.

A. Specify the research problem and objectives.• All good research improves our knowledge by filling a gap, enhancing accuracy, orestablishing boundary conditions. Thus, our first task is to identify the specific ways in which our current knowledge is deficient. In other words, why would our client/manager want to allocate precious and scarce resources to our project?• Having identified a knowledge deficiency, we need to propose a solution for addressing

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it. This is a focusing task. One of the most common problems in research is a lack of focus, which leads to trying to do too much. When we find ourselves spending a lot of time wondering what the right methods and measures are, it is a sure sign that we lack focus.

• Remember that the purpose of research is not to make decisions but rather to inspire decision makers. If a decision maker wants us to produce research and make decisions, we are no longer researchers but instead management consultants and should expect to be compensated at a higher rate.

B. Design the key study or studies.• All research ultimately seeks to describe, explain, and/or predict something. This “something” is typically an outcome or effect that is of managerial interest. For example, a manager who wants to make a decision about the type of background music to play in a retail space may hypothesize that “higher tempo music makes people walk faster, which leads to less time for shopping, which leads to less time for deliberative decision making, which leads to lower sales of high involvement products.” To aid the manager, we may seek to design a study in which we measure shopping time, product type, and sales.• Just as we seek to observe or measure outcomes of interest, we are also interested indetermining the impact or influence of marketing decision variables and other “causal”

factors. For example, in the preceding example we might systematically vary the tempo, volume, and/or genre of the music to better understand consumer responses. In some cases we can not actually vary a factor (e.g., gender) but we may still think about it as a potential causal factor of interest.• There are many ways to carry out the same research idea. Thus, we must make choicesand specify a particular study procedure. That is, we must figure out the logistics ofrunning the study. It should be very clear in our minds how the study will transpire,moment by moment. As multiple persons will probably be gathering data, it is importantto ensure uniformity of the protocol. We also need to understand or anticipate theinfluence of various “contextual” factors that are not of focal interest but neverthelessmay influence the outcomes of interest (e.g., lighting, questionnaire wording or modality,researcher-respondent interaction, etc.)

C. Design the collection method (i.e., study materials).• Typically, the data collection methods will contain both the stimuli (i.e., words, pictures, sounds, or objects that we create and/or muster in order to vary causal factors of interest) and themeasured outcomes of interest. We must think very carefully about all of the data that isrequired to test our ideas, including various participant factors (e.g., demographics,psychographics, individual differences).• Just as important, we must think about the analyses we are planning to run. If we don’tmeasure the responses in the right way, we may not be able to analyze them or we maybe forced to use crude techniques that only partially answer our questions.

D. Sample the relevant population.• As best as we can, we will administer our questionnaires to people that are appropriatefor the study at hand. In most cases, a minimum of 75-100 respondents is necessary tohave a chance to extract insights. Some study designs may necessitate a larger sample.

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If using online blogs, chat groups, etc., we want to be able to document them well and make sure they are relevant.• We will discuss the much misunderstood concept of sample “representativeness.”• You may collect data online or offline.

E. Analyze the data and write the report.

II. Summary of Deliverables

A. Report (75% of product grade)• Hard copy, typed, double-spaced, 12 font. (see section III for suggested outline and level of detail).• Soft copy of the hard copy in word processing format (i.e., no pdfs or other image files)• Grammar and spelling are important/count.

B. PowerPoint presentation (25% of project grade)• We will be creating a “deck” of slides that could be used to present the research tomanagement or a client.• You will be presenting the findings in class.• Visual appeal and spelling are important/count.

C. Supporting Materials (must be turned in to receive project grade)• SPSS file containing study data if doing a survey. Printouts of blogs, chat groups, focus groups depth interviews, and electronic copies (word docs) and listing of web addresses.

Experience-based tips on getting the report done:• Write/draft the report as you go! Don’t wait until you are done with all of the data collectionand analysis. The details will not be as fresh and you will have many other things on yourplate. Teams who have followed this advice in the past have not only done very well, theyhave completed the project earlier and with smiles on their faces. Happiness is a choice.• Everyone should be involved in the data analysis in some form. Managing and interpretingthe data constitutes the major, value-added activity in the project. The world is full of goodideas, interesting data, and poor analysis.• Division of labor and specialization can sometimes be a good thing. Just make sure everyoneis comfortable with the way it is divided. There will be a peer evaluation.

III. Generic Outline for the Written Report

A generic, but detailed outline for the report is provided in this section. A couple of othercomments are provided below.• Artful, effective deviations in structure and content are welcome.• The expected length is 15-20 pages (double-spaced, excluding appendices). It is possible towrite an effective report that is shorter. In contrast, reports that are longer than this areusually lacking in cogency and clarity.• It is not good practice to include reams of output in the appendices. Instead, this sends up ared flag that the report contains uncritical or unfocused analysis. All output should be clearly

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labeled and referenced in the written portion of the report. Otherwise, it does not belong inthe report.

A. Introduction (1-2 pages)• What is the general area of research?• Why is the research necessary?• What will be accomplished in this research?• Hint at the results (tease the reader – make them want to read more)

B. Background and Theory (1-2 pages)• Review relevant prior research. What do we already know about this topic?• We are primarily interested in peer-reviewed literature, not unsubstantiated (i.e., nonempirical)opinions or commercially motivated observations in magazine articles orblogs.o The best place to start is Business Source Premier. You can search for many typesof articles and, in most cases, access pdfs if you are on the BU networko The next place to look is Google Scholar. Sometimes you can dig up an article thatisn’t in Business Source Premier.o Another good place to look is Web of Science.• Building on what we learn, we can develop our own theory about why things happen.Based on our theory, we can state some expectations or hypothesis in terms of the studyfactors and responses. Note that we are making a distinction between our explanation ofsomething and the data we will be using to test the explanation. The former is abstractand logical while the latter is concrete and factual.

C. Methods (3-5 pages)1. Participants.o From whom did you collect the data?o How were they recruited to participate?o Provide some descriptive statistics.2. Procedure and Materialso Describe how the study was conducted. The focus here is on logistics. Give enoughdetail so that the reader gets a sense of “what happened”o Describe any materials that are pertinent to the study (e.g., pictures or stories usedas stimuli). Provide justifications for material choices where appropriate.3. Designo This is where you state the formal design in terms of factors and response variables.o Indicate exactly how the factors are manipulated and how you assigned participantsto receive the manipulations (e.g., random assignment)

4. Measureso Describe the response measures (scales and observations) and any other measuresthat were taken.o Provide evidence of the reliability and validity of the measures.

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D. Results (4-5 pages)1. Manipulation checks. Were the factors varied as intended? What evidence do we havethat this is the case? It is important to have some evidence so that we don’t end upwondering if non-significant effects were due to failed manipulations rather than poormeasures, an underpowered sample, or an incorrect theory.2. Tests of theory/hypotheseso This is where we want to report analyses of the data from the main study designo It may help to organize the analysis according to the response measureso Report all necessary statistics. In many cases a table may be desirable as a summaryo Where possible, complement the analysis with a graphical depiction of the datao Do not editorialize. That is, do not comment on whether the results are “good” or“bad” or what the potential implications are. The results section should be objectiveand factual. Let the data tell its own story in this section.o Be sure to indicate where the data are consistent or inconsistent with the researchhypotheses/expectations

E. Discussion (1-2 pages)• Summarize the key results• Reiterate for the reader why the research is necessary and important

F. Implications (1-2 pages)• Given knowledge of our results, what are the implications for other researchers ormanagers who may be affected by our findings?

G. Limitations and Future Research (1-2 pages)• All research has limitations because there are only so many factors that can be examinedat one time.• Focus on limitations that are unique to this study as opposed to philosophical issues thatcould be applied to virtually any inquiry.• Be sure to maintain a distinction between potential and actual limitations.• Limitations usually present an opportunity for future research to improve our knowledge.Discuss any particularly promising avenues for future research to advance your inquiry.• What would be your advice for researchers thinking about running a study similar toyours? For example, were there any special challenges in terms of measurement orlogistics or stimulus construction?• Given our likely time and budget constraints, the samples may be limited in terms of size(sampling error) and representation (non-sampling error). To what extent are weconcerned about these factors in terms of our own data?o Hint 1: sample size impacts the power (sensitivity) of statistical techniques to detecteffectso Hint 2: sample representativeness does not mean that your respondents mustphysically or demographically resemble the population of interest. These variablesare often completely irrelevant. What matters are the dependent variables…do yourrespondents resemble the population in terms of the processes underlying thespecific responses gathered?• What notable observations, if any, can we make about respondents’ reactions or

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behaviors during data collection (i.e., respondent-based non-sampling error)?H. Appendices• Copy of stimuli and/or questionnaire used to generate and collect data• Coding sheet (i.e., the “key” for getting the variables and data from the questionnaire tothe SPSS data file)• Other selected output that is too large to place in the body of the report itself

IV. PowerPoint Slide Deck

Follow the basic outline of the written report, but be very selective in terms of content and detail.There are two important reasons for this.• First, design the presentation to be about 20 minutes long. This corresponds to the typicalmanager’s or client’s attention span for research results : )• Second, in order to be interesting and effective, the presentation should focus more on whatyou found and less on how you found it (this is good advice for any type of researchpresentation). Remember, the intended audience may be fairly strong in terms of analyticalthinking, but not necessarily well-versed in the specific techniques being presented.Presentation Assessment (dimensions weighted equally)A. Presentation quality: how well the presentation communicates. A good presentation is onewhere the recipient is provided with good transitions between ideas and doesn’t have towork hard to understand the main points. Use diagrams and pictures wherever possible inplace of numbers and in place of long chains of logic.B. Content quality: the in-depth thinking underlying the analysis and recommendations;ability to include only the most pertinent issues in the presentation.C. Use of the time limit: Tailor the level of detail to the time limit. Simply adhering to the timelimit is not sufficient. We could, in theory, adhere to any time limit by rushing through anover-prepared presentation or by dragging through an under-prepared presentation.