Hotel management assignment - 2000 words essay
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PPT.206LONWeek6-BusinessandMarketResearch..pptx
206LON: Business Management and Decision
Making Process
Week 6 – Seminar: Use of Research to Justify the Marketing of
a Business
It is essential that management clearly understands what information is and why it is important to take decisions based on facts rather than assumptions.
It is also clear that those who do use information for decision making also realise that they take better decisions as a result of using data. The implications of this for management are:
Better knowledge of their markets and the customers they are selling to;
More focused decisions and plans that are realistic to the market;
Decisions that are based on more cost effective sales, marketing and communications methods;
Decisions that assist the company to increase sales by ensuring that customer needs are met and satisfied;
Acting on the research that is completed.
Information therefore is the key to taking good decisions as it enhances the decision making process. However, to ensure this is done effectively the meaning of both information and decisions has to be evaluated.
WHAT IS INFORMATION:
The real definition of information, as given by the Oxford Concise Dictionary, is:
informing;
knowledge;
news.
Information through the adoption of research techniques has a fundamental informing role for management. It relates facts about a product or market, which the manager may or may not already know. Research always improves the knowledge of management, as managers need to understand clearly what the needs of the customers are and how these needs are always changing. Research also provides plenty of news, as a well designed research project will provide facts or facets of situations not clear to management that it is not likely to have known before.
Information, therefore, is something on which management should depend for making good decisions. It is vital in the decision making process, and so key that it is difficult to understand how companies take decisions without information.
WHY TAKE DECISIONS WITH INFORMATION?
Researchers say that decision making cannot be done effectively without a continuous flow of marketing information and research - it is the trends that matter. Information on your customers and how well you are marketing to them is:
a reassurance that you know who they are;
a source of feedback on how well you are servicing them;
key to knowing the changes in the market;
key to knowing how to make customers loyal in the longer term.
It is therefore the management responsibility to decide what information is needed to make sure that the decision taken is improved through the use of information.
Management needs to be able to decide:
What data or information is needed?
Which decisions will be influenced by this information?
How is the information to be collected?
How is the information to be analysed?
What expenditure is required to collect the information?
How can a decision be taken without the information?
Is a wrong decision likely to be taken as a result of not having the information?
HOW DOES INFORMATION IMPROVE DECISIONS?
Information becomes vital to the decision making process when:
It is well prepared,
Used pragmatically,
Analysed and interpreted with 'market-led' implications.
It improves the decision making process by:
Reducing uncertainty,
Reducing the number of assumptions that a team of managers might take.
Allowing a more systematic assessment of the facts about a market, or product, or any decisions managers take.
So the keys to making good decisions therefore are:
to use information,
become more analytical in the way it is interpreted,
and become dependent on taking a decision when there are facts to support it.
WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO USE DATA AND RESEARCH
Customers' needs are always changing,
Competitors' activities are always changing,
The market environment in which business operates changes because of external factors, such as political and economic circumstances,
Managers have become more focused as companies operate more efficient organisations, and they cannot keep an intimate knowledge of their customers and their needs because of pressure of time.
Data and research therefore has become more essential to help to monitor change and provide managers with an 'early warning system' on how to keep customers satisfied.
It is important for all managers in a company to adopt the traditional marketing planning skills of developing a strategy, testing and monitoring it, to find time to understand their markets and customers better. It is effective to convene a management team and review the following questions:
Where are we now?
Where do we want to go?
And how do we get there?
Answering these questions will give management the chance to take a step back and identify whether it is meeting market and customers needs effectively.
It will also assist in deciding on priorities for marketing and communications activities in the future, and in getting them into the context of change that is constant and affects all decisions.
Many managers find it difficult to conceptualize what data and information is needed to help them answer the three traditional questions, so it is important to review other questions to develop the discussion.
The following are effective, provided each manager answers the questions in relation to his or her own role in the company and then participates in a review to consolidate the answers, so that a company develops its consent view of what are the key answers that need to be addressed:
What do we know about our markets and customers?
What do we want to know about our markets and customers?
What data and information are essential to assist us in the decisions that we need to take to be successful?
What data and information are essential to assist us to know that we are more successful than competitors and that we are keeping our customers satisfied?
From Data to Wisdom Business MODEL
(The Importance of Data in Business)
https :// www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw4P5wx1Bq0
Birn, R.J. (2004). Effective Use of Market Research: How to Drive and Focus Better Business Decisions, London, Kogan Page Ltd.
Kubo, H. and Ottaviano, T. (2016). Company and Industry Research: Strategies and Resources, Business Expert Press, New York.
