MR (with Marketing CourseMate with eBook Printed Access Card)

Tom J. Brown is Noble Foundation Chair in Marketing Strategy and Professor of Marketing in the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University. In addition, he serves as Director of the Center for Customer Interface Excellence in the Spears School. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Brown teaches marketing research and has supervised hundreds of student research projects for industry clients ranging from not-for-profit service organizations to Fortune 500 companies. Dr. Brown is a past recipient of the Sheth Foundation Best Paper Award in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. In addition, he received a Richard D. Irwin Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship while at the University of Wisconsin, the Kenneth D. and Leitner Greiner Teaching Award, and the Regents Distinguished Research Award, both at Oklahoma State University. In addition, he was recognized as an International Research Fellow at the University of Oxford for his work on corporate reputation. Dr. Brown's articles have appeared in the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Retailing, and Journal of Service Research. His current research interests include organizational frontline research (e.g., customer orientation of frontline employees; customer influences on frontline employees) and causes and effects of corporate associations (e.g., reputation, identity). He is cofounder of the Corporate Associations/Identity Research Group as well as the Organizational Frontlines Research Symposia series. He is active in the American Marketing Association, having co-chaired multiple national conferences, co-hosted the AMA/Sheth Doctoral Consortium, and served as president of the Academic Council. In addition, he serves in a leadership role at Sunnybrook Christian Church. Tracy A. Suter received his Ph.D. from the University of Arkansas. Prior to joining the management and marketing faculty at The University of Tulsa, he served as a faculty member in the Department of Marketing and School of Entrepreneurship at Oklahoma State University and as a marketing faculty at the University of Southern Mississippi. Dr. Suter teaches a wide range of courses with emphasis on marketing research and applied creativity. Each semester undergraduate marketing research students complete real-world research projects for area for-profit and not-for-profit firms under his guidance. These service-learning projects now number in the hundreds completed. Dr. Suter’s research interests include public policy, the use of new, innovative technologies in marketing and entrepreneurship, and consumer-to-consumer communities. He has published in journals such as the Journal of Business Research, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, and Journal of Retailing among many others. He also served on two editorial review boards of academic journals and is a frequent reviewer for other journals and conferences. Dr. Suter is currently the first holder of the David and Leslie Lawson Chair at Tulsa and is the former Daniel White Jordan Chair at Oklahoma State. He has received numerous awards for both research and teaching activities including the University of Arkansas Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Sherwin-Williams Distinguished Teaching Competition Award given by the Society for Marketing Advances, and the Kenneth D. and Leitner Greiner Outstanding Teaching, Regents Distinguished Teaching, and President’s Outstanding Faculty Awards all at Oklahoma State University. Dr. Suter is frequently asked to speak to doctoral students and other academic groups about teaching excellence.

1. Marketing Research: From Data to Information to Recommended Strategies.
The problem: Marketers need information. Who does marketing research? Why study marketing research? The research process.
2. The Research Question: Formulation of the Problem/Opportunity.
Problems versus opportunities. The problem formulation process. Preparing an effective research request agreement. The research proposal. Research to avoid. Choosing a research supplier.
3. Exploratory, Descriptive and Causal Research Designs.
Types of research design. Exploratory research designs. Descriptive research designs. Causal research designs. Market testing.
4. Collecting Secondary Data from Inside and Outside the Firm.
Secondary data versus primary data. Advantages and disadvantages of secondary data. Internal secondary data. Components of a decision support system. External secondary data. Standardized marketing information services.
5. Collecting Primary Data by Communication.
Types of primary data. Collecting data by communication versus observation. Structured versus unstructured communication. Issues in the use of disguise. Methods of administering questionnaires.
6. Collecting Primary Data by Observation
Observation research. Structured versus unstructured observation. Using disguise with observation research. Choosing a natural or contrived setting for observation. Human versus mechanical observation.
7. Asking Good Questions.
Scales of measurement. Measuring attitudes and other unobservable variables. Self-report attitude scales. Other issues in designing scales. Establishing the validity and reliability of measures.
8. Designing the Questionnaire or Observation Form.
Steps in questionnaire design. Designing observation forms.
9. Planning the Sample and Sample Size.
Developing the sampling plan. Nonprobability samples. Probability samples. How big a sample do you need?
10. Data Collection: Enhancing Response Rates while Limiting Errors and Biases
Importance of nonsampling errors. Types of nonsampling errors. Calculating response rates. Improving response rates.
11. Data Preparation for Analysis.
Editing. Coding. Cleaning the data. Handling missing data.
12. Analysis & Interpretation: Individual Variables Independently.
Basic univariate statistics: Categorical measures. Basic univariate statistics: Continuous measures. Hypothesis testing. Testing hypotheses about individual variables.
13. Analysis & Interpretation: Multiple Variables Simultaneously.
Analyses with categorical measures. Analyses with categorical and continuous measures. Analyses with continuous measures.
14. The Research Answer: Project Findings and Strategic Recommendations.
The written research report: Writing standards. The written research report. The oral presentation. Using graphics to communicate results.