Dr James Abdey COL.5.10 and Mr Karsten Shaw

This course is available on the BSc in Business Mathematics and Statistics, BSc in Data Science, BSc in Management and BSc in Mathematics, Statistics and Business. This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course is available with permission to General Course students.

Not to be taken with ST307.

Students must have completed one of the following: Elementary Statistical Theory (ST102), Quantitative Methods (Statistics) (ST107), Statistics for Management Sciences (ST203), Econometrics: Theory and Applications (MG205), Analytical Methods for Management (MG202), or equivalent. The combination of Elementary Statistical Theory I (ST109) and Econometrics I (EC1C1) is also acceptable.

The main ideas and applications of market research techniques. ST327.1 Topics covered are introduction to market research, defining the market research problem, research design, internal secondary data and the use of databases, qualitative research: focus group discussions, projective techniques, survey and quantitative observation techniques, measurement and scaling: fundamentals, comparative and non-comparative scaling, questionnaire design, sampling: design and procedures, final and initial sample size determination, cross-tabulation and hypothesis testing, analysis of variance and covariance, correlation and regression, discriminant analysis, factor analysis, cluster analysis and conjoint analysis. ST327.2 Case Studies: Students use the information and techniques gained from ST327.1 to carry out a co-operative Market Research Case Study. Individual write up of the Case Study forms part of the assessment.

This course will be delivered through a combination of classes and lectures totalling a minimum of 36 hours across Michaelmas Term and Lent Term. 

This course does not include a reading week in Week 6 of Michaelmas Term.

Students are given weekly exercises to work on for discussion in class.

Malhotra, N.K. (2019) Marketing Research: An Applied Orientation (7th edition), Pearson (earlier editions are also fine).

Exam (60%, duration: 2 hours) in the summer exam period.
Coursework (25%) in the ST.
Presentation (15%) in the LT.

The assessed Case Study work is split into two parts; a group presentation and an individual piece of coursework.