Marketing Blog #6

The testing process in marketing is relatively simple.  The first step in the process is determining what your reasoning is for conducting the test in the first place.  The second step in this process is designing a test that fits based on your marketing variables and what information you plan to get from the people you test.  The third step in this process is establishing your test metrics which means what significance will be and what the cutoff date for your test will be, along with other things.  The fourth step is the administer the test and monitor the results as they arrive.  The fifth step in the process is to analyze and report your findings in the results.  The final step in the process is to make a marketing decision based on the outcome/results of your test.  Data is collected in a multitude of ways, the most obvious being through websites, then purchases, census data, surveys, and focus groups, all done on the internet of course.  We learned about data mining which is an emerging field and is also a new job field that was created in the past 5 years.  Data mining by definition is, a set of statistical routines that permit pattern detection in large data sets.  Lastly we spoke about the hierarchy of customer focused marketing strategy, which from bottom to top is information, interaction, transaction, personalization, and lastly customization.