ABSTRACT
In Chapter 1 we described marketing research as producing the information managers need to make marketing decisions. In that chapter we also listed numerous examples of how the results of marketing research can inform marketing decisions such as in concept/product testing, market segmentation, competitive analysis, customer satisfaction studies, etc. These, and many other examples of marketing research studies, illustrate the need for measurement-“rules for assigning numbers to objects in such a way as to represent quantities of attributes.”1 Several things we should note about this definition:
1 Not all of what researchers do involves measurement. Researchers are interested in generating information, which leads to knowledge, which leads to better decisions. Sometimes that information is in the form of insights from exploratory research studies such as focus groups, in-depth interviews, projective research, and similar methods. For these techniques we are generating information, but we are not “assigning numbers to objects,” so we are not “measuring.” As we have said before, information does not have to have numbers attached to it to have value, and we are dangerously oversimplifying our analysis when we favor information with numbers over that without, simply because it has the appearance of being “hard evidence.”
