Discuss the factors that affect the quality of the information obtain by marketing research. Be explicit.The information obtained by the marketing research is based on the data that may involve the specific types of errors. These errors are the factors that diminish the quality of data. The research design is classified into exploratory and conclusive that splits into descriptive and causal. Because these methods are different it is understandable, the factors that affect the quality of data may be specific for certain forms of design or methods. Some errors can be common for all types of design.One of the design types is exploratory design. The techniques used for the exploratory purposes consist of focus groups interviews, depth interviews and projective techniques. The key ...view middle of the document...
The exploratory techniques based on face-to-face contact with the interviewer may be more than others techniques affected by unwillingness because the respondents fear of embarrassment, desire to please the interviewer or provide socially desirable information.The conclusive research includes descriptive and causal techniques. The descriptive techniques are surveys, panel and observation. The quality of data obtained by the descriptive techniques may affect the same errors that affect exploratory techniques. The panels and surveys may be more than others may techniques affected by error due inability to answer. In such cases when data with missing responses is discarded, the results may be highly inaccurate because it may appear that the same type of people were unable to answer the same question. The respondents may not be able to answer because "unfamiliarity, fatigue, boredom, faulty recall, question content or format" (Malhotra 91).In case of the projective techniques the quality depends highly on the interpretation of the results however there is very high risk that that data will be biased.The causal research involves experimentation. The data during the experiment should be characterized by external and internal validity. If the researcher is unable to control the extraneous variables (variables that affect test units but are others then independent variables), the data may be highly inaccurate. Sources of the internal invalidity that the researcher may not be able control are History, Maturation, Testing, Effects, Instrumentation, Statistical Regression and Selection bias. Still the data obtained by the experiment do not have produce valid results that apply to reality.
