Developing Information

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III. Developing Information - Information needed by marketing managers can be obtained from internal company records, marketing intelligence, and marketing research. The information analysis system processes this information and presents it in a form that is useful to managers.

A. Internal Records:

* Internal records information consists of information gathered from sources within the company to evaluate marketing performance and to detect marketing problems and opportunities; it is essentially raw data.

* Internal databases: Many companies use internal records to build extensive internal databases, computerized collections of information obtained from data sources within the company. Marketing managers can readily access and work with information in the database to identify marketing opportunities and problems, plan programs, and evaluate performance.

* Data warehouses: Increasingly, companies are creating data warehouses to house their customer data in a single, more accessible location. Then, using powerful data mining techniques, they search for meaningful patterns in the data and communicate them to managers.

* Guest history information: The single most important element in any hospitality marketing information system is to have a process for capturing and using information concerning guests. Guest information is vital to improving service, creating effective advertising and sales promotion programs, developing new products, improving existing products, and developing marketing and sales plans and to the development and use of an effective revenue management program.

* Guest information trends are vital to the planning and revenue/yield processes. Types of guest trend information used by hotels, airlines, cruise lines, and auto rental companies include the following: Booking patterns, cancellations, conversion percentage, overbook patterns, historical trends on occupancy for prime, shoulder, and low seasons yield patterns by season. Gathering this vital information requires careful planning by a management information system.

* Guest Information Management: Acquisition of this critical information cannot be left to chance or the whims of department managers. A system for obtaining guest information may include any or all of the techniques discussed below. (1) Handwritten Journals and Card Files from Guest Registrations and Personal Observations. (2) Guest Comment Cards (3) Listening to and Speaking with Guests (4) Automated Systems (5) Disguised Shoppers (6) Company Records (7) Point-of-Sale Information.

* Corporate Customer and Marketing Intermediary Information: A database of customers/prospects is of great value to a professional sales force. The marketing information concerning the prospect can be obtained from annual reports, financial analyses of public companies, and articles on the company, and by talking with company employees. For example, the sales force of Benchmark Hospitality Conference Resorts is trained to go beyond demographic studies and to target prospects by geography and industry segment. Benchmark's salespeople monitor the health of specific industries and qualify prospects.

B. Marketing Intelligence includes everyday information about developments in the marketing environment that helps managers prepare and adjust marketing plans and short-run tactics.

* Internal sources of marketing intelligence include the company's executives, front-desk staff, service staff, purchasing agents and sales force. This information can be gathered from internal databases, data warehouses, guest history information, guest information trends, guest comment cards, listening to and speaking with guests, automated systems, mystery shoppers, company records, point-of-sale information, corporate customer and marketing intermediary information.

* External sources of marketing intelligence include macro market information, competitive information, and new innovation and trends.

* Sources of Competitive Information: competitive intelligence is available from competitor's annual reports, trade magazine articles, speeches, press releases, brochures, and advertisements.

* Commercial sources of marketing information: Companies can purchase information from outside suppliers or from on-line database of information services. Good examples include: Dialog Dow Jones News Retrieval, UMI ProQuest, and Dun & Bradstreet's Online Access.

C. Marketing Research is a process that identifies and defines marketing opportunities and problems, monitors and evaluates marketing actions and performance, and communicates the findings and implication to management. For example, when McDonald's decided to add salads to its menu, its planners needed to research customers' preferences for types of vegetables and dressings.

The 10 most common activities are measurement of market potentials, market-share analysis, the determination of market characteristics, sales analysis, studies of business trends, short-range forecasting, competitive product studies, long-range forecasting, marketing information systems studies, and testing of existing products.

D. Sources of Competitive Information - a great deal of information is readily available about your competitors. Information can be gathered from Competitor's annual reports, trade magazines, speeches, press releases, brochures and advertisements as well as site visits. Search engines can look through thousands of databases online.

IV. Marketing Research Processing: The marketing research process consists of four steps: defining the problem and research objectives, developing the research plan, implementing the research plan, and interpreting and presenting the findings.

1. Defining the problem and research objectives: Managers and marketing researchers must work closely to define the problem and the research objectives. Once the problem is well defined, there are three types of objectives for a marketing research project.

* Exploratory. To gather preliminary information that will help define the problem and suggest hypotheses.

* Descriptive. To describe the size and composition of the market.

* Causal. To test hypotheses about cause-and-effect relationships.

2. Developing the research plan: determining the needed information and developing a data collection plan.

Determining specific