Gage Gorman

Case 2.1

Gage Gorman

Marcello and Litzenberger felt it was important to conduct this study because, at the time, there was a lot of skepticism about market research. They needed to create a new study as to why marketing research is important because they could not it would have been inappropriate for them to share the results of previous studies from other clients. That is when they came up with the idea to do the study about American Idol.

The main purpose of this study is to find out “what still needs to be known about the viewers and voters for contestants of the popular TV show American Idol?” (Malhotra, 2011, pg.780). This question is so marketers can direct their product at a certain demographic. If there are only teenagers watching and voting for this show, then companies should direct their product to them.

The protagonists main questions were, how do they do the study? How much is it going to cost? They needed a cheap way to conduct the study to get the best results. At first they were questioning who would care about investigating the viewers of the show, but then realized that if there are 28 million people watching the show, then there are 28 million people to advertise to. They were also asking questions about the sample size. Would the sample size be big enough to say their conclusion with confidence?

There are two steps of the marketing research process evident in this case. The first process is step one: problem definition. In this step, the problem is defined. “In defining the problem, the researcher should take into account the purpose of the study, the relevant background information, the information needed, and how it will be used in the decision making. The purpose of the study was to be able to show other companies that market research is relevant and makes a difference. The actual purpose was to see how many people living in the United States, 18 or older, watched and voted in the 2009 season of American Idol. They had some back ground information on the show, knowing that in one episode, 28 million viewers tuned in. They also know that Pepsi did not invest money into the show, but Coke did. The second process which is evident in this case is step two: development of an approach to the problem. One of their questions about the study was whether or not they could afford to conduct the research. Their answer to this question would be to use the Opinion Research Corporation telephone survey for ab out $1,000 per question.