This is a marketing research textbook, not a statistics textbook in disguise. The objective of the book is
fundamental: to provide a comprehensive and managerially relevant discussion of the principles of marketing
research. The purpose of the book is to demonstrate how marketing research creates value for the firm
and, thus, its shareholders, and to provide managers and marketing researchers with the tools and skills for
solving decision problems in business.
In its fourth Australian edition, the book continues to be written for both students and ‘users’ of marketing
research. Specifically, it is written for students, as well as managers and aspiring managers who want to
know how to use the results of marketing research to maximise the performance of their businesses. It is
also written for marketing researchers and aspiring marketing researchers who wish to implement marketing
research in a managerial, relevant, effective and ethically correct manner. To make the book even more relevant and contemporary, Ken Roberts, CEO of Forethought Research,
has reviewed the book and made a large number of theoretical and practitioner-oriented additions. Founded
in 1993, Forethought Research is an international award-winning strategic marketing and brand consultancy,
anchored in primary research. Roberts’ cutting-edge insights from an industry-leading perspective make this
fourth edition unique in Australia and the wider Asia–Pacific region. This book is suitable for use in undergraduate and graduate classes. It does not require a strong background
in statistics or prior knowledge of marketing research. Although the book is not intended for teaching
advanced multivariate data analysis, it could serve as a very good supplement text for those procedures. This fourth edition continues to maintain a strong focus on an Australian and New Zealand audience. It
is also suitable for an audience in Asia. Because businesses operate in a global environment, we continue to
make some use of North American and European examples as well. The book’s writing style is easy to understand and engaging, and the chapter organisation parallels the
marketing research steps discussed in the book. Specific features include: - comprehensive industry insights by Ken Roberts
- comprehensive chapters on qualitative marketing research
- comprehensive chapters on quantitative marketing research
- in-depth treatment of identifying, gathering, analysing and interpreting primary and secondary data
- a separate chapter on qualitative data analysis, focusing on important tasks such as coding qualitative data and
identifying themes and patterns - substantial material on the topic of literature review is provided, including guidelines on how to conduct a
literature review and the sources to search - functional-oriented data analysis sections, with discussions centred on which statistical techniques to select
when testing for differences, association and interdependence (thus departing from technical-oriented
discussions structured around univariate, bivariate and multivariate techniques, which we believe is an
approach more appropriate for statistics textbooks) - separate chapters toward the end of the book on the role marketing research plays in marketing practice
- continuing examples across chapters that illustrate the links between various research concepts
- where relevant, marketing research illustrations based on original projects that showcase how concepts
discussed within that chapter have been applied in practice - coverage of current marketing research issues such as internet-related surveys and online research techniques
- coverage of ethics regulations and legal requirements specific to marketing research in Australia.
Joseph F. Hair Jr
Bryan A. Lukas |