Essentials of Marketing Research,
7th Edition

Part 1: INTRODUCTION.
1.The Role of Marketing Research.
2. Harnessing Big Data into Better Decisions.
3. The Marketing Research Process.
4. The Human Side of Marketing Research: Organizational and Ethical Issues.
Part II: DESIGNING RESEARCH STUDIES.
5. Qualitative Research Tools.
6. Secondary Data Research in a Digital Age.
7. Survey Research.
8. Observation.
9. Conducting Marketing Experiments.
Part III: MEASUREMENT.
10. Measurement and Attitude Scaling.
11. Questionnaire Design.
Part IV: SAMPLING AND STATISTICAL THEORY.
12. Sampling Designs and Sampling Procedures.
13. Big Data Basics: Describing Samples and Populations.
Park V: BASIC DATA ANALYTICS.
14. Basic Data Analysis.
15. Testing for Differences between Groups and for Predictive Relationships.
16. Communicating Research Results.
Part VI: MARKETING ANALYTICS TOOLS.
17. Beyond the Basics in Basic Data Analysis.
18. Advanced Topics in Linear Analytics.
19. Testing Hypotheses with GLM Procedures.
20. Introducing Multivariate Data Analysis.
21. Multivariate Data Analysis: Analytics with Interdependence Techniques.
22. Primer on Structural Equations Modeling.
Part VII: COMPREHENSIVE CASES WITH COMPUTERIZED DATABASES.
Comprehensive Cases
Appendix: Statistical Tables.

• Barry J. Babin

  Barry J. Babin has authored more than 100 research publications in some of today's most prestigious peer-reviewed research periodicals, such as the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Retailing, Psychology and Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science and the International Journal of Wine Business Research. Dr. Babin is currently Morris Lewis Professor of Marketing and chair of marketing in the Ole Miss Business School. He has won numerous honors for his research, including the Louis K. Brandt Faculty Research Award from the University of Southern Mississippi, Outstanding Researcher in the COB at Louisiana Tech University, the 1996 Society for Marketing Advances (SMA) Steven J. Shaw Award, the 1997 Omerre Deserres Award for Outstanding Contributions to Retail and Service Environment Research and the Academy of Marketing Science’s prestigious Harold W. Berkman Distinguished Service Award. Dr. Babin is a past president of the Academy of Marketing Science and the Society for Marketing Advances and has been recognized as a distinguished fellow of both organizations. His research focuses on the effect of the service environment in creating value for employees and customers and on the impact of big data on consumer liberty. He offers expertise in building and understanding value that leads to long-lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with employees and customers. His teaching specialties involve advanced methods of marketing and consumer research and creative problem solving. A frequent international lecturer, he has presented in Australia, South Korea, France, Germany, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Peru, Israel and the United Kingdom.

• Each chapter contains a Research in Action box that helps guide students through a marketing research project.

• Project Outline—Chapter 16 includes an outline (downloadable in the student resources) suitable for use as a student project. The outline functions as a guide for the steps necessary to conduct a marketing research project like one suitable to serve as a term-long project in a marketing research course. The outline is geared to fit almost any type of comprehensive research project. By selecting only parts of the outline, a smaller project could be designed.

• Research in Action!—Instructors and students have asked for guidance in turning information from the chapters into a marketing research project. Each chapter now provides a feature box that helps frame the material for the chapter with respect to completing the research project. Combined with the outline for Chapter 16, Essentials provides essential direction in helping get the project done competently

• Increased coverage of big data and analytics.

• Tips of the Trade—Each chapter contains a useful list of important tips that correspond to the particular stage of the research process discussed in the chapter. The tips provide information addressing practical questions such as interview length, question wording, interviewer involvement, sample size requirements, and guides for data reliability and validity, as well as useful tips for testing hypotheses using inferential statistics.

• Chapter Vignettes—All chapters open with a story relevant to the material featured in that particular chapter. Some of these vignettes involve famous brands and companies, so the reader may well be familiar with some of the topics. Other vignettes involve “slice of life” stories describing a businessperson’s struggle to make smart decisions and demonstrate how research is intertwined with this struggle.

• More emphasis on “how to”—The boxed material, chapter objectives, and end-of-chapter materials seek to emphasize research in action or steps used to perform different approaches illustrated in the text. Boxed materials take the form of Research Snapshots that cover ethical angles of research, provide illustrations of research in practice, and offer relevant tips or detailed “how-to” examples. The chapter learning objectives provide coherence and structure to the chapters, each culminating with objective-directed end-of-chapter materials. In later chapters, the Research Snapshots provide step-by-step guides describing how to perform many of the marketing analytics approaches.

• Software Friendly—Essential recognizes that different students and instructors interact with multiple software platforms. Here, the illustrations do not focus on a single software platform. Rather, the how-to guides illustrate how to perform different analysis routines in multiple platforms. Most advanced analytical/statistical tools are illustrated in EXCEL, SPSS, SAS, and JMP (a fast growing analytical tool).

• Substantial Coverage on International Business Issues—The examples and illustrations make much greater use of international business. Readers of this book may end up working or dealing with issues anywhere in the world, so the increased international examples will increase awareness of research issues beyond North America and open up domestic students to global market dynamics. This is a particularly important emphasis because cultural and language barriers often present challenges for the researcher.

• Substantial Attention to Qualitative Research—Big data also creates a big demand for qualitative research tools. In response, several chapters provide insight into how to gather and use data not expressed in the form of quantities. Chapter 5 focuses exclusively on qualitative research. Phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, and case study approaches are all covered. Qualitative research is dramatically being changed by the Internet as consumers leave more and more artifactual data behind on social networking websites, company chat rooms, blogs, social networks, micro-blogs (such as tweets left on Twitter), and more. Just think about the potential gold mine of data available in all of the online consumer feedback, ratings, and recommendations.

Cengage provides a range of supplements that are updated in coordination with the main title selection. For more information about these supplements, contact your Learning Consultant.