Marketing Research Report

1. 0 Introduction

With the recent Covid-19 pandemic, we observe a heavy repetition of Singapore going in and out of its lockdown states and having events being on greater restriction basis such as limited number of participants entry to having book time slots for the utilisation of private exercise spaces. With our health being tied directly to the severity of occurrence in the Covid-19 symptoms, many people are starting to try and adopt healthier ways of living and our client wants to tap on this emerging phenomenon by introducing virtual workouts to the people of Singapore. With the “work from home” trend growing to eventually be a future occurrence in our workplaces, this report is to help understand that with the limitation in necessary movement would people adopt virtual workouts as an alternative to the physical counterparts.

1.1 Background

To create a service that allows easy mode of adoption for the people in Singapore currently stuck working from home or being unable to enjoy their usual physical activities due to the restrictions.

1.2 Research Aim

Our client is trying to discover the demand in virtual workouts as an alternative to physical sessions in Singapore and to see if it will be a viable option for future adoption as the world moves towards the direction of convenience and accessibility.

1.3 Research Objective

1. To determine if consumers are willing to exchange physical workouts for virtual workouts

2. Length and price of a virtual workout class

3. What type of potential virtual workout to offer to our consumers

These objectives will help us to understand if virtual workouts will be a thing of the future and if so what services should we provide to the public.

1.4 Literature Review (Sophie)

2.0 Research Methodology (Celine)

2.1 Research Design (Celine)

This research uses the descriptive research design method to obtain information that answers our research problems/questions through collecting data that defines and describes the research problem to deepen our understanding. Descriptive research design is used to collect quantitative data of the respondents such as their preferences, attitude, past behavior, and opinions towards virtual workout classes. The intent using this research design method is to identify trends, test relationship hypotheses between variables, and ultimately identify ways to create a marketing strategy once our research objective is achieved. It is also used to verify findings of exploratory research studies based on secondary research.

2.2 Research Methods (Celine)

The research methods selected is a survey questionnaire to collect primary data. The survey questionnaires are to be distributed to participants to determine the appeal of virtual workouts classes and their willingness to adopt them (Appendix A).

2.3 Participants’ Demographics (Celine)

Majority of the participants fall in the age range of 18 to 34 years old, in line with the target respondents of this research.

2.4 Questionnaire Design (Celine)

​​ https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.590172/ful

Question format	No.	Questionnaires
Introduction Screening question (1) – to ensure respondents are eligible to meet our target audience specifications (behavior, interests) Target respondents: People that take physical classes	1.	How often do you exercise? o Never o Sometimes o Often (every week) o Very often (> once a week) Have you attended workout classes before? Yes no
Research Questions Quantitative (e.g. price, frequency of purchase etc.) (5) *Continuous/numerical data https://www.fao.org/3/w3241e/w3241e05.htm#preliminary%20decisions%20in%20questionnaire%20design	2.	How many times do you attend workout classes in a week? Never Sometimes Often Very often
	3.	How much are you willing to pay for a virtual workout class? $20 - $40 $50 - $80 $100 - $150
	4.	Virtual workouts are usually less time consuming and priced lower. To what degree would you likely adopt virtual workouts? (Likert Scale) o (1) Very likely o (2) Likely o (3) Neutral o (4) Unlikely (5) Very unlikely
	5.	How many times within a week would you attend a virtual workout class? - None - Once - 2-3 times - More than 3 times a week
	6.	How many people would you prefer to workout with during workout sessions? 1 - 5 6 - 10 11 - 20 Above 20
Research Questions Qualitative (e.g. design, quality etc.) independent variables (from secondary research) (5)	7.	What are the reasons that would get you to adopt virtual workout classes? · Health · Physical appearance · Lose weight · Convenience and affordability · Build muscle · Privacy · Others:__________
	8.	What do you look for/want in a virtual workout class?
	9.	Are you more likely to do virtual workouts with family and friends? Yes No
	10.	If you would adopt virtual workout classes, what type of workout classes would you choose? (e.g. pilates, HIIT, Zumba etc.)
	11.	Are you comfortable with an instructor of the opposite gender? Yes No
Research Questions Attitude-scale questions (Interval) (5) https://www.managementstudyguide.com/attitude-scales.htm#nominalscale **The data obtained from the Interval Scale can be used to calculate the Mean scores of each attributes over all respondents. The Standard Deviation (a measure of dispersion) can also be calculated.	12.	Are you willing to adopt Virtual workouts classes instead of physical workout classes?. Disagree 0 1 2 3 4 5 Agree
	13.	With WFH & Singapore’s restrictions, do you think virtual workouts are a necessity? Disagree 0 1 2 3 4 5 Agree
	14.	Virtual classes are just as fun and effective as physical classes. Disagree 0 1 2 3 4 5 Agree
	15.	You prefer one-to-one classes more than group classes Disagree 0 1 2 3 4 5 Agree
	16.	You find virtual classes more flexible, convenient, and accessible Disagree 0 1 2 3 4 5 Agree
Research Questions Comment by Celine Kong: Other questions to consider: What do you think virtual classes are missing compared to physical classes? If you have previously agreed that you prefer physical classes, what are the reasons? Open-ended questions to answer why (ratio and/or text) (2)	17.	What is your opinion on virtual workout classes?
	18.	What factors are the most important to you when choosing a virtual workout class?
Demographic Question	19.	What is your gender? Male Female Others
	20.	What is your age group? 17 & below 18 to 34 35 to 50 51 to 70

2.5 Sampling Plan (Aloysius)

Sampling Method

With the time constraint allocated for the completion of our GBA and the restrictions placed especially in such times of Covid-19, given the health risk and limitation in people’s movement, we decided to utilise an online survey. With the non-probability sampling, there might be an occurrence of a potential sampling bias due to the widespread of the survey to everyone. However, we ensured that those participating fit into our target demographics of attending a workout class before to reduce the error.

For the spreading of our online survey, we utilised a convenience sampling method through communication applications such as whatsapp and telegram. Given the time frame, we had to use this method as it grants the greatest convenience and it is easy to ensure the response from the users. The users included family, friends and potential acquaintances. However, the sampling method goes beyond that as we encourage our users on the communication applications to spread this online survey further so that we could get a wider range of responses from more potential audiences. So, this is the utilisation of snowball sampling where we utilise the connections from our own family and friends and request them to further distribute the online survey.

Therefore, with the necessity of convenience and the help of other individuals' connections, we utilised 2 different non-probability sampling methods, Convenience and Snowball Sampling.

2.6 Pilot testing (Aloysius)

There were 5 respondents to the pilot survey just that one selected no so not included as part of our customer demographics. We are utilising the “Have you attended Workout classes before” as our screening question to check for our target demographics to ensure that if they selected no, they need not participate in our survey.

First Question to change:

Image 1 First draft question

For this question, the responses were split 50 - 50 between the sometimes and the very often. This led us to think that the options given were very vague as there was no timeframe for one of the options which might lead to a poor analysis. Therefore, we made changes to only include 3 options which all should include a time frame factor. The change made is seen in the image below.

Image 2 Edited first draft questio

Second question to change:

Image 3 Second draft question

For this response we observed that besides one person, all others selected the cheapest option. This can be due to various factors such as the current classes are mostly 45 mins to an hour at most. So, people who might choose longer may have different expectations about the timeframe of the particular class. Thus, to limit this biasness, we have included a disclaimer of showcasing an example for an hour lesson for a virtual workout class instead to have a more proper analysis.

Image 4 Edited second draft question

Third question to change:

Image 5 Third draft question

For this question, we realized that there was no option to further enhance our analysis of what types of workout class to offer to our potential consumers such as a one-to-one class. Given that we have a question for preference to private virtual workout classes, we feel that an additional option to include for the “How many people would you prefer to workout with during workout sessions” should include 0 as well. This will help us dig deeper in understanding our consumers potential preference better to help better design workout classes.

Image 6 Edited third draft question

Fourth question to change:

Image 7 Fourth draft question

As seen from the image above, we have a question that gives preference for our target audience to select why they would want to adopt virtual workout classes. However, we also have a short answer question to understand their preference of a virtual workout class. We felt that this might be a little repetitive which might led to some not knowing what to answer such as “nil” or even “convenience” when it is already an option in a previous question. Thus, we decided to remove the question instead to avoid sounding very repetitive and making our audience unsure to the point that they have to repeat or have nothing to write.

Fifth question to change:

Image 8 additional question to add

As observed from the second question to change, we realised that we do not have a proper gauge in how long our sessions should be if consumers would prefer having virtual workout classes. So, relating back to our objective in the project of determining the price point and timeframe of a lesson, we decided to add in this question to help us better understand how we could craft lessons.

2.7 Data Collection

3.0 Results and Analysis (Chloe)

3.1 Recommendations (Chloe)

3.2 Limitations (Aloysius)

3.2.1

Limitation of using online survey

Despite providing a huge convenience in allowing a wide reach of audiences, online surveys do have its limitations as well. One key factor will be the anonymous factor that lies in conducting online surveys. Usually, people would be more willing to participate in a survey if it will not be traceable back to them. However, this creates underlying issues such as a lack of quality response which some people might not give very truthful answers or they might just skimp through and answer the questions randomly. Furthermore, with our chosen online survey platform, Google forms, there might be a chance that some users might attempt the questionnaire more than once which might dilute our findings.

3.2.2

Sampling bias

We utilised 2 different sampling methods for our research, Convenience and Snowball sampling.

With convenience sampling, our goal was mainly to get back the highest number of responses in the shortest amount of time. This could lead to our results showcasing a biasness of an over or under representation of the population as a whole. However, measures were taken to strictly only survey participants of our demographics which helps us in countering the sampling error factor which may be present.

For the snowball sampling, the biasness is similar where the representation of our sample is not guaranteed of the population as a whole. Furthermore, this sampling technique usually accounts for participants who are close to one another only which might result in the showcasing of similar traits as a result of the survey (Explorable, 2009).

3.3 Suggestions

With the limitations observed above, there can be some suggestions to improve the quality of our research in the future.

An improvement will be the conducting of face to face surveys or interviews where we engage with the public in either public transportation areas or nearby to physical classes studios where our main target audiences reside. This allows a more accurate finding of data and it moves our sampling method to become a simple random sampling instead.

References

Explorable.com (Apr 24, 2009). Snowball Sampling. Retrieved Feb 17, 2022 from

Explorable.com: https://explorable.com/snowball-sampling

Appendices