Consumer insight is just one aspect of market research. As qualitative research, consumer insight relies on interpretation of consumers’ emotional responses to a brand or product, and the meanings they evoke. A systematic collection and analysis of market information includes other factors, such as product testing, market size, segmentation, etc., which measure the market in a quantitative style.

For this week’s Assignment, assume a product manager has asked you, the marketing director, to help her understand the role of consumer insights in relation to other forms of market research. She is trying to figure out the best way to position a new product. During your conversation, she had several questions that she wanted to learn more about:

How is consumer insight research different from other types of market research?
Does consumer insight research have a role in helping the marketing director determine how to position the brand? Why? How?
What do Macdonald, Wilson, and Konus (2012) in this week’s Learning Resources suggest would be beneficial regarding the product manager’s dilemma?

By day 7

With these questions in mind, the marketing director has asked you to prepare a memo of this week that will help her make decisions related to consumer insights and their role in market research. She has asked you to be sure to provide evidence and examples to support and illustrate the role and relative value of consumer insights.

General Guidance on Assignment Length: Your Assignment will typically be 2–3 pages (1–2 pages if single spaced), excluding a title page and references. Refer to the Week 1 Assignment Rubric for grading elements and criteria. Your Instructor will use the rubric to assess your work.

Submission and Grading Information

To submit your completed Assignment for review and grading, do the following:

Please save your Assignment using the naming convention “WK2Assgn+last name+first initial.(extension)” as the name.
Click the Week 1 Assignment Rubric to review the Grading Criteria for the Assignment.
Click the Week 1 Assignment You will also be able to “View Rubric” for grading criteria from this area.
Next, from the Attach File area, click on the Browse My Computer Find the document you saved as “WK2Assgn+last name+first initial.(extension)” and click Open.
If applicable: From the Plagiarism Tools area, click the checkbox for I agree to submit my paper(s) to the Global Reference Database.
Click on the Submitbutton to complete your submission.

Project: Market Research Proposal

Beginning in Week 2, you will develop your Market Research Proposal, which will build on the topics of the course.

Imagine that you are positioned as a marketing research manager assigned to provide insights to senior management regarding new revenue opportunities for your company. In order for you to provide such insights, you and your team will need to undertake a market research project using existing data sources through “desk research” (i.e., secondary data) as well as obtaining new information specific to the product you are working on (i.e., primary data).

For example, if you worked for Apple, and management asked the question, “How can we increase sales of the iPad?”, as the marketing research manager, you would begin by pulling existing information together about customers and perhaps customers of competitors, current sales of iPads, and current sales of competing products and so on. Once you have put this information together and developed your insights, there would likely be many questions unanswered. At this point you would design a research project to obtain new, primary information in order to better understand the market and the prospective customers so you can recommend actions for the management to take in order to increase sales.

Primary research efforts cost money and time. In order for management to approve allocating these resources, as the marketing research manager you need to develop a market research proposal for management to review and approve. In creating the proposal, you may need input from other people or departments, and this input should increase the value of the proposal. But, the proposal is submitted with your name attached to it, and whether management accepts or rejects it will reflect only on you.

Creating a Market Research Proposal is the term Final Project. You will be the sole author of the proposal but, as in the real world, you will also be assigned to a team via the Peer Forum. Your team members will provide feedback to you on the proposal, which you can accept or ignore, and you will provide feedback to each of them.

Refer to the “Final Project Overview: Market Research Proposal” document in the Learning Resources for a detailed description of the proposal requirements.

Week2 Requirements:

Day 5 – Post project topic to forum.

Day 7 – Provide your peer feedback on forum.