COMM834:

Lesson 2 Overview

 

Introduction

This lesson will review the secondary research sources that you may use as you prepare to write your situation analysis. You will learn how to search the MRI-Simmons database for insights about consumers, and a brief review of SWOT analyses will be provided.

By the end of this lesson, each of you should decide on the brand you are going to work with for the final project and begin conducting secondary research using the databases that have been discussed in this lesson.

Objectives

At the end of this lesson, you should be able to do the following things:

• Decide on the brand for your final project and start writing the situation analysis.
• Understand the writing styles required for the situation analysis.
• Differentiate among and describe strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
• Understand and be able to use the MRI-Simmons database for background research.

Lesson Readings and Activities

By the end of this lesson, make sure you have completed the readings and activities found in the Lesson 2 Course Schedule.

 

Situation Analysis

The first step in putting together a campaign is to complete a situation analysis, which is essentially an analysis of the background of the brand or organization. This where you demonstrate your understanding of

• the brand itself,
• the brand’s current status,
• its sales figures,
• its competitors, and
• its consumers.

Without a good understanding of all these things, it will be difficult to run a campaign or to recommend any marketing communications strategies for the client.

As discussed in Lesson 1, the situation analysis contains three parts:

• the company background,
• a category and competitive analysis, and
• a consumer analysis.

In order to find relevant information for each of these parts, you will need to conduct both primary and secondary research, analyzing the information and data you gather.

When you start writing the situation analysis, please keep in mind that this course requires a business writing style that emphasizes clarity and conciseness. To achieve that, you can use short sentences and short paragraphs, with headings and subheadings organizing your information. The selective use of tables and graphics is appropriate when they serve a purpose. For example, when you are comparing numbers across different brands and competitors, it is often very effective to use graphics to display such information.

APA Style Documentation of Sources

You are required to cite and reference the sources you used as part of your research. This class will use citation and reference styles from the American Psychological Association, hereafter referred to as APA Style. For a review of APA Style, please visit the APA Quick Citation Guide from the Penn State University Libraries.

As you start writing the situation analysis, please keep in mind that you are supposed to cite and reference all the sources you have used. You cannot copy other people’s words or ideas and claim them as your own. Crediting other people’s work is the right thing to do. By providing citations and references, you recognize other people’s work or ideas.

To avoid plagiarizing others’ work, you will need to do three things:

• keep track of the resources you have used, attributing information to these original sources;
• summarize or paraphrase what you have learned using your own words, attributing the ideas to the sources you have used; and
• enclose quotations from the original sources in quotation marks, identifying the page number(s) they came from (see the subsequent example).

However, if you are summarizing others’ ideas, rephrasing them using your own words, you can cite the information without the quotation marks. When you paraphrase an author, you are restating and building on their ideas in your own words.

There are two kinds of research that you are required to do: primary research and secondary research. Primary research refers to the research that you will do on your own to collect data. For example, if you conduct a survey or focus group, you will be conducting primary research.  Secondary research refers to the gathering of information from data and resources that other people have put together. We will discuss primary research methods starting in Lesson 4. In this lesson, we will focus on conducting secondary research.

Secondary Research

There are a variety of resources that you can use to start your research; you can start with Google and the company’s website and then check the online databases offered through the Penn State University Libraries.

A company’s website will often contain relevant information in annual reports, mission statements, and communications strategies. A basic Google search can help you identify any relevant articles or data; however, make sure the online information comes from reliable sources that you can cite. Individual blog posts are often unverified and therefore inappropriate to use. Wikipedia entries can provide good background information, but reliable entries should have their sources cited—be sure to verify their information.

Moving beyond open internet sources, you can use the Penn State University Libraries databases to access archived sources and items behind paywalls.

Using the Penn State University Libraries Databases

Go to the University Libraries Public Relations Databases page. Select Articles and Databases on your screen (see Figure 2.1 below). The page will return suggested databases based on your interest in public relations.

As shown in Figure 2.1 above, in exploring public relations, you can search both Business Source Premier and ABI/INFORM Collection for relevant information. Regardless of what brand you are working with, you can use a combination of keywords to search for relevant marketing and advertising information within these databases. For example, if your brand is Starbucks, , you can use such keywords as Starbucks, advertising, marketing, or public relations (or some combination of them) to see if anything has been written on these subjects. Alternatively, you can replace Starbucks with coffee if you are interested in learning about the overall market category of coffee brands. If you do see relevant articles, please download them, saving them in a folder on your computer so that you can retrieve them later.

Now, please select Company/Industry (see highlights in Figures 2.1 and 2.2). You will be presented with additional searchable databases containing company and industry background information (Figure 2.2). Both Mergent Intellect and MergentOnline contain relevant information about companies and brands that you might be interested in.

Other databases for you to consider include the following. Click each name to see how these databases describe themselves.

 

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In conclusion, because you are all working on different brands, your research strategies will vary. There is no one-size-fits-all research strategy. Please feel free to explore other databases if you feel that you need additional information.

SWOT Analysis

Based on your primary and secondary research, you will put together the SWOT analysis.

SWOT stands for

• strengths,
• weaknesses,
• opportunities, and
• threats.

Your SWOT analysis should be based on a careful consideration of all of the internal and external factors that may have an impact on your brand’s performance.

In general, a strength is an aspect of the brand that you think is an advantage or favorable. This might be something that the brand is already focusing on or something new that you have uncovered in your research. A weakness represents a disadvantage or something that is potentially harmful to the growth of the brand. Strengths and weaknesses tend to focus on things that are internal to the brand, including both consumer perception and objective brand characteristics.  Since you will be working on a communications campaign, it is important that your strengths and weaknesses are related to the relationships between consumers and the brand or organization. Ideally, you will have a few items that are related to perceptions, attitudes, loyalty, knowledge, awareness and other communication-related attributes of the brand and its relationship with consumers.

An opportunity represents something that is likely to be valuable, that the brand can explore in the future in order to promote itself and grow. The most obvious opportunity comes from new demographic groups to target or new geographic markets to reach. It can also be a new message or media strategy that can affect performance or perceptions. A threat is typically something external that might harm to the brand in the future, including

• competitive behaviors,
• consumer trends,
• regulatory changes, and
• social, cultural, and economic trends.

 

Consumer Analysis Using MRI-Simmons Data

One of the main sources of information about the consumers of products and brands is the MRI-Simmons database, a leading provider of syndicated consumer data. MRI-Simmons gathers data from over 20,000 consumers each year through in-person interviews asking about lifestyles, attitudes, and uses of over 6,000 products in 550 categories (Huebsch, n.d.). Random selection of households reduces bias, allowing MRI-Simmons to extrapolate data on a few thousand consumers to represent several hundred million Americans (Huebsch, n.d.). 

You can use the database to analyze the consumers of the brands or products that you are interested in. If your brand is relatively new, it may not be in the database. In that case, you will need to find a proxy brand or product that best resembles yours.

You will need to review all the resources on the following pages before using MRI-Simmons.

 

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References

Huebsch, R. (n.d.) What Is MRI in Advertising? Chron. https://smallbusiness.chron.com/mri-advertising-34172.html

Accessing MRI-Simmons Data Through the Penn State University Libraries

To access the database, you will need your Penn State Access Account ID and password. First, go to the Libraries database page and then choose Simmons Insights. Follow the steps in the linked handout to search the database (see attachment).

Additional Instructions

Please watch this video on how to search the MRI-Simmons database.

 

 

 

How to Interpret MRI-Simmons Data

Simmons Insights provides users with in-depth reports that utilize a crosstab (FDU, 2022). When you are analyzing Simmons Insights data, keep in mind that the columns relate to the product or brand you are interested in, while the rows contain demographic characteristics, media habits, or psychographic variables (FDU, 2022). Figure 2.3 is an example of the data you might retrieve (here, on energy drinks).

Terms

Some of the terms in the report will be of particular importance.

Sample

Samples in this report refer to the number of respondents who participated in the survey and who also fulfill the column and row characteristics. For example, in this report, 1,707 survey respondents were males who said that they drink energy drinks.

Weighted

This figure, which is expressed in thousands, is a projection of the total number of adults in the United States who fulfill the row and column characteristics based on the stated samples. For example, this report estimates that 22,727,000 people in the United States both are male and drink energy drinks.

Vertical %

This refers to the percentage of respondents who first meet the column criteria and then meet the row criteria. For example, in this report, out of all the respondents who drink energy drinks, 62.23% are male.

Horizontal %

This refers to the percentage of respondents who first meet the row criteria and then meet the column criteria. In this report, out of all the male respondents, 19.60% reported drinking energy drinks.

Index

The index measures the likelihood that respondents will meet the criteria for both the column and the row, as compared to the total U.S. population (FDU, 2022). The base number of the index, for comparison purposes, is 100 (FDU, 2022). In this example, the index for male respondents who drink energy drinks is 129, which means that, compared to the total U.S. population, these male respondents are 29% more likely to have had energy drinks.

The index is one of the most important pieces of information found in the Simmons Insights report (FDU, 2022). If the index is 130, survey respondents have 30% more interest in using a product or brand than the rest of the population (FDU, 2022). An index of 75 indicates that the likelihood of using a product or brand is 25% less than the average (FDU, 2022). If the index is close to 100, usage among survey respondents and the general population will not differ much (FDU, 2022).

Interpreting Energy Drinks Results

Figure 2.3 identifies those who selected Red Bull Regular in response to the survey question “What brands of energy drinks did you have in the past month?” The possible answer Red Bull Regular is captured in the rightmost column label. The corresponding rows break down the data via demographic characteristics: gender and age:

• Men are more likely to have had Red Bull than women are; the index for men is 136, compared to 66 for women. 
• Of the people who stated that they had Red Bull, 65.62% were men; 34.38% were women. 
• Adults in the 18–24 age group are much more likely to have Red Bull than any of the other survey respondents. The index for this group is 204, which is much higher than the base of 100.

 

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References

Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU). (2022, April 12). Simmons Insights Database Guide: Understanding Your Results. https://library.fdu.edu/c.php?g=777863&p=5697189

Lesson 2 Wrap-Up and Looking Ahead

Summary

This lesson reviewed the secondary sources that you will need for the situation analysis and introduced the MRI-Simmons database, which you will be expected to understand and use as part of your research. This lesson also reviewed the key elements of the SWOT analysis.

Check and Double-Check

By the end of this lesson, make sure you have completed the readings and activities found in the Lesson 2 Course Schedule.

Looking Ahead

Lesson 3 will discuss competitive analysis and the AdSpender database, which contains advertising spending figures for various brands.