Course Description

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Regardless of what business you are in, a must-have skill for any organization is the ability to understand how to use learnings from marketing research to achieve business goals. But marketing research is more than just surveys and focus groups – it also includes publicly available information such as census or industry data, as well as articles/research studies published on the internet.  In this course you will learn what marketing research is, different methods for doing your own marketing research, and about what types of marketing research information is already out there.

Most importantly, you will learn how to use and interpret marketing research information – for example, how to use marketing research findings to identify the best prospects, or determine which marketing campaign or product offer can maximize sales. Whether you manage a restaurant, have a traditional brick-and-mortar store, or work in a services industry like tax preparation, understanding marketing research principles can help you better understand your customers, and thus help you expand your business.

This course will also include basic information on how to run your own focus group, or write your own survey, and will teach you how to interpret data tables, as well as explain some of the statistical terms you may be familiar with, such as margin of error, sample size, and correlation – what they mean and what they can teach you about your customers. The course will include examples for learners to work thru, and the instructor will be available weekly on Zoom to review key concepts and answer questions.  

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, learners will be able to:

• Define marketing research and understand the different methods available
• Find and use publicly available marketing research information, including vetting it for relevance/bias
• Read and interpret information in data tables and databases
• Conduct basic focus groups and write short surveys
• Understand how to interpret findings from confidence intervals, correlations, and regression models
• Create representative and appropriately sized samples for their own marketing research efforts
• Understand what types of marketing research vendors are out there, and what each can do for them

Course Outline

• Session 1: Intro to marketing research, review of different methods, review of publicly available marketing research information and how to use it/interpret it
• Session 2: Brief review of how to conduct a focus group/how to write survey questions - can include a guest speaker
• Session 3: Review of how to read data tables/data bases - examples of how to use data they might already have in house, as well as how to interpret tabular data (Excel format) from an example survey
• Session 4: Stats/math principles - what is the right sample size, how many contacts are needed, & how to interpret confidence intervals, correlations, and regression model findings

About the Instructor

Aaron S. Terry is a Lecturer in Marketing & Marketing Research at the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business at Elon University. Aaron spent 7 years conducting marketing research for Yankelovich, Inc. on behalf of clients such as HSN, The New York Times, Pfizer, Amgen, Wells Fargo, & Aetna, and also brings 12 years of experience in the IT/data analysis space, including statistical analysis at Mayo Clinic and serving as a Data & Technology Advisor at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina.