Abstract:This report is designed as a resource for engineers, economists, physical scientists, as well as agency, NGO, and legislative staff, and others who may be unfamiliar with marketing and marketing research methods but are working on transforming the automobile market to clean and efficient vehicles. Many may find themselves either working with marketing researchers or using marketing research data to design social marketing campaigns. We wish to introduce marketing and social marketing research and theoretical approaches to such readers. In particular, we focus upon the application of marketing research to guide long term marketing efforts with iterative research and monitoring of change. We discuss theories and research approaches in the social marketing stream that can guide multi-year research efforts and a "transformation of the automobile-market." Additionally, we discuss selection of data collection techniques, such as focus groups and Internet surveys, to aid in identifying and selecting appropriate research methods.