ESSENTIALS OF MARKETING RESEARCH, 6E, provides a concise, yet complete guide to the design, execution, analysis, and reporting of marketing research to support smart business decisions. Covering essential principles and techniques in a streamlined, engaging way, the text equips students with the core knowledge and skills needed to manage marketing research effectively. This proven text provides valuable business context while introducing both traditional research methods, such as designing questionnaires, and the latest technological advances, including current data collection devices, basic data analysis tools, practical approaches to data analytics, and the impact of social media and artifactual online data. Designed specifically for instructors who prefer a concise introduction to marketing research topics, the Sixth Edition of this trusted text features updates based on recent trends and technology, including an increased emphasis on ethical and international issues, reflecting their growing importance in modern marketing research.

Part 1: INTRODUCTION.
1.The Role of Marketing Research.
2. Harnessing Big Data into Better Decisions.
3. The Marketing Research Process.
4. The Human Side of Marketing Research: Organizational and Ethical Issues.
Part II: DESIGNING RESEARCH STUDIES.
5. Qualitative Research Tools.
6. Secondary Data Research in a Digital Age.
7. Survey Research.
8. Observation.
9. Conducting Marketing Experiments.
Part III: MEASUREMENT.
10. Measurement and Attitude Scaling.
11. Questionnaire Design.
Part IV: SAMPLING AND STATISTICAL THEORY.
12. Sampling Designs and Sampling Procedures.
13. Big Data Basics: Describing Samples and Population.
Park V: BASIC DATA ANALYTICS.
14. Basic Data Analysis.
15. Testing for Differences between Groups and for Predictive Relationships.
16. Communicating Research Results.
Part VI: MARKETING ANALYTICS TOOLS.
17. Beyond the Basics in Basic Data Analysis.
18. Advanced Topics in Linear Analytics.
19. Testing Hypotheses with GLM Procedures.
20. Introducing Multivariate Data Analysis.
21. Multivariate Data Analysis: Analytics with Interdependence Techniques.
22. Primer on Structural Equations Modeling.
Part VII: COMPREHENSIVE CASES WITH COMPUTERIZED DATABASES.
Comprehensive Cases
Appendix: Statistical Tables.

ESSENTIALS OF MARKETING RESEARCH, 6E, provides a concise, yet complete guide to the design, execution, analysis, and reporting of marketing research to support smart business decisions. Covering essential principles and techniques in a streamlined, engaging way, the text equips students with the core knowledge and skills needed to manage marketing research effectively. This proven text provides valuable business context while introducing both traditional research methods, such as designing questionnaires, and the latest technological advances, including current data collection devices, basic data analysis tools, practical approaches to data analytics, and the impact of social media and artifactual online data. Designed specifically for instructors who prefer a concise introduction to marketing research topics, the Sixth Edition of this trusted text features updates based on recent trends and technology, including an increased emphasis on ethical and international issues, reflecting their growing importance in modern marketing research. The text now employs a more concise approach to marketing research fundamentals, creating a clear distinction between coverage of essential principles and more detailed analytical material to help students build knowledge and skills related to analyzing data. Increased coverage of basic analytical tools provides a strong grounding in practices and processes students are likely to encounter in today’s business environment. The Qualtrics Research Suite survey software facilitates online surveys and data collection with its powerful research tool—included with every new copy of Babin and Zikmund. For more information, visit www.qualtrics.com/cengage. Each chapter opens with a story relevant to upcoming material, and most are new to the Sixth Edition. Many chapter-opening vignettes involve famous brands and companies students are likely to know, while others focus on "slice of life" stories describing a businessperson’s struggle to make smart decisions based on effective research. Survey This! features invite students respond to online questionnaires using Qualtrics software, providing firsthand exposure to survey construction and the ways research hypotheses are addressed, as well as opportunities to use real survey data to answer research questions. Students also get access to Qualtrics to design their own questionnaires. Each chapter contains a Tips of the Trade feature with advice related to the current stage of the research process. Tips address practical considerations such as interview length, question wording, interviewer involvement, sample size requirements, guides for data reliability and validity, and testing hypotheses using inferential statistics. Boxed material, chapter objectives, and end-of-chapter materials are presented in a simple, engaging form that allows students to focus on important information. Highlights include Research Snapshots that provide detailed examples of real marketing research and explore its ethical aspects, learning objectives to help guide reading and study, and a focus on practical statistical applications rather than intensive statistical theory. JMP software from SAS Institute is an easy to use, point-and-click, data analysis and visualization software for Windows and Mac. Used by many leading consumer products companies across the globe, 24-month access of JMP Student Edition is included with every new copy of Babin and Zikmund. For more information, visit www.jmp.com/se. Strong coverage of qualitative research is included to reflect the growing importance of phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, case study approaches, and qualitative Internet research, including artifactual data collected on social networking web sites, company chat rooms, blogs, Twitter, and more.