NOTE: This course
description is from Fall 2018 and is FOR REFERENCE ONLY. Course content and
details may differ in the current semester. If an updated description becomes
available, we will post it here.
COURSE NUMBER: MBA261.1
COURSE TITLE: Marketing Research: Tools and
Techniques for Data Collection and Analysis
UNITS OF CREDIT: 3.0
INSTRUCTOR: Leif Nelson
E-MAIL ADDRESS: leif_nelson@haas.berkeley.edu
PREREQUISITE(S): MBA206
CLASS FORMAT: A mixture of lectures and cases
REQUIRED READINGS: A course reader. (A
textbook is recommended). Also, we will use SPSS, which is the most commonly
used statistical software in marketing research.
BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: Approximately 35% exams, 25% Class
Participation, 40% Group Project
ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND
OBJECTIVES:
Marketing research is
the process of asking and answering important questions about customers and
competitors. As the complexity of problems facing managers increases, so does
the managers’ need for information. It is a near certainty that whatever
functional area you enter, and whatever industry, you will come in close
contact with market research. The basic objective of this course is
to help you conduct, purchase, and use research to make more effective business
decisions. To the greatest extent possible, the class will use real-life
examples to demonstrate marketing research methods, including: focus groups,
survey design, observational research, data mining, experimental design,
regression analysis, conjoint analysis, factor analysis, cluster analysis, and
others. The course will be taught from the point of view of helping
you be both a producer and consumer of marketing research.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
Leif Nelson is the
Ewald T. Grether Distinguished Professor in Business
Administration and Marketing at Berkeley-Haas. He earned his doctorate in
experimental psychology from Princeton, and has previously been on the faculty
at New York University and the University of California, San Diego. His
research has investigated topics including biases in sports gambling, the
positive influence of television advertising, charitable giving, and the
effectiveness of highly idiosyncratic pricing (e.g., pay-what-you-want). His
work has appeared in a number of leading psychology and marketing journals and
has been covered extensively in the media.