You are the marketing manager for a local nonprofit charity whose funding is derived from membership fees. You have noticed a severe drop in new memberships and a decline in repeat memberships, which is threatening your organization’s ability to survive and grow. You have decided to implement the Five-Step Marketing Research Approach to help clarify the problem and develop strategies for implementation.

Write a 1050 word essay on the Five-Step Marketing Research Approach in which you detail the steps you will use to address the membership issue that the local nonprofit charity is facing.

Address the following in your role as marketing manager:

• Define the Five-Step Marketing Research Approach and discuss the importance of research in marketing.
• Describe each step of the Marketing Research Approach in detail and create a plan of attack to explain how each stage should be implemented.
• Define the target market that you are striving to bring into this organization and describe the methods of research that you will use to identify these groups of people.
• Define service differentiation. Provide an example that illustrates how the local nonprofit charity in the scenario can use differentiation to help increase the target market’s interest.
• Explain how differentiation will help position the charitable organization within its defined market.