Chapter 4 Chapter 2 Marketing Information and Research Lay the Basis for Accurate Decision-Making

Good product and marketing plans start with a thorough understanding of customer needs.Therefore, companies need reliable and sufficient information in order to produce superior value and satisfy customers.Companies also need information about competitors, resellers, and other actors and forces in the marketplace.More and more marketers see information not only as an input to making better decisions, but also as a vital strategic asset and marketing tool. Information is for decision-making, and marketing information has value only when companies use information to make better decisions.In modern enterprises, marketing managers or other marketing decision-makers need regular performance reports, latest intelligence, reports on survey results, and even some non-routine information for special occasions and on-site decisions to make marketing decisions.At the same time, the rapid development of information technology has also brought revolutionary progress in the acquisition of marketing information.For example, today's marketing managers can directly access information systems from any physical location at any time, and can obtain information from company databases or external information service companies.

In today's era of information explosion, higher requirements are put forward for information processing.Faced with massive amounts of information, the processing efficiency of enterprises is often not satisfactory, so that marketers often complain about the lack of enough appropriate information, or too much useless information.Worse, however, is that we don't always process marketing messages carefully enough to make biased decisions.The precision of marketing information processing determines the correctness of marketing decisions. The Coca-Cola Company has always adhered to the principle of "don't make trouble for the 'mother of Coke'". However, after its successful operation in 1999, it abandoned the original formula of Coke and replaced it with the sweeter and smoother New Coke.After investigation, marketing managers believe that 60% of consumers like the taste of New Coke, and simply compare it to a political candidate who gets 60% of the votes, so the new formula will win the market.But this also means that 40% of people still like the original formula, because by abandoning the old Coke, the company will hurt a large number of loyal users of the old Coke who are unwilling to make changes.

At first, New Coke sold well due to the overwhelming advertising and publicity, but sales soon began to decline, and the public's reaction was surprising.Every day companies receive countless letters and calls from angry consumers.There is even an organization called "Old Coke Users", which has launched various protests and asked Coca-Cola to reuse the old formula.At this time, the company has realized that the negligence in information processing has led to the failure of this decision. Under pressure, the company began to bring back the old Coke and called it "Classic Coke," selling it on store shelves alongside "New Coke."But "New Coke" has never been able to surpass "Classic Coke" in sales.The good news is that the company's quick corrective response avoided a greater disaster.The company resolved the crisis by increasing its promotion of "Classic Coke" and using "New Coke" as an auxiliary product.

If Coca-Cola had analyzed the survey data in a more refined and thoughtful manner, it would not have made a decision to change the formula at the beginning. Even if the company's strategy intends to launch "New Coke", it is entirely possible to implement two different formulas at the beginning. The strategy of parallel sales of Coke will prevent dissatisfaction and resistance from consumer groups, and this turmoil can also be avoided. In this information-oriented society, in the face of massive marketing information, it is very important to search and analyze the information you need. Fortunately, this is supported by the rapid development of information technology. However, the interpretation and processing of information is difficult. It is difficult for incomplete intelligent technology to solve, which requires the experience and accurate information judgment ability of decision makers.If the information cannot be processed in a precise and reasonable manner, then all the previous work on marketing information will be in vain, and the final result must be a failure.

Marketing information system refers to the personnel, equipment and procedures that can collect, analyze, evaluate and distribute the required information for marketing decision makers in a timely and accurate manner.A good marketing information system can find a balance between the information managers want and the information they really need and can get.Marketing information systems can also provide information to external partners, such as suppliers or marketing services.Even some important customers have access to limited information systems. The emergence of marketing information system has greatly improved the application efficiency of marketing information.The data in the marketing information system mainly comes from the company's internal database, marketing intelligence information and information obtained from marketing research.

The marketing activities of modern enterprises are inseparable from human, financial and material resources, especially information resources.With the continuous expansion of the scope of enterprise market activities, it is necessary to collect and process a lot of new information in the face of new environments; in addition, consumers' demands for products and services are becoming more and more diverse, which also determines In addition to the diversification trend of the market, the market information faced by enterprises is becoming more and more complex.Therefore, in order to achieve better survival and development, enterprises must establish an efficient marketing information system, improve the quality of information through systematic analysis and research, serve the business decision-making of enterprises, and improve their business capabilities and competitiveness. purpose of ability.

Hunan Jiuzhitang Co., Ltd. is a national key traditional Chinese medicine enterprise. It was founded in 1650. It is a well-known time-honored brand in China and has been listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.Such a well-established enterprise has no signs of being "old" in terms of informatization, especially its perfect marketing information system. Jiuzhitang marketing management information system includes eight subsystems including business management, warehouse management, account management, customer management, leadership inquiry, expense management, plan management, and system management, basically covering all aspects of the marketing business field.Realized the guiding ideology of marketing management based on transactions, customer-centric, and ensuring that the accounts are consistent and the accounts are consistent.Through careful and detailed customer analysis, the system can make business accountants focus on 20% of customers who can bring 80% of benefits, so as to guide, supervise and review the business.And through real-time inventory management, inventory can be effectively controlled, thereby reducing inventory loss, reducing unreasonable inventory occupation of funds, revitalizing and improving the turnover rate of funds; through data security control, over-centralized marketing management functions Appropriate separation will reduce the work pressure of the internal support department and improve the comprehensive combat effectiveness of the internal support department.

After using the marketing information system, the enterprise can register documents such as invoices, invoices, and settlement documents more than 30 times faster than the original system; the speed of query and data analysis is also much higher than before, and at the same time cooperate with up to 400 The use of multiple practical reports has reduced the time spent by the marketing center on monthly settlement by more than double.After the marketing department used this system, the original 3671 customers were concentrated into 865 customers for management, which reduced the problems of bad debts and bad debts caused by this aspect.

It can be seen from the above examples that the marketing information system, as the link connecting the enterprise and the marketing environment, plays an important role in the decision-making and business activities of the enterprise, and is also a powerful guarantee for the enterprise to improve its core competitiveness.Since different companies have different information needs, more marketing information is by no means better.In addition to the different needs of different companies, there are also many constraints in terms of cost and technology.First of all, the cost of collection and processing and analysis is high. In addition, massive information requires superb data mining technology, and if it is not applied properly, it is easy for enterprises to fall into information traps and mislead decisions, resulting in losses.

Large enterprises need to deal with a wide range of marketing information, and the amount is large, so it is troublesome to process, and important data is easily lost. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a marketing information system to efficiently process data and serve decision-making in a timely manner; for small and medium-sized enterprises Said that the establishment of a relatively simple marketing information system can also improve the quality of marketing decisions.Establishing a marketing information system is an inevitable trend for enterprises to process marketing information. Just like in winter, cotton coats and down jackets are necessary. However, what size, material, style and color to buy requires you to "tailor the clothes".

Marketing research is the systematic design, collection, analysis, and reporting of data relevant to specific marketing situations facing an organization.Companies use marketing research a lot.For example, marketing research can help marketers assess market potential and market share, understand customer satisfaction and buying behavior, and measure the effectiveness of pricing, product, distribution, and promotional activities. With the intensification of market competition, more and more enterprises pay attention to marketing research.In order for enterprises to gain a larger market share in an environment where consumer awareness continues to mature, the work of marketing research is essential.The importance of marketing research is also reflected in connecting marketers and consumers through information, identifying and defining marketing opportunities, generating, improving and evaluating marketing programs, monitoring marketing organization activities, and improving understanding of marketing activities. , to help corporate marketing managers formulate effective marketing strategies and so on. Of course, an enterprise's marketing research is an orderly activity, and its process is generally divided into four steps: first, determine the problem and research objectives, second, formulate a research plan on this basis, then implement the research plan, and finally Interpret and report findings.Using advanced statistical methods and models for further information analysis can help marketing managers make more accurate decisions. Anhui Special Wine Group is a leading enterprise in my country's super alcohol industry, and has imported a complete set of equipment and technology from France.Its main products are vodka (Vodka) and analytical grade absolute ethanol.Among them, the sales of absolute ethanol accounted for more than 50% of the country's total.Through border trade, vodka has exported 10,000 tons to Russia and other former Soviet countries, with total sales exceeding 100 million yuan.However, with the deteriorating economic situation in Russia and other former Soviet countries, the export volume has decreased year by year, and the situation is not optimistic.Ante Group judged the situation and decided to conduct network marketing research through the Internet from the second half of 1998, and on this basis to open up a broad European and American market.The group has identified three directions for marketing research: (1) Price information.Including manufacturer's quotation, wholesaler's quotation, retailer's quotation and importer's quotation. (2) Tariffs, trade policies and international trade data.Including tariffs, import quotas, licenses and other related policies, import and export trade data, and market capacity data. (3) Trade object, namely the detailed information of potential customers.Including the history, scale, strength, business scope and varieties, and contact methods of trade partners. Ante Group spent about half a year collecting information on the above three aspects, and had a basic understanding of the world's vodka trade situation, and grasped the price trend of world vodka transactions, and clearly recognized the Ante brand vodka The grade level of the wine is also contacted with hundreds of importers and distributors. It can be said that it has basically grasped the pulse of the international vodka market and successfully completed the marketing research work.These tasks have laid a good foundation for future network marketing work such as online negotiations and selecting agents. Ante Group has taken the first step of "going abroad" through successful marketing research, paving the way for future marketing strategies.It can be seen that marketing research is the starting point of corporate marketing activities, and its role is very important.Marketing research is mainly carried out for market peers, that is, industries or industries, with the purpose of grasping the marketing trends and strategies of competitors, as well as the marketing tools that can be used for oneself, such as channels, media, etc., so as to provide a basis for marketing management. Provides a basis for investors to make, evaluate and improve marketing decisions. Generally speaking, the content of marketing research and research mainly includes: research on market demand and changing trends, research on purchase motivation, product research, distribution research, market competition research, macro-environment research, etc. "Adapting measures to local conditions", what kind of problem you want to solve, you should formulate and implement a marketing research plan accordingly. The marketing decision-making of modern marketing activities is based on the market demand; therefore, the market demand status information is an important content that the company must investigate.Including what consumers need, when they need it, and under what conditions they are willing to accept marketing products or services. Market demand also refers to the sum of consumer demand in a certain product (service) market, which is not only the sum of quantity, but also includes factors such as quality, performance, and packaging; (service) demand, including the demand for products (services) that have not yet been developed, produced or put into the market.There is also a time factor in market demand, that is, the point in time when consumers are willing to consume when they have the ability to pay for purchases.To be precise, only the demand that consumers have the ability to consume and are willing to consume can be included in the existing market demand; while the potential market demand should be counted at a certain point in the future, for example, when When a company launches a new product in the future, the fact that consumers have both spending power and willingness should be included in the market demand for the new product. In actual research, potential market demand is more valuable.Before conducting market demand analysis, we first need to determine the geographical area and target market, and then select samples from the target population according to a certain scientific sampling method, conduct research on them, obtain relevant data information such as their purchase needs, and finally use relevant The mathematical model is used to calculate the demand of the entire market from the sample demand, which is the general process of market demand analysis.However, what is generally covered by market demand?The requirements analysis report below is a good example. The US domestic stone market is currently the largest stone consumption market in the world, accounting for about 20% of the world stone consumption market.Due to the restriction of relevant laws in the United States and the underdeveloped stone industry in the country, the domestic stone consumption market is basically satisfied by imports. The stone import volume of the United States has ranked first in the world for many years, and 80% of domestic stone demand is from Rely on foreign imports. At present, the stone consumption demand in the United States is mainly based on granite and marble (including travertine and some limestone), supplemented by sandstone, slate, quartz stone, etc. The proportion of each stone type is: granite 50%, marble 45% others About 5% of stone.Although granite is currently dominant, the share ratio of marble and granite is constantly shrinking. According to experts' estimates, the market share of marble will expand to about 55% around 2015, while that of granite will drop to 45%. Because marble is a mid-to-high-end product in the American stone consumer market, its terminal retail price is relatively high, so although the domestic consumer market in the United States has been hit by the financial turmoil, the demand is sluggish, and the purchasing power has declined, but consumers with low purchasing power turn to buy Inexpensive tiles, or the use of cheap granite, so the demand for low-end marble products in the US domestic market has not increased, and there has been a downward trend.Basically, the consumption of marble is still dominated by mid-to-high-end consumer demand, the price is relatively stable, and has not received a major impact, while the market sales of marble have been affected, but the impact is not significant, just a small decline. Through the analysis case of American marble market demand, it can be seen that the content of market demand is structural, including demand analysis of various product types, industry upstream and downstream market demand analysis and related impact analysis, market environment factor analysis and impact analysis on demand, etc. . A complete market demand analysis process should include the stages of market demand research, data collation and analysis, and then use the demand analysis results as the basis for product development and project decision-making, and can also be used to guide the production and sales of enterprises.In the analysis process, the most important thing is to find out the various factors that affect the market demand, and to demonstrate the size of the influence of each factor from the data; to deduce the results of the demand analysis from the data, it is also necessary to be able to theoretically give A reasonable explanation even requires a scientific forecast analysis of market demand. Therefore, market demand analysis is actually a pulse on the market situation of new products or services in the market.Compared with the unpredictable life, the market has a relatively stable development law, so its prediction and analysis are often much more accurate, and it can even be said that this is a necessary job, otherwise, you will lose before you fight The opponent has a game. Marketing intelligence is the systematic collection and analysis of publicly available information about competitors and changes in the marketing environment.The purpose of obtaining marketing intelligence is to make better strategic decisions, obtain and track competitors' actions and provide early warning of opportunities and dangers. The shopping mall is like a battlefield. On the battlefield, if an army has no intelligence information, it is difficult to imagine that it can win the battle. The same is true in the shopping mall. If there is no intelligence collection and analysis, it is difficult to survive in the fierce market competition. of.Modern society can be said to be a society dominated by information, and the quality of information processing has also become a decisive link.More and more companies are busy finding out what their competitors are doing and what the market environment is like. The means of obtaining marketing intelligence are also diverse, for example, temporary tests on the company's employees, product analysis on competitors, interviews with customers, using the Internet to search for relevant information, etc. What's more, sending commercial spies to infiltrate competitors to search for information.There are endless ways to collect intelligence, legal and desperate, all in this intriguing commercial struggle.Accurate and effective intelligence information is not only the key to the success of corporate decision-making, but also has a profound impact on corporate strategic planning. Xerox is an American document management and processing technology company. Its products include printers, copiers, digital printing equipment, and related services and supply of consumables. Its expertise in document production and management is unparalleled.Because of Xerox's success with office optical equipment, especially copiers, there is even an informal habit in American English of using its brand name "Xerox" directly as a verb or noun substitute for "photocopy". Xerox also has its own advantages in collecting marketing intelligence. In the competition with its old competitor Kodak, the two parties have exhausted their minds in marketing intelligence related work in order to seize the market: The Xerox technicians learned from conversations with Kodak copier salespeople that Kodak salespeople were being trained to service Xerox products.The Xerox employee reported the news to his boss, who in turn passed the news to Xerox's intelligence unit.Kodak used the leads as a classified ad, placing new scouts with experience with Xerox products, and Xerox verified Kodak's plans to service Xerox copiers, code-named Ulysses.To protect this lucrative service business, Xerox devised a Total Satisfaction Guarantee program that allowed copiers to be returned for any reason as long as Xerox performed the service work.By the time Kodak launched Project Ulysses, Xerox had been promoting the project for three months. Mastering the initiative of intelligence can take the lead in strategy. This is how Xerox won Kodak.The sources of intelligence are extremely wide, not only from suppliers, resellers and customers, but also from insiders of the company, and even from observing opponents.Information, whether public or non-public, should be collected as long as it is related to the company or industry.For example, rival annual reports, business publications, trade exhibits, and news reports. However, often the non-public intelligence information that is not in the hands of many people is of greater value, and this is the intelligence that companies are desperately trying to obtain. Of course, while you are analyzing the state of the industry and the future movements of your competitors through the collected intelligence, others are likely to be doing the same to you.In order to prevent opponents from grasping information that is not good for them, all parties will also create some false information that "confuses the audience", and this cycle repeats, which makes the information on the entire market extremely complicated, and poses a challenge to the collection of intelligence, especially competitor intelligence. higher requirements. Driven by profit, while marketing intelligence is showing explosive growth, some moral problems have also emerged.Moral behavior often affects word-of-mouth. Therefore, in today’s society where intelligence and information sources are so diverse, the moral impact of intelligence collection cannot be ignored. Some bright methods may consume more costs, but standing on the company’s Considering the level of reputation and maintaining a fair competition atmosphere in the industry, why is it not worth spending these costs? Information gathered through Internet databases, marketing intelligence, and marketing research often requires further analysis, and managers need help applying this information to marketing problems and decision-making.Marketing information is only valuable if the business uses the information to make better decisions. After having sufficient marketing information, the next step is to organize the data information, and then analyze and use it.Usually, in order to mine the interrelationships and credibility among various sets of data, it is necessary to use mathematical statistical analysis methods.In the face of these complicated data and calculation methods, fortunately, there are special statistical software, which makes these calculation and analysis work maintain high efficiency and accuracy. With the development of IT technology and statistics, many current statistical software for information analysis even have functions that can help marketers make the best decisions. Sales to make scientific forecasts, etc.Of course, marketing information analysis serves applications, and one of the very important application areas is customer relationship management (CRM), which is used to interpret and apply a large amount of individual customer data in the database to maintain and manage customer relationships . FedEx Group provides customers and enterprises all over the world with a series of comprehensive services covering transportation, e-commerce and business operations.As a prestigious corporate brand, FedEx Group provides a set of comprehensive business application solutions through the operation mode of mutual competition and coordinated management, making its annual revenue as high as 32 billion US dollars.In addition, FedEx Group pays great attention to the needs of customers and society, and has been rated as the most respected and reliable employer in the world for many times. FedEx has launched a multimillion-dollar CRM campaign in an effort to cut costs and augment its customer data to cross-sell products and high-quality service to potential or existing customers.Using Clarify Inc.'s CRM software, the new system provides each of FedEx's more than 3,300 sales force with a comprehensive view of each customer, detailing each customer's needs and proposing capabilities. recommendations that meet their needs.For example, if a customer who does a lot of international shipping calls to arrange a shipment, a sales representative will view the detailed customer history from his or her computer screen, assess the customer's needs and determine the best local offer.Worrying sales reps can turn to this high tech to help.FedEx offers 220 different services -- from logistics to shipping to acting as a customer broker -- often making it difficult for salespeople to determine the best way for customers.The new CRM system will also help FedEx to carry out promotions and ensure the quality of potential leading services. Clarify's software analyzes each market segment, pinpoints the market's "fragrant spots" and calculates how much money companies and individual salespeople are making in which segments. FedEx's new CRM system is a tool for analyzing and using marketing information. It can be seen from it that the terminal of marketing information is customer-oriented, and its ultimate purpose is to provide customers with better services.For enterprises, the most valuable assets are of course customers, but establishing and maintaining customer relationships is a lengthy process, and requires the support of relevant IT technologies, so that customer relationship management can be implemented efficiently. The implementation of customer relationship management also depends on the analysis process of customer data information. Accurate data and scientific analysis are important conditions for customer relationship management.It can be seen that the analysis and use of marketing information are two closely linked links, and the results of the analysis will directly lead to the results of the use.An excellent company always has its own set of scientific methods in the analysis and use of marketing information.It is also a trend of modern marketing management to fully apply the achievements of scientific and technological development to the related work of marketing information processing. Most marketing research benefits both the client company and its customers.Through marketing research, companies can better understand the needs of consumers, so they can provide more satisfactory products and services.However, inappropriate use of marketing research can also harm or distress consumers. In today's society, in order to master richer marketing information, companies have also come up with endless research methods, such as online questionnaire surveys, intercepted visits on the road, door-to-door distribution of questionnaires, and even adopt some high-tech methods to record people unconsciously. behavioral information, etc.For marketing research, most consumers hold a positive attitude. After all, companies also want to provide people with better products and services. Therefore, some people will actively cooperate and express their opinions and ideas, but some people, They hold distrust or even disgust attitudes towards some research activities. Most of them are out of self-privacy protection. In addition, some companies often expose negative events such as poor protection of customers' personal information and even selling customer information. This part of the population concerns appear to be justified.Therefore, companies need to make more efforts to protect customer privacy. At the same time, industry associations and other related organizations also need to make fair and clear regulations on the ethics of marketing research in order to create a good moral environment. Some companies, including IBM, AT&T, American Express, DoubleClick and Microsoft, have appointed a "top privacy officer" whose job it is to protect the privacy of consumers with whom the companies do business.At least 100 U.S. companies now employ such privacy officers and the number is expected to grow rapidly.Microsoft's top privacy officer says his job is to make the data decisions the company follows, to make sure that every program the company creates improves protection of customers' privacy, and to inform and educate company employees about privacy issues and people's concerns in this regard. The problem. Sally Cowan, director of privacy at American Express, believes that any company that deals with customer information must take privacy seriously."Privacy is not a hot-button issue at Amex," she says. Amex developed a formal set of privacy guidelines in 1991, and in 1998 it became one of the first companies to post a privacy policy on its website.This tendency to protect customer privacy has led Amex to introduce new services that protect the privacy of consumers when they purchase items online using the Amex card.American Express sees privacy as a way to gain an edge—like something that leads consumers to choose one company over another. The establishment of a "top privacy officer" by American companies is a good measure to prevent ethical issues. At least it shows that they attach great importance to customer privacy issues, which is more conducive to maintaining customer relationships.It can be seen that raising customer privacy protection to a strategic level is a wise move for maintaining long-term customer relationships. Of course, it is difficult to find a pure "pollution-free" environment, at least in the shopping malls. There are always some companies that speculate and use the personal information of customers obtained from research to conduct "harassing" sales to customers, or even use other Weaknesses of "deceptive" marketing will not only hurt the majority of consumers, but also increase the public's resistance to research activities, making it difficult for other companies to carry out some "regular" research activities smoothly.From the perspective of the entire market, this trend will increase some unnecessary costs, which will hinder the healthy development of the industry. How to create a healthy "pollution-free" marketing environment?The protection of the natural environment needs to be started by everyone. Similarly, for the research environment of an industry, each company needs to lead by example and jointly maintain it. Of course, industry regulators must formulate corresponding laws and regulations to "eliminate pollution". In this way In order to form an effective and fair competition marketing research environment.