24761 Chap.1 Marketing Data and Its Types
Marketing Data and Its Types
Data before analysis
The first week defines data as raw, unprocessed facts, numbers, observations or symbols, and it reminds marketers that customers leave data in four forms: numbers, text and images, audio such as call recordings, and sensory experience such as taste or smell.
Public data such as census tables sits beside private data such as purchase histories.
Levels decide the maths
Every variable belongs to a qualitative family, nominal or ordinal, or a quantitative family, discrete or continuous.
The level decides which summary and which chart are honest, which is why a coded payment method never gets an average and a star rating is read with a median.
From records to decisions
The chapter separates data, information and insight with a worked bakery case, then introduces the split between primary and secondary data that the rest of the subject builds on.
What this chapter covers
- 01
What counts as data, and public versus private data
- 02
Numerical, textual and visual, audio and sensory data
- 03
Nominal, ordinal, discrete and continuous levels
- 04
Which summaries each level allows
- 05
Data, information and insight as separate products
- 06
Primary versus secondary marketing data
Worked example · free
Pick a chart and a summary for each checkout survey field
- 1Payment method is nominal, so show a bar chart of counts (card 3, PayPal 1, gift voucher 1) and report the mode, card.
- 1Delivery stars are ordinal, so show a bar chart with the five star levels in order and report the median, which is 4 stars once the ratings are sorted 2, 3, 4, 4, 5.
- 1Plants per order is discrete, so a column chart of how many orders held 1, 2, 3 or 5 plants works, with the mean of 13 divided by 5, or 2.6 plants.
- 1Dispatch minutes are continuous, so a histogram or box plot shows their spread; a pie chart would wrongly treat the minutes as parts of a whole.
Key terms
- Nominal Data
- Labels that name categories without any order, such as payment method or product colour.
- Discrete Data
- Whole-number counts, such as visits or items bought, that cannot be split into fractions.
- Continuous Data
- Measurements such as time, weight or income that can take any value within a range.
- Marketing Data
- Any information that helps a brand understand its customers, its market and its own performance well enough to decide.
- Sensory Data
- Evidence about taste, smell, touch or physical experience, which the lecture calls very important even though it is hard to capture.
Marketing Data and Its Types FAQ
Is a star rating ordinal or interval data?
The Workshop 1 answer key treats a one-to-five star rating as ordinal. Five stars beats four, but nobody has shown that each step between stars is the same size, so the median and the full spread of ratings are the safest summaries. If you do report an average rating, say that you are treating the steps as equal.
What is the difference between discrete and continuous data?
Discrete data are counts that only take whole values, like the number of products in a basket. Continuous data are measurements that can take any value in a range, like minutes spent on a website or household income in dollars. The difference decides whether a column chart of counts or a histogram of spread suits the variable.
Why does the level of measurement matter in a marketing report?
It decides which statistics and charts are honest. A coded category such as region or payment type cannot be averaged, a ranked scale is summarised with a median, and measured quantities support means and histograms. Getting the level wrong produces numbers that look precise but mislead whoever reads the dashboard.
How do data, information and insight differ?
Data is the raw record, such as every order and its time stamp. Information is that record organised to show a pattern, such as the share of afternoon orders reporting a sold-out item. An insight explains why the pattern matters for the business and points towards a decision a manager could test.
Is a company's own sales record primary or secondary data?
It depends on the question. Sales records collected to run the business become internal secondary data when an analyst reuses them for a new marketing question. Data only counts as primary when the researcher designs and collects it for the specific problem being investigated, for example through a new survey or experiment.
Assessment move
Take any survey or dashboard you meet this week and write the level beside every field before reading a single number. Then ask what summary each level allows and whether the chart in front of you respects it. Practise the three-statement habit from the bakery example on a small data set of your own, writing the finding, the insight and the decision as separate sentences.
Last, list five sources you could use to study a brand you are not assessed on and label each one primary or secondary, internal or external; the next chapter builds directly on that habit.
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