EOC: Big

What marketing research methods were demonstrated in the film?
Longitudinal research – I noticed exploratory research being utilized in the movie Big. Exploratory research can clarify the research environment and help improve the design of descriptive studies. They used focus groups that were a group of kids that played with the toys and expressed their attitudes toward the products. These focus groups are in an interactive setting, coordinated by the company. Longitudinal research examines shifts over time.
Brainstorming was also another way research was being conducted in the movie. Once the boy gave his ideas they rest of the group was able to feed off of his crafty ideas. If they had a larger sample of people for the research, they would have come up with a better product.
Casual research was being conduct by the owner of the company on the weekends. He casually walked around the store and observed how the customers played with the different products. This approach relies on experiments to establish cause and affect relationships. Casual research seeks to control for external influences in an effort to asses a cause and effect relationship between two variables.
Many of the research approaches weren’t reliable or valid before the research. Reliability in a research context is the degree to which measures are free from random error and, therefore, yield consistent results. The company could have double checked all of the components of the study to make sure there were no data errors.

BOC: Beautiful Stranger

Beautiful stranger seems to be a styling web site that allows shoppers to check out the current street fashion from people in the city. The website displays photos of everyday people in the hippest cities. Beautiful Stranger, “ventures out on the street (and occasionally behind the scenes) in search of arbiters of taste -- women, men, kids and couples alike.” If you think you are a Beautiful Stranger then you can sign up for their group and find out. Anyone can submit a photo of themselves and tell them what you are wearing, using, enjoying, loving, doing for your environment, etc.
“Beautiful stranger.tv wants to know about everyones “favorite foods, books, movies, makeup, hangouts, shops, restaurants, skin care, furniture, artists, jewelry, lingerie, music, spas, airline, vacation spots, cars, legwear, wine, you name it.”
Beautiful Stranger has cultivated relationships with trendsetters who have their own businesses, offering them access and a unique opportunity to insider information, products and services. “It’s more about sharing than selling,” adds Wallach.
Insiders who frequent the Beautiful Stranger.tv website can sign up for FREE exclusive deals and invite their friends to join. Beautiful Stranger.tv will also offer exclusive products that are based on trends that they find on the street!”

BOC: Survey and Results

o Working Your Way through the Stages of Research
o Exploratory, Descriptive, and Causal Research
o Longitudinal Research and Cross-Sectional
This Atrena survey is taken on social networking. They definitely are trying to understand the importance of social networking for vendors. The background problem here is “vendor direct blogging, tweeting, and forums are all sunshine and no rain which limits the credibility.” “To avoid –or at least minimize- the “iceberg” problem we note earlier you should step back and gain perspective.” They think for vendors, social media is no longer an experiment or a moonlight function, and that social media is an integral part of corporate communications.
This survey, I believe, is based off of exploratory research. “Exploratory research, which includes qualitative research, in-depth interviews, and observations. Exploratory research can clarify the research environment and thus help improve the design of descriptive studies.” This survey is a qualitative survey, collecting information on all categories that apply to the person taking the survey.
This social networking survey connects
http://blog.dac.com/post/2011/02/28/Social-Networking-Survey-results.aspx

BOC: Online Quiz

What is a booty pop and what is it’s significance? The Booty pop is padded panties, made to turn a flat booty into big booty. It’s a pair of underwear with padding and it creates an illusion of a big curvy, rounded booty. The significance of the Booty pop is to avoid the gym and surgery, things that you should be doing to create a healthy and attractive body. I think it’s for lazy women who should be going to the gym but decide they can lift there booty with padding. It’s for women who want their booty big, for self-esteem purposes. When they ask “how do these jeans make my butt look?”
http://www.bootypop.com/Big_Business.html

Who spends more money online, men or women?
Online shopping seems to be popular for both men and women, almost three-fourths of women (72%) and more than two-thirds men (68%) have shopped online in the past 30 days. It seems women primarily lead the online shopping activity except for in certain categories.
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/in-u-s-men-are-shopping-more-than-ever-while-women-are-watching-more-tv/

Who spends more time online, men or women?
Research says women spend more time online then men. In a study comScore has found women over the age of 18 (almost half of the internet population) spend more time online than men. 42.4% of women living in Asia Pacific have access to the Internet, whereas Europe, Latin America, and North America respectively has 47%, 50.4%, and 48.1% women net users.
http://www.itlist.com/research-says-women-spend-more-time-online-then-men/

What advantage do marketers have for women shopping online then men?
According to recent findings women would are the majority of visitors on so many different social networking sites. Marketers can target women in their leisure time.
http://she-conomy.com/2011/03/23/women-rule-the-internet-as-a-male-marketer-do-you-view-this-as-competition-or-opportunity/

EOC: What i'm expecting from this class.

Principals of Marketing should be a great course for me to be able to gain every aspect of marketing practice. I’m hoping this class will make me an informed consumer of marketing and research and be able to conduct research. I would like to learn the research process and the basic types of research. I know there are many different types of surveys and relative strengths and weaknesses of each type. I believe it will be interesting to learn all of the types of secondary data and how to use them. Learning the strategies for increasing respondent involvement, avoiding respondent bias, and inputting data is extremely important. I’m excited to learn the general ethics of marketing research and all of the components. As a student, I know my market research findings will influence my future business decisions. It should be imperative that I obtain reliable and valid answers from the respondents of my research. Marketing research is an area I’ve always been interested in. I want to learn it. Live it, love it. I want to be able to generate sales for my future business, know the latest business trends, become familiar with problem solving, segmentation, product research etc. I want to take this class to make better business decisions, get knowledge on marketing research and learn what it can do for me in the future. I want to find out how different types of surveys can work for me. Hopefully I will gain the tools and information I need to collect, analyze, and report my data.