Table Of ContentThe Market Research Toolbox
Fourth Edition
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The Market Research Toolbox
A Concise Guide for Beginners
Fourth Edition
Edward F. McQuarrie
Santa Clara University
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Contents
Preface
Part I: Introduction
1. Nature and Characteristics of Market Research
2. Planning for Market Research
Part II: Archival Research
3. Secondary Research
4. Big Data
Part III: Qualitative Research
5. Customer Visits
6. The Focus Group
7. Interview Design
8. Qualitative Sampling and Data Analysis
Part IV: Quantitative Research
9. Survey Research
10. Questionnaire Design
11. Experimentation
12. Conjoint Analysis
13. Sampling for Quantitative Research
14. Quantitative Data Analysis
Part V: The Big Picture
15. Combining Research Techniques Into Research Strategies
16. The Limits of Market Research
Index
About the Author
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Preface
This book is aimed at managers and business people. I assume that however accomplished in
your own field—computer engineering, perhaps—and however experienced in business, you
approach the topic of market research as a beginner. The aim, then, is an initial orientation, a
guided tour of the topic—an overview.
Until this book came along, the manager seeking such a briefing had few good options: (1)
purchase a bona fide market research textbook, up to 1,000 pages in length, and try to extract
what you need; (2) purchase a series of small volumes on specific market research techniques,
aimed at specialists and often written at an advanced level, and try to integrate these accounts
on your own; (3) put your faith in a consultant and their research technique of choice; or (4)
wing it.
The goal, then, is a thin volume intended to provide an overview to the interested reader
seeking a place to begin. My assumption is that you need to get your bearings (What is
conjoint analysis anyway?), or maybe to conduct some market research (Would a focus group
make sense here?), or perhaps to interpret a market research effort that someone else has
championed (Can I trust the results of this survey?).
I want to emphasize that this book is written primarily for decision makers. In tone, manner,
and approach, the envisioned reader is a manager who has to decide whether to do market
research, what objectives to pursue, and what specific kind of research to implement. This is
not a standard textbook, as a glance through the pages will make clear: it lacks the boxed
inserts, the snazzy graphics, and the chunking of text into bite-size morsels expected in that
marketplace. And as will soon be apparent, it doesn’t read like a textbook: the tone is direct
and the style more oral than written.
Instead, the treatment strives to be concrete and specific: Do this. Don’t do that. Watch out
for this problem. Try this solution. The guiding idea is that managers are impatient people
subject to conflicting demands who must act now. This book offers a practical approach
addressed to their needs.
On the other hand, the book has been used successfully for many years at diverse educational
levels, often as a supplemental reading, and this fourth edition includes a number of
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adaptations to address its use in a classroom (see “Note on Pedagogy,” below). In my view,
because of its intended focus on adult learners, it is best adapted to an MBA course aimed at
working professionals, or to similarly targeted Executive Education offerings. The
instructional materials that accompany the book assume an MBA class setting and further
assume that the book will be combined with other readings and with Harvard-style cases.
The book has also been used at the undergraduate level, but here the instructor should have a
definite reason for not adopting a conventional market research textbook (i.e., distaste for
that style or the typical topic coverage), and a plan to supplement this book with other
material. Whatever the level, the more the class consists of adult learners with some business
experience the more successful this book is likely to be.
In this fourth edition I have tried to keep these two audiences clearly in mind, labeling certain
content as aimed at the one or the other, and incorporating some pedagogical material into
the text, so that the nonstudent reader can grapple with it if he or she chooses to do so.
This book is distinctive in one other way: It focuses on business-to-business and technology
examples. Modern market research as we know it was pioneered in the early middle of the
20th century to meet the needs of companies like Procter & Gamble, Quaker Oats, and
Ralston Purina. Soap, cereal, pet food, and the like continue to be prominent among the
examples and illustrations used to teach market research in the typical university course. This
is entirely appropriate for textbooks aimed at a broad audience because consumer packaged-
goods companies continue to spend large sums on market research and to provide many of
the career opportunities in market research. However, living in California’s Silicon Valley, my
experience base is different. The research problems with which I am familiar preoccupy
companies like Hewlett-Packard, Apple Computer, Cisco, and Oracle. Markets may be small
and concentrated, products are often complex and expensive, customer expenditures are
driven by the need to solve real business problems, and technologies are dynamic and rapidly
changing. Although much of the accumulated wisdom of market research is just as relevant to
Hewlett-Packard as to Procter & Gamble, I have found it has to be taught differently. The
readers I have in mind are impatient with examples based on the marketing of soap. They
don’t want to have to make the translation from mass markets, simple products, and stable
technologies to their own rather different situation.
If you fall within the core audience for this book, then you are a beginner and not a specialist.
One of the important contributions of the book is to direct you to further reading. There
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