Exam 6: Listening to Customers Through Research

One of the biggest challenges facing a marketing researcher is converting a complex set of data into a form that can be read and understood quickly by executives, managers and other employees who will make decisions from the research.

In business-to-business situations in which large accounts are involved, senior members of the account team commonly conduct service expectation and reviews.

Century Business Systems, Inc. offers all of the non-technical support a business would need to operate successfully-everything from auditing to management consultant to financing to marketing advice. Which of the following types of interaction activities is it likely to use to gain information about its business customers and still be able to have only a minimal investment of time and money in the research?

Which of the following is NOT a research objective for improving upward communication in a service organization?

Process checkpoint evaluations are commonly used in service industries in which the services are provided quickly on a one-time only basis.

Sunoco is readying a chain-wide set of marketing initiatives designed to improve its image with women drivers and win more return business to its service station outlets throughout Ontario. It refurbished all of its restrooms and tried to hire friendly personalities and real customer service skills instead of "just who was available". It hired an outside research organization to send people to Sunoco service stations twice monthly to grade staff on their customer interaction skills. What research method did Sunoco use to make sure that each station was implementing the new service strategy?

In early 2002, the University of Leeds in the U.K. released findings of its study of television viewing behaviors. Seventeen families have given permission for cameras with sound to be placed in the main living areas of their homes for two three-week periods over two years to watch them watch television. The University of Leeds used _____ to determine that people who have specifically chosen to watch a program are more likely to remain present for the commercial breaks within it.

The new owner of the Atlanta Falcons football team wanted to know why game attendance was low. Former purchasers of season tickets were asked to provide an anecdote about a satisfying and a dissatisfying experience at a Falcon game. The researchers used:

Key Energy was a company that provided quality oilfield construction, drilling and other services. The company's top management felt stakeholders did not have a clear image of the company and were considering changing the name to clarify the organization's position in the market. The company conducted an hour long interview with four of its largest customers. Only 25 questions were asked and much probing was done to find out exactly what the participants meant. This is an example of a:

The health industry in the U.S. is an $840 trillion business. HYPERLINK "http://www.adam.com/" Adam.com is trying to cash in on some of that money by providing an Internet service that will answer health-related questions for consumers. After a year in operation, HYPERLINK "http://www.adam.com/" Adam.com did an informal survey of its customers. It used open-ended questions to determine what people like and dislike about its service. HYPERLINK "http://www.adam.com/" Adam.com was conducting _____ research. A. Qualitative B. Functional C. Inferential D. Secondary E. Quantitative

SERVQUAL is a type of requirements research.

Which of the following types of research has a high monetary cost?

One of the benefits of conducting marketing research on the Internet is the composition of the survey samples.

In the first stage in the services marketing research process, the researcher:

What is the primary objective of research on intermediate customers?

_____ are used to report the findings from a services marketing research study that collected data on the two levels of customer expectations-desired service and adequate service-along with customer perceptions of company performance.

Boston Symphony Orchestra realized the classic music market was generally becoming older and needed to learn how to appeal to younger concert-goers. It hired a research agency to identify the positive and negative attributes of going to concerts. In other words, the research agency conducted a:

Research done by a financial services company asked the respondents to describe the company using the brand name of an automobile. This is obviously an example of quantitative research.

An important trend in services research is to measure only the negative consequences of service quality and ignore the positive because it does not need improvement.

What type of qualitative research is used to monitor changes in customer expectations and to provide a forum for customers to suggest and evaluate new service ideas?