Market research is a key component in developing marketing strategy
for any buisnes by providing a fact-based foundation for estimating
sales and profitability. In fact, it can make the difference between
making wise decisions that drive business forward and poor decisions
that can damage your business. I recently watched a show on
Netflix about PEPSICO and their 1980 war with COKE. The main
goal of PEPSICO was to win over the cola war against COKE
and gain more traction with the new generation by influencing more
PEPSICO sales over COKE sales. The marketing team for PEPSICO
then came up with the PEPSI POINTS (some might recall this),
the idea of the PEPSI POINTS was for the consumer to gain
points by the purchase of product and then get items off a
catalog based on how many points they collected. The prizes
originally offered where sunglasses, shirts, coats, and simple stuff like
that, where the issue arises was when the marketing team then
wanted to push the purchasing of PEPSIC products further and
made a commercial offering a military jet for X amount of points
and did not make a disclaimer anywhere on the 1st aired
commercial. What happened here was that because the disclamer was
so carelessly not added by the marketing team a young guy did
in fact end up collecting all the needed points and came forward
to PEPSICO causing the company headaches and going as far as
suing them. The case ended in PEPSICO correcting the original
commercial to show the disclaimer stating it was a joke. We see
here why its so important to DO the needed research and have
an accurate view of your business and your marketplace and the
marketing offers made. It is next to impossible to come up with
a market strategy when you haven't done any market research. Let
me correct myself, it is next to impossible to come up with a
good market strategy when you haven't done any market research.
Where I live in Northern New York, we have a very interesting
demographic of people, we have some big cities, and we also
have a large area of rural land. I am a beer wholesaler and
having this strange demographic, our area is often used for market
research and product releases and product test runs. The breweries
will send us a sample pallet of product for free and we will
distribute it out to various different retailers within our geographical
area. We then send the brewery back our sales data after a
certain amount of time and they take that and decide how they
want to proceed. This data shows them which groups and areas
sold the most of the product, which sold the least, should they
stop producing the product, or should they carpet bomb the united
states with it because its so good. I am sure most of you
have heard of white claw, we were one of the first distributors
in the nation to carry it as a trail run and look at it now.
My current employer offers our quarterly market research reports for
free to our members. For non-members, this report is approx $2,000,
and companies regularly pay that who are not our members. The
report monitors key measures in order to identify current industry
strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, the report explores and
demonstrates the latest adjustments in the market and valuable insights
of the consistently evolving opportunities for growth as well as the
challenges that the industry is experiencing. For many businesses,
market research is a key component in developing marketing strategy
by providing a fact-based foundation for estimating sales and
profitability. In fact, it can make the difference between making
wise decisions that drive business forward and poor decisions that
can damage your business. Marketing research is important to the
development of a marketing strategy the same way a coach studies
the opponent team's past games to create his plays before the
match up. You have to know your audience and the needs and
wants of the market you are trying to attract. Performing market
research is a part of building your plan by pinpointing the who,
the what and the why. For example, if a business's market area
was now booming with new parents, they would not want to
market adult-geared vacation spots to build in the area. If they
conducted a market research, they would find that a more family
friendly vacation option would be better and more needed by the
market they serve. As another example, lets use the current status
of the price of groceries. In a market where there is a high
number of families, promoting a grocery discount card may be a
better choice than promoting a new store credit card. Market research
is all about knowing the market you serve and building a
marketing strategy that will fill the needs and wants of that
market. There are many reasons marketing research is important to
the development of a marketing strategy. For several companies,
market research is a very important component in developing strategies
for marketing by creating a fact-based foundation for estimating
profitability and sales. This will make the difference when it comes
to making smart decisions that pushes business forward and poor
decisions that could potentially harm your business. Marketing research
gives important information and insights to the business. You can
gain a more in depth understanding about your competitors and
customers in the market environment. At the same time it can
assist with recognizing new opportunities for your company. The
market changes over time so you will have to continue doing
research to determine ways to improve your offering depending on
the changing preferences of consumers and/or market dynamics. Overall
market research is critical when developing a marketing strategy.
Some benefits are being able to identify gaps in what customers
expects and identifying how new and existing customers view your
company. Great marketing intelligence helps to lower risks when
making important business decisions. Marketing research is vital to
developing a marketing strategy because a business needs to know
its consumers, their likes, dislikes, shopping behaviors, and shopping
habits. A business can also learn how its consumers react in
certain situations. A company with a well-planned market strategy can
determine the business's life.Companies that research the market help
them collect the information needed to analyze and understand the
marketplace. In turn, it will improve the company's development of
products and services, and having a solid relationship with your
merchant can help you find out what products are selling and
help a company build a more profitable business. If the business
is online, Google can assist you with demographics that can further
your business endeavors. Demographics is statistical data population-
related and particular groups within it. It can help a business
locate customers in new locations where the company can advertise
its products or merchandise that suits the customer's needs.A Company
should test new products before launching its business online to see
how the product will sell; if the company does not do this, it
could prevent the company from losing money. I believe doing
research for anything business related such as marketing is important.
The way I see it, you have to do research for papers but in
order to do that, you need to know your audience. Marketing is
similar because you need to do market research to know what is
popular on the market currently, because knowing what the public
needs is like knowing your audience. Coffee companies such as
Starbucks haven’t always had what they call at home coffee. But
then they did market research because not everyone wants to go
out and buy coffee, some people prefer their coffee machines.
Starbucks started selling coffee beans which they grind for you
depending on what type of machine you have. Within the past
few years, or since the keurig has become popular, consumers have
been buying k-cups since they’re less messier than bags of coffee.
Starbucks starting selling their own k-cups not just in their cafés,
but in grocery stores too. If you do not do market research
your product won’t do as well on the market. Marketing research
importance is to help you plan on a strategy to help your
customers, Product or services research is done to tell which is
need most .This also help with successful product offering and
development on executing effective marketing strategies this allows the
company to use its strengths and avoiding insane unnecessary cost
.
Well what is market research, market research is the process of
determining the viability of a new service or product through
research conducted directly with potential customers.
What are some examples of marketing research, well I have two,
Primary market research which refers to any research that a person,
company or a person/company conduct or hires another company or
individual to conduct. for example,a person may conduct a survey
by asking customers a few questions in person. Interview,focus groups,
questionnaires and surveys are as well other examples of primary
market research.My second example is, secondary market research which
involves assessed data that has already been collected and published
by others .For example you may research a particular topic and
note any trends you find based on data already published about
that topic.business often use this form of marketing research when
they have a smaller budget or when ample marketing research has
already been performed on a particular topic .It is so important
to have a strategy. Some call it a method to your madness. I
call it organization and research. I guess you can use the reference
of playing chess. One firm does one thing, and the opposition
reacts by trying to match or oppose movements in the market.
Watching the numbers and how they rise, and fall can definitely
be an indicator of where the market is developing and forming.
New markets require extensive research due to the fact you need
to know the supply and demand of the market. When you have
a product that is in demand, it ensures your sales will increase.
Don't get low on supply though or your customers may seek a
temporary or even permanent substitute for the product you are
selling. In reality, it is all about finding what the customer needs,
wants and demands in the current market. A specific example can
be running shoes. There are so many to choose from. I have
tried many different types of running/walking shoes as I have a
special condition in my feet called metatarsal Aysia. I have narrowed
it down to Asics shoes but there are so many different types
to choose from. This is where I use reviews, market price and
overall comfort level before I make an actual purchase. Marketing
research is important to the development of a marketing strategy
because research allows an organization to determine if the goal of
the organization is obtainable by the plan or path that has been
pre-mapped. Most businesses have an idea of how businesses can
be successful. In most cases, the term successful is used loosely
depending on the organization's definition of success. Is success profit,
longevity, market share, customer satisfaction or something else?.Amazon
is a multi-billion dollar business. This organization offers many
services and products. Most of us are familiar with the delivery
and logistics or even the entertainment services; streaming of music,
movies, or tv shows. Amazon became big due to what I would
like to think of as market research. The company people watched
and saw that our world was turning from "patiently waiting" to
instant gratification. Looking at consumers' want for instant gratification
allowed the organization to implement services that would provide
just that. Amazon valued its customer's time. Now that there was
a value of time presented, customers were interested in seeking
other values, which Amazon discovered by building on the liking
on instant gratification. Marketing research is important for developing
a marketing strategy because at the crux of marketing, companies
are attempting to sell products to consumers. Marketing research can
make or break something selling well or not. Ensuring marketing
research is done thoroughly helps ensure a business succeeds.
It is necessary to implement a research approach, which we learned
about this week. The five steps are: to set goals and find
marketing opportunities, determine how to collect data, obtain
secondary/primary data, analyze data, and present the findings of all
data and to take the recommended action(s).
One example I can think of that happened recently was when a
preview of the movie ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ debuted. Immediately,
fans criticized the graphics of the icon. After fans took to the
internet to voice their concerns. In doing so, the film studio
listened and re animated the whole movie! This added about a
year to the film’s release, but by listening to consumers the film
was successful and they have even made a sequel.
The re-animation could have possibly been avoided if the production
agency had a more strict research strategy in place before they
filmed the movie and during production.
Marketing research is an essential tool for marketers to help identify
and elaborate on the opportunity and problems in marketing a
particular product. It establishes a starting point for the ultimate
goal of a company or organization. Marketing research helps generate,
define and check the marketer's action. It matches the performance
of effective market control. It is essential for any company or
organization to know the market's temperature. Without this research,
learning, and understanding the competition would be hard. It helps
to ensure marketing performance has been adequately monitored/
Marketing research helps in proper analysis and target market analysis
as well, and it helps to identify business trends. In market
research, you can determine what is and is not working for an
organization. Overall, marketing research can help an organization
identify opportunities, identify risks, and it helps to create and
promote advertising materials. Marketing research helps identify target
markets, beat the competition, and beat previous sales forecasts. The
main goal of most organizations is success, and to be able to
out beat last goals and revenur=e numbers is a success in itself
. When trying to market a specific product to the public its
important that you do research to see how your product will have
the most reach to people. Not only that but you also need to
consider the current affairs happening in the world at the moment
to know when a specific marketing strategy might be seen as
tone-deaf or ill-fitting for the moment in which case, the product
that you're attempting to market ends up not performing either as
well, or just completely flops. Market research will also help you
identify your competitors as well and see how their strategies are
either working as intended or not working as intended, or actually
working similar to the topic that we covered last week. Doing
your due diligence and performing research will also tell you if
there is a place for the certain product that you're trying to
market or, if it is something that is brand new to the market
in which case you have created a market and are the first one
to attempt to market a product. Marketing research is important
because it provides data from which companies can build strong
business strategies. Without this data, companies would be forced to
make decisions in a vacuum—and how could you possibly know
what your customers want if you don’t ask them? Marketing research
is a crucial part of the marketing process. It provides data from
which companies can build strong business strategies. Marketing research
helps companies understand their target customers better, so that they
can improve the products and services that they offer, as well as
develop new product ideas. Marketing research also helps companies
identify trends in the marketplace, which can help them stay ahead
of their competitors in terms of product quality and marketing
effectiveness but when you conduct research on your customers, you
find out what they need and want, and then you can create
products and services based on those needs. This means your
company will be able to grow faster than its competitors because
it has a better understanding of what people want from their
products.
A few examples of marketing research are surveys, phone surveys,
focus groups social media market research, and online interviews.
Conducting marketing research is vital to developing and launching
anything you want to be successful. Developing a research plan
allows companies to determine whether or not there is a market
for the product, what the fair market value is, challenges that
may occur, and how to deliver the product with a reasonable
return on investment. Learning from the success and failures of
other companies that may have tried delivering similar products and
how to make it better, and if possible at a cheaper cost.
Another big piece to the success is the branding or slogans chosen
to help deliver a product to the intended market. If not careful
this is something that can blow back in negative ways that were
not intended if not carefully thought out. Another is consideration
is to develop a product that keeps the customer coming back to
buy more based on the favorable experience they have from the
product, essentially you want the product to sell itself. Tools come
to mind for me when I think of this concept. I have always
told my employees that I would rather spend an extra fifty to
one hundred dollars more for quality that will last longer and
perform better than the cheap ones that will break quickly. I will
always continue to come back and buy those same tools when
the time comes. Marketing research is very important in the
developing process of a market strategy because it can give you
an accurate view of your business, marketplace and even competition.
Marketing research allows you to see how and what your competitors
are doing to attract their customers. Marketing research even helps
you decide whether a new idea or product could benefit your
customers and attract new ones as well. Gathering and developing
market research is essential for a firm if they intend to increase
their sales of a specific product through one of the four general
bases of segmentation. Without great market research going into the
marketing strategy you could expect to find high-end vehicles sold
in low income areas of your city and other things like this
occurring. These kind of marketing strategies would put many
companies out of business and shows the importance of developing
strategic market research.One example that comes to mind was the
marketing strategy of Lays potato chips a couple of years back.
It was called the "Do Us A Flavor" contest and it seemed that
there was a new flavor on the shelf daily with some pretty
wild ones to boot. This was a very unique way to conduct
market research and has since been copied by other organization's
looking to replicate Lay's success. According to Wireless News, "Lay's
is asking fans to also include the location that inspired each
potential million-dollar idea. Later this year, four delicious finalist
flavors, representing flavorful cities and towns across the U.S., will
be fully developed, brought to store shelves and voted on by
America. Fans are encouraged to visit DoUsAFlavor.com to submit
their flavor ideas." (Close-up Media, 2015) The primary observational
data that Lay's was able to generate from this strategy would set
the company up for years of future marketing success. They would
then be able to identify market segments across the nation with
which to target and how to target those segments. Marketing research
is one of the key components in developing marketing strategies
for businesses. It is important because we need to identify marketing
opportunities and problems. We also need to generate, refine, and
evaluate potential marketing actions, and monitor marketing performance.
Some main purposes of marketing research is that it can help a
business make important business decisions, secure investments and
funding, determine new business opportunities, and avoid business
failures. An example of marketing research is conducting an online
search on a particular product and then making note of the most
recent data published on that product. I will use face cleanser
products as an example, a business can want to find out their
competition or what they are up against and can look up that
product and make note of their recent data and sales and things
like that. Another example of marketing research is contacting trade
organizations and asking specific questions about a topic. Some
companies even choose to perform market research by sending
questionnaires to their existing customers or users who have shown
interest in their product or services. There are at least seven
reasons why marketing research is important to the development of
a marketing strategy. Easily spot business opportunities by forming
partnerships with other businesses, create profitable order upgrades, and
find new locations to sell to. Reason two is lower business risks
by testing new designs and products before launching, find out why
customers do not come back, and get insights on the problem
areas. Create relevant promotional materials by talking to the target
customers and already know their wants, needs, and frustrations and
you will know exactly what to address and how to address it
when you start creating marketing materials. The fourth reason is
known where to advertise by buying ads on social media, placing
flyers and posters, and targeting ads. Outsell competitors by target
dissatisfied customers, find an underserved customer segment, and
identify unaddressed customer needs. Reason sixth is setting better
goals for your business because with market research, you will be
able to determine the specific directions you want to grow your
customer base. The last reason is decision making becomes simple,
the need for and importance of marketing research frequently comes
up when making tough business decisions. Instead of having arbitrary
criteria for the decisions you make as a business owner, you can
always go back to your market research report. Based on that
report, will this decision lead to more customers? Will you be
able to reach more people who are likely to buy from you?
Will it be clear to them that your business can meet their
needs? . Market research is critical in developing a marketing
strategy by providing a fact-based foundation for estimating sales and
profitability. It can make the difference between wise decisions that
drive the business forward and poor decisions that can damage your
business.Market research provides critical information about your market
and your business landscape. It can tell how your company is
preserved by the target customers and clients that you want to
reach. It helps you understand how to connect to them, shows
how you rate against the competition and how to plan your next
step.For example, It gives you an accurate view of your business
and your marketplace. You can see how you are perceived in
comparison to your competitors, and evaluate what your competitors
are doing to attract customers.It helps you to know who and
where your customers are and which ones are most likely to do
business with you. This gives you the opportunity to ask those
customers who do not want to do business with you "why not?"
It can help you to determine if customers will find a new idea
for a product appealing based on how similar products have
performed in the marketplace. It can also help you make decisions
on product packaging and promotional decisions that will effect the
marketing message. Market research is the very first step that must
be taken for the development of a marketing strategy due to the
fact that research helps in making a better and effective strategy.
Some of the advantages of doing a market research are:
• It helps in a better understanding of the customers. Having
a detailed information about the customers like age, gender,
income etc. helps in a better profiling and gives an advantage
in effective targeting.
• Doing a market research also helps in getting the required
information about the existing competition in the market. Having
performed this analysis gives an appropriate picture of the
major competitors and their weaknesses which can help in
making a better strategy.
• Market research also provides insights about the changing
consumer trends. These trends are crucial for the formulation
of product related strategies. Eg: What new features should be
added to the product
• Market research helps in getting the insights about the demand
of a product or service. This can help in making strategies
related to the production planning and stock purchasing.
some disadvantages to market research? It can be expensive, may
only target a small population and need personnel to conduct
research. Would you agree to these as well? Before a company
develops a new product for the company’s existing product line,
executives often conduct market research to see if the new product
will be profitable, while examining the direct need for the product.
Although market research for new products has advantages, disadvantages
also are associated with the process. Company executives must decide
whether market research is necessary for the new product in question.
A company can determine the types of data they collect by
identifying the target or specific market. For example, a make-up
brand might target stay at home moms and develop a TV
commercial that will be shown while soap operas are on. Then
they have their full attention as their kids are probably in school.
The company could collect the ratings of how many people are
watching these shows Mon-Fri. Reach the target price by evaluating
how much people are willing to spend, and roughly figure out
how much the regular household brings in. Some people by high
end make-up, like MAC for instance. Realistically, not a lot of
people can afford to spend $80 on a single foundation. The
consumers then look to a cheaper alternative. Loreal is one I use
and can afford. Not as good quality but effective.
