Marketing Research (MRSH1-CE)

Targeting marketing managers, researchers, and analysts, this advanced course offers an overview of online market research methodology and application. Examine how qualitative and quantitative data is collected, analyzed, and applied. Topics include data collection tools, such as e-mail surveys, online focus groups, and downloadable interactive surveys; Internet panels; feedback banners; newsgroups; bulletin boards; website activity research and analysis; questionnaire design; customer and demographic segmentation; concept testing; and analysis of results.

Gain insight into the specific factors that lead to focus group success. Learn strategies and techniques for staging effective group sessions––and planning and execution procedures that ensure a quality experience. Discover what draws consumers and professionals to a marketing message or new product idea and what turns them off. Learn how to anticipate and avoid pitfalls, accurately interpret and use results, and manage the process. Develop winning strategies and marketing campaigns by learning how to use focus groups to solve problems.

The market research industry is experiencing a dramatic evolution driven by new communications technologies, new social media habits, globalization, and profound economic pressure to stay competitive. Marketers are seeking ways to use market research to stay closer to their target audiences through social media observation, ethnography, and natural and structured communities. Learn how these strategies help set clear goals for your company's market research efforts, to select research providers and methods to obtain your goals, and to communicate research in ways that inspire action and results. Case studies, texts, articles, and online demonstrations introduce both traditional and leading-edge market research methods.

Turn research findings into business solutions. Whether you already are a market researcher or you want to conduct your own research studies, this introductory course will help you to deliver successful results. Learn how to recruit respondents, to field focus groups, to conduct surveys (online and offline), to moderate groups, to facilitate group exercises, and to design questionnaires. Delve into sampling theory, data analysis, and interpretation. Discuss how to present findings effectively. Develop business cases, gather secondary data, and design both qualitative (focus groups) and quantitative (surveys) research. This class is an excellent introduction to more specialized e-marketing research courses.

This course is designed for marketers, product managers, and advertisers who want to know how to build a successful market research program and what C-suite executives look for in approving budgets. Topics include writing a request for proposal, evaluating market research firms, scoping the project, building return on investment, qualitative and quantitative methods, reporting and analysis, how to best communicate and execute findings, and new technologies and methods in market research. Learn how to transform research data into an implementation strategy and discover what it takes to find the most qualified research partner to obtain the best results for marketing programs.

To succeed in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace, understanding your customer and prospective customer is not an option—it is a necessity. As marketing becomes more complex, analyzing consumer behavior and tailoring custom market research solutions to consumers are critical to success as a researcher, marketer, or brand strategist. This course, using lectures, case studies, online sources, video, collaborative team assignments, and more, is designed to increase your perspective on market research and marketing in both the traditional and digital realms, as well as on all the latest innovations in market research. Discover how cultural, demographic, social, personal, economic, ritual, neural, and psychological factors influence consumer behavior and thus brand analysis and response. Learn best practices for analyzing and predicting consumer behavior, and become proficient at integrating breakthrough market research with successful branding for today’s marketplace and the marketplace of the future.

While marketers strive to develop strategies that resonate with customers, product managers are concerned with product launches, packaging, and placement. Marketing researchers must design and deliver the appropriate tools to meet the needs of both. Learn methodologies for the use of data integration, infusion, and collection; database marketing; concept tests; segmentation analysis; perceptual mapping; formats for pre- and post-tests; and web activity analysis. Discuss how to organize content, to plan a program, and to make informed decisions that lead to stronger marketing strategies and campaigns.

This advanced course is for individuals who want to develop specialized skills in digital analytics. Become skilled at translating market research data into decision-making information for managers. This course examines how to use product design, promotion, and pricing to create an analysis plan that links research data to marketing questions. Learn how to tabulate results, to prepare charts and tables, to summarize findings, and to write and present reports. Topics include working with summary statistics, crosstabs, significance tests, and correlations; specifying objectives; using standard software to present data in easy-to-digest formats; extracting conclusions from raw data; making recommendations; and reviewing alternative audiovisual presentations.

Learn how businesses, organizations, and individuals can use futuring techniques to produce stated outcomes for long-term results. This course prepares marketers for a more productive future, regardless of internal or external business factors. Using primary and secondary research methodologies, examine classical futuring techniques, including scenario planning, trend and product forecasting, crisis preparedness, and transformation and hyper-change sensitivity. Develop critical thinking, listening, and observational skills. Increase your ability to enhance planning today to better anticipate future obstacles and opportunities.