Hello again. Now, before you can design and implement an effective quantitative survey, you must define who you will be studying or surveying. That involves clearly delineating the market segment or target audience to be studied. I'll walk you through how to do that in this lesson and afterwards, you will be able to define your market segment or target audience. So, let's get started. Your market segment is a group of people who share one or more common characteristics. Researchers hope to understand the intricacies of these segments by learning about what makes them tick. In learning about each segment, it is important to understand their needs, lifestyles, demographics, and personality. As I mentioned in the last module, you will first start with a large population and then further refine that population into a sample that you want to specifically study. In further segmenting that population, you will consider geographic area, demographics, similar interests, needs, education, and income, just to name a few aspects. You might have heard the term target marketing, which means directing your marketing efforts toward a specific group of people. Market segmenting, on the other hand, allows you to divide a broad target market like students into a narrower market such as students age 18-24, who are new iPhone customers. These terms are similar in that, they describe particular markets, but they are different, since the term target market is broader than a market segment. Once you have clarified your starting point, it's important to follow this process to delineate the market segment to survey. Number one. Establish the precise question you want answered with your client. Two, find out what the main objective of the research is. Is it to increase market share, replacing an old product with a new product, initiating a brand new system etc? Three, do some secondary research on what kind of people would best answer questions one and two, and what has been done before. You will include this in the report. Four, ask the client more about who they already target and who they would like to target. Five, decide on the precise target market and market segment, and how you will reach them. Now, we already covered steps one and two back in module one, but we'll review steps three to five in greater detail for the rest of this video starting with step three. Step three in the process would be to do some secondary research on what kind of people would best answer the big business question. Normally a summary of whatever you find from secondary research should be included in your final report. Sort of like a literature review. To begin your secondary research, you would do a Google or some sort of specific topic journal article search. For example, PubMed is a good place to go for medical research. You want to search on the specific topic to see what has been written in journal articles or summarized by other research firms. Step four in the process is to ask your client more about their current target market and who they would like to target in the future. To do this, you would want to ask your client for any reports they have already written pertaining to the marketing or market share, as it relates to their target market in the specific business area you are studying. For example, when I worked at Medtronic in the Spine Industry in India, they wanted to get doctors to establish spine clinics for preventative care. Since they hadn't done spine clinics before, I met with area hospitals in various states to find out what their surgeons did in regard to spine clinics. And finally, in step five of the process, you need to determine the precise target market and market segment you want to survey. You also need to decide on how you will best reach these people. A few years ago, I had a large project in Los Angeles with the Motion Picture and Television Fund. It was about what people in the industry, who represented various industry unions, thought about their health coverage and costs. It involved doing focus groups in-person interviews and a random survey. The client was not sure which population of union employees they wanted to survey and they had no idea how to best approach them. In this case, we talked at length about the different unions they have and how they are composed. For instance, there's a Writers Union, The Editors Union, a Directors Union, a Cameraman's Union etc. We also discussed the fact that union members have extremely busy lifestyles and how to best reach them effectively. We decided on two approaches, a series of focus groups with each type of union, and a randomized stratified sample of 800 representatives taken from each union. So, when you decide to interview a random selection of union representatives from the Motion Picture Television Industry, you need to figure out how best to elicit information from all these union members. Luckily, my client had a list of all members that we could randomize. The results were extremely informative for my client. They got the full picture via the focus groups that provide an explicit flavor without standing and dramatic quotes. Figures within this industry, I would get that. The mail survey, on the other hand, had an outstanding response rate due to an accurate and up to date mailing list, an attractive and easy to follow questionnaire, and timely reminder postcards and effective tracking. My partner and I received continual praise during the presentation. We also got referrals to other clients in an industry publication in that Motion Picture Television fun newsletter. Let's think through applying this successful process to our business case scenario. We know from discussing with our client that they want university students age 18-24, who have purchased a high end smartphone in the last year. This is the target market. And moving toward the market segment we want, we would further refine the sample to be UC Davis students, who represent a variety of ethnicities. We would most likely work with specific departments on campus to capture most of the students. Once you've clearly delineated your market segment for your survey, you're on the way. This lesson should have equipped you to do that.
