Certificate of Market Research Analytics

Unit 1  – Assess marketing opportunities

• What is the market?
• Finding and selecting the target market
• Understanding objectives
• Knowing the starting point
• Create a strategy
• Business and marketing objectives
• Structure and plans
• Gaps in the market
• Existing marketing clients
• Collecting information
• Review existing marketing clients and external environment
• Research and document marketing opportunities
• Using statistics
• Perform a market segmentation
• Criteria for market segments
• Market analysis
• Analysis methods
• PESTL analysis
• COSMIC analysis
• SWOT analysis
• Profiling the market
• Identify opportunities
• Industry overview
• Analyse opportunities against marketing objectives
• Branding and positioning
• Communication channels
• Best practice
• Benchmarking
• Planning and selecting a strategy
• Budgets and common measures
• Documenting opportunities
• Planning presentation
• Documenting, objectives
• Description of target market
• Sales analysis
• Action steps
• Rationale
• Timelines measures and expected outcomes
• Contingencies
• Revise and feedback
• Approval

Unit 2  – Plan market research

• Market research
• Market intelligence system
• Communications
• Customer-driven company culture
• Enterprise activity
• Best practice
• Forecasting
• Sales data
• Financial data
• Determine research needs
• Market segmentation
• Problem definition
• Statement inclusion/ structure
• Potential competitors
• Customer profiles
• Products and services
• Promotions
• Market research objectives
• Define objectives
• Situation analysis
• Marketing mix
• Project scoping
• Project justification
• Deliverables
• Success criteria
• Work breakdown structure (WBS)
• Completion criteria
• Constraints
• Legislations and regulations
• Staff consultation
• SWOT analysis
• SMART objectives
• Data gathering methods
• Data sources (primary and secondary)
• Qualitative information
• Government statistics
• Industry trade associations
• Customer feedback channels
• Consumer behaviour
• Mystery shopping
• Social networking sites
• Data editing and coding
• Statistical data
• Values and scoring
• Specialist software packages
• Data processing services
• Decision on data types
• Data quality and validity
• Market research plan
• Estimate and timelines
• Budget
• Plan feasibility
• Research design
• Secondary research
• Cost-benefit assessment
• Potential research issues
• Make or buy analysis
• Budget constraints
• Plan design and approval
• Sell the plan

Unit 3  – Identify and evaluate marketing opportunities

• Marketing opportunities
• Business needs
• Business to business marketing
• Potential new markets
• Innovative approaches
• Potential marketing opportunities
• Knock-out factors
• Ethical principles
• Rank marketing opportunities
• Financial viability
• External factors
• Return on investment
• Changes to current operations
• Resource requirements
• Re-tooling
• New marketing opportunities

Unit 4 – Interpret Market Trends and Developments

• Statistical analysis
• The research processes
• Trends and developments
• Trend analysis
• Data
• Target market
• Market segment
• Factor and cluster analysis
• Analysis
• Interpreting data
• Multivariate analysis
• Time series analysis
• Pie charts, bar graphs and histograms
• Performing qualitative analysis
• Data quality
• Analysing market performance
• Potential opportunities or threats
• Competitor analysis
• Comparative analysis
• Competitive analysis
• Competitor profiling
• Analysing performance data
• Over and underperforming products and services
• Product life cycles – The 4 phases
• Product performance testing
• The Boston Matrix
• Buying pattern analysis
• Forecasting market needs
• The need to forecast
• External trends
• Forecasting models
• Capacity needs
• Information sources
• Preparing reports on market data
• Presenting data
• Chart elements
• Legends and labels
• Getting other opinions
• Using colours
• Keeping it simple
• Word count
• Tips in using visual presentations
• Reporting on data
• Submitting and presentation of reports
• Structuring reports