Home / The University / Faculties / Faculty of Economics and Business Administration / Degree Programmes / Bachelor's Degree Programmes / Faculty of Economics and Business Administration / Business Administration / Business Administration (English) - Curriculum / Marketing Research

   

 

Marketing Research

 

Status: Required course

Period: Fourth year, First semester

ECTS credits: 3

Class hours: 30 (15 lectures and 15 seminars)

Language: Bulgarian

Requirements:

Prerequisites: Completed courses in Marketing and Statistics

 

 

Course content:

The course is closely related to the practical application of marketing research. Marketing research is the process of systematically collecting and orderly processing of information coming from the external environment in order to improve the marketing of the organization's products. To create value for customers managers must know their preferences, which are subjective and volatile. Secondary statistical information (collected for other purposes) cannot fully serve these management tasks. It is necessary to conduct specialized data collection and data analysis to support marketing decisions.

The course consists of two logically and methodologically related parts. In the first part in the form of lectures students become familiar with the nature and methods of planning and conducting marketing research, with the two basic approaches – quantitative and qualitative and with the relevant methods for data collection: questionnaire survey including internet based survey, interviews – standard and in-depth, group discussions, observations, desk research. The second part of the course is practically oriented and consists of planning and conducting of own consumer research of one of the following,

 

- Familiarity, disposition and use of products and brands;

- Image and positioning of products and brands;

- Testing of product concepts;

- Value and brand identity

- Segmentation surveys, or

- Customer satisfaction survey

related to products and services, which are of interest to students or are in the product range of the company which is willing to provide internship after completing the course.

 

Depending on the number of students they conduct one or several own team based marketing research. Data processing and analysis is done with a specialized computer software SPSS.

 

Course aim:

The course is of theoretical and applied nature and has two goals: to provide students with knowledge and skills.

 

Intended learning outcomes

  • The importance and benefit of conducting in-time marketing research,
  • Advantages and disadvantages of the different types of marketing research conducted in Bulgaria and abroad.,
  • Advantages and disadvantages of the various methods of marketing data collection,
  • Basic rules and requirements for the development of a questionnaire for data collection ,
  • Characteristics of different samples and methods of transmission of the sample,
  • Approaches for processing and analysis of data,
  • Able to identify the needs of the business from marketing information,
  • Develop tools for data collection,
  • Determine the sample size,
  • Organize field work to collect marketing data
  • Control the quality of the data collected,
  • Define a questionnaire in the SPSS programme,
  • Write and prepare for processing marketing data in SPSS,
  • Process and analyze marketing data with SPSS,
  • Interprete and explain the results from data processing,
  • Draw conclusions, summaries and make recommendations to the managers on the basis of the collected, analyzed and interpreted marketing information.