Includes index, glossary and appendix.

Contents: The Role of marketing research in management decision making: Nature of marketing -- Marketing research and decision making -- Development of marketing research -- The Marketing research industry and research ethics: Evolving structure of the marketing research industry -- Organizations involved in marketing research -- Consumer and industrial corporate marketing research departments -- Research suppliers -- Using marketing research-A corporate perspective -- The State of the marketing research industry -- Marketing research ethics -- Problem definition, exploratory research, and the research process: Critical importance of correctly defining the problem -- Research objectives as hypotheses -- Marketing research process -- Managing the research process --The Marketing research proposal -- What motivates decision makers to use research information? -- Background -- Objectives -- Study design -- Areas of questioning -- Data analysis -- Personnel involved -- Specifications/Assumptions -- Services -- Cost -- Timing -- Secondary data and big data analytics: Nature of secondary data -- Internal databases -- Big data analytics -- Geographic information systems -- Decision support systems -- Qualitative research: Nature of qualitative research -- Focus groups -- Other qualitative methodologies -- Future of qualitative research -- Traditional survey research: Popularity of survey research -- Types of errors in survey research -- Types of surveys -- Determination of the survey method -- Online marketing research- The growth of mobile and social media research: The Online world -- Using the internet for secondary data -- Online qualitative research -- Online survey research -- Commercial online panels -- Mobile internet research- The future is now -- Social media marketing research -- Primary data collection: Observation: Nature of observation research -- Human observation -- Machine observation -- Tracking -- Observation research and virtual shopping -- Primary data collection: Experimentation and test markets: What is an experiment? -- Demonstrating causation -- Experimental setting -- Experimental validity -- Experimental notation -- Extraneous variables -- Experimental design, treatment, and effects -- Limitations of experimental research -- Selected experimental designs -- Test markets -- The Concept of measurement: Measurement process -- Step one: Identify the concept of interest -- Step two: Develop a construct -- Step three: Define the concept constitutively -- Step four: Define the concept operationally -- Step five: Develop a measurement scale -- Step six: Evaluate the reliability and validity of the measurement -- Using measurement scales to build marketing effectiveness: Attitudes, behavior, and marketing effectiveness -- Scaling defined -- Attitude measurement scales -- Considerations in selecting a scale -- Attitude measures and management decision making -- Questionnaire design: Role of a questionnaire -- Criteria for a good questionnaire -- Does it solicit information in an unbiased manner: Questionnaire design process -- Impact of the internet on questionnaire development -- Adapting to mobile device questionnaires -- Costs, profitability, and questionnaires -- Basic sampling issues: Concept of sampling -- Developing a sampling plan -- Sampling and non sampling errors -- Probability sampling methods -- Non probability sampling methods -- Internet sampling -- Sample size determination: Determining sample size for probability samples -- Normal distribution -- Population and sample distributions -- Sampling distribution of the mean -- Determining sample size -- Statistical power -- Data processing and fundamental data analysis: Overview of the data analysis procedure -- Step one: Validation and editing -- Step two: Coding -- Step three: Data entry -- Step four: Logical cleaning of data -- Step five: Tabulation and statistical analysis -- Graphic representations of data -- Descriptive statistics -- Statistical testing of differences and relationships: Evaluating differences and changes -- Statistical significance -- Hypothesis testing -- Commonly used statistical hypothesis tests -- Goodness of fit -- Hypothesis about one mean -- Hypotheses about two means -- Hypothesis about proportions -- Analysis of variance (ANOVA) -- P values and significance testing -- Bivariate correlation and regression: Bivariate analysis of association -- Bivariate regression -- Correlation for metric data: Pearson's product-moment correlation -- Multivariate data analysis: Multivariate analysis procedures -- Multivariate software -- Multiple regression analysis -- Multiple discriminant analysis -- Cluster analysis -- Factor analysis -- Conjoint analysis -- Big data and hadoop -- Predictive analytics -- Communicating the research results: The research report -- Organizing the report -- Interpreting the findings -- Making a presentation -- Managing marketing research: Marketing research supplier management -- Communicaton -- The key role of the project manager -- Managing the research process -- Managing a marketing research department.