Business studies, product development

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        Business Studies

   

Contents

Introduction

Primary Research

  • Interview
  • Questionnaire

Other Research

  • 2nd Questionnaire
  • Website Research
  • Price Survey
  • Secondary Research
  • Production Methods
  • Boston Matrix
  • Swat Analysis
  • Pest
  • Supply and Demand

Report



Introduction 

I am going to produce a new sports bag for the market. I am going to produce a sports bag because I have noticed there was a flaw in the market when selling Sports Bag. I heard my friends complaining about their sports bags. Because I heard the complaints I decided to do some research to find out what people thought was missing from sports bag. I will use different methods of research, for example I will interview a shop assistant in a sports shop to see what the public looked at when buying a product and how it can be improved. I am also going to produce a couple of different questionnaires to get an idea on what sorts of sports bag the public have, what they like/dislike and other kinds of information. I will also research websites to see what other sports websites look like and how they are laid out. I will then go into different shops and carry out a pricing survey to see how I should price my product. I am going to  make it so you can put equipment on the outside of the bag, I am going to do this because I need to make my bag unique from all the other kinds of sports bag in the market. There is no point making a sports bag that is similar to a sports bag that is alright out that is made by a big make because everybody would choose the bag made by the big make. Because this bag is unique more people will want to buy it.

Marketing Research

I am going to be finding out about how I will put my product into the market in the best possible way. To do this I will find out about which kind of area is going to have the highest amount of customers in it and which is best to accommodate my shop. I will have to also work out what sort of price my bag should cost. Once I have found out all of this I will have to bags marketing scheme the best it could possibly be. This means that I will sell the most amounts of bags for the higher price possible so I will get the maximum revenue. If I had not done this research I would have just picked a random place that might not be very sport orientated. E.g a small country sold village with the majority of the population already being retired unlike a city centre which has a lot of teenage kids who would go to the local sports centre.

The two general types of marketing research are called Primary or Field Research and Secondary or Desk research.

Primary Research is when your find new data for a specific purpose. These can be found in many different ways, for example I used a questionnaire to find out certain data about my sports bag. You could also interview somebody, send them a post or you could ring them up. All of the Primary Research tends to be one on one and so you will be getting a better more precise answer. But the problem with this is that it costs a lot more and takes up a lot more time.  

Secondary Research on the other hand is when you collect existing data from other company’s research. It can be anything from a company's own sales statistics to Department of Trade and Industry reports. The good thing about Secondary Research is that it is a lot faster and a lot cheaper than using Primary Research. But the main problem is that the information may be incorrect due to the fact that you are now 100% sure of who collected the data in the first place.

The marketing mix is known to be defined by the 4 P’s Pricing, Product, Promotion and Place. Once you have perfected the 4 P’s you will be getting the best out of your product. If you do the marketing incorrectly then you don’t stand a chance to sell all of your products. Sometimes they put in an extra two P’s these are known as Packaging and Product Life Cycle. I think that if you have a team of employees working on the packaging design this will increase sales by a long way.  

Pricing;

The price of my product is very important. You are going to have to find out what is the highest price you will be able to sell the product for. Also you will have to make sure that the price you sell the product for you will be able to make a profit after you pay for all of the materials, advertisement and staff salaries. If the price was to low and you didn’t even break even there wouldn’t be a point for running the company this is because the company is a market orientated company. A market orientated company is a company that works only to make money instead of a company that does something to help others, eg. A charity shop works to make money to help certain charities instead of to make the maximum amount of profit. So once I have worked out perfect price I will be able to make the maximum amount of profit which is what the whole company is based around. I have to make sure though that the target market will want to pay that amount as well which I will find out from my questionnaires and interviews ect.

Product;

A product can either be a good or a service. For example a good is something such as a football, Ipod or a biscuit whereas a service is when you pay somebody to do something like a hairdresser, mechanic or a private school teacher. My sports bag will be a good. With your product you can either sell it to a commercial customer or an end consumer. A commercial customer is somebody who buys the product and the end consumer is somebody who uses the product. You can be a commercial customer and an end consumer at the same time because say you brought a packet of crisps you will be the customer and the consumer. But you can also be a customer and not a consumer because if you brought somebody a birthday present you would be the customer but the person you gave it to would be the consumer.

Place

Where to set up a company is very important. This is because you need the area to have a lot of customers who want your product. To find out this we will put out surveys finding out what people want in different areas so we know which area will have the most customers. Another thing we could do is employee a market research company who could find out which area of the country has the highest amount of sports bags bought. This is a very expensive tactic but it will be extremely helpful increasing sales by a large amount.  

Promotion

Promotion is the 4th P. This is all about advertisement. There are different kinds of advertisement, newspaper, T.V, radio, word of mouth. The most common form of advertisement is using the T.V this is because the majority of England watches T.V at some point during the day and so they will watch adverts at some point. This is also the most expensive form of advertisement because it has the most competition so you will have to fight against the big companies like Nike to get a slot. This will be the best as well because you can use visual images to help advertise. I would have to put the adverts on in the later afternoon from like 5-11 because otherwise students will be at school or they will be working so they wont be able to see the advert if it is on before. Newspapers are alright for advertisement, but I don’t believe that people who read the Guaidan for example will be the right age group to buy sports bags. I could use another questionnaire to find this out but I don’t think that it would be worth all of the money. I could put advertisements in sports magazines or magazines like ‘Nuts’ because this tends to be brought buy men between 18-28 which are my target market. In sports magazines as well I don’t think that the price of the space in the magazines will be that expensive.    

Interview

I am going to interview a shop assistant in JJB sports to help me decided how I should make my sports bag. I am going to ask him some questions that I wouldn’t be able to ask in a questionnaire because I would want a lengthy answer not just a couple of words. I decided to use the JJB Sports shop in oxford because it is local and also I know they get a lot of customers so they know what they are going to be talking about.

  1. When customers look for a sports bag what do they want the sports bag to be able to do and extra functions it has?

Well they defiantly want enough space to be able to carry the equipment around from A to B. But they also all want them to be easily carried, it changes for each sport but for example cricketers prefer to have wheels on the bottom but then footballers prefer it to be easy to carry using a strap. They all make sure they have extra sections as well to keep deodorant and small items.

  1. What sort of design do they choose, make, colour ect?

Customers tend to choose a darker colour maybe navy blue or black. The make varies depending on the customer. Some either go for the cheap small make or others go for either Adidas or Nike.

  1. What is the price range that people tend to choose between?

The prices change depending on make but people tend to pay £20 to £30 for a bag. But the prices going nearer to £30 tend to be the Adidas and Nike bags. If you were starting a business I would make sure the prices were more around £20.

  1. Do different age groups buy different bags?

What tends to happen is teenagers buy big sports bag for when they play cricket, with all there pads and equipment. But then for other sports they just get small draw string bags. But then adults tend to get big bags for any sport such as rugby/football/hockey.

What have I found out?

From the interview I found out that people take a lot of care in making sure that they buy a bag that has a comfortable method in carrying it. People do not want to buy a bag that is hard to carry around. For example for cricket they will want stable wheels and also a strap so they can either wheel it around or carry it depending where they are. Whereas people who want a hockey bag will make sure that they have a comfortable strap that goes around the shoulder. Customers expect enough space to carry their equipment in the bag for their chosen sport. So for example a cricket bag is going to have a larger space in the middle whereas a football bag wont need as much. People take a lot more interest in extra compartments for sport e.g. somebody going to a hockey match will want space to put a gum shield, phone, glove, money and deodorant in one space while they have cloths in another and their boots and stick in another. They would not want their boots and their cloths to mix because if the boots have sand in it would go all over their cloths or if the boots were wet it would make the cloths wet. Another thing they would want is a waterproof section to keep cloths dry in case it is raining.

I found out that the majority of the bags that are sold are either Black or Navy Blue. This in my opinion is because they are quite neutral colours and so people don’t mind getting them. This means that I am going to have to make sure that my bags are either Blue or Black depending on what I decide later on. I could use Navy Blue for school colours if I was interested. I would have to do some questionnaires to find out the final colour scheme because I have to know what want because I don’t know what everybody wants.

What I am going to do

To solve the first problem I will have to make sure I put in lots of extra sections in my design that fit a purpose. I don’t want to put to many pockets because then people can lose them or just get annoyed having to look through all their pockets to find something.

I am going to have to make sure that the product is a suitable price for people to buy. I was told prices vary between different make, the big makes tend to sell their bags for around £30 because they know that people would rather pay a little extra money to have a Nike bag because they know that it is a reliable bag and also it looks trendier. Smaller makes tend to sell their bags because if they sold their bags for the same price as Nike people would always go for the Nike bag. Instead newer companies would have to sell their product for a smaller price, this means that they would get customers who don’t care about the make and just want a cheap bag. This means that if lots of people buy the cheaper bag the company would get a higher reputation. Eventually they will start to become a bigger company when they could start to sell their products for prices like Nike. So I am going to make my price around £19.99 most likely because people would think this is a lot cheaper than £20 because it starts with a 1 not a 2.

Because I was told that bags are mainly sold to adults, I believe this is because adults tend to stay behind and shower while children go home and shower. Because of this I am going to use a lot more mature colours rather than bright colours. A grown man would not want to walk around with a bright blue bag with a picture of a child’s cartoon on it.

Questionnaire

I decided that I didn’t know what the public wanted from my sports bag all I knew was what the shop assistant thought the public wanted. I thought that the best way to find out what the public wanted was to create questionnaire and hand them out to a variety of people. I thought creating a questionnaire was good because it is primary research, this means that you find out specifically what you want. Instead of using a questionnaire you could pay somebody to use one of their existing questionnaires. This is called Secondary Research, this is a much cheaper method of research because you don’t have to design the questionnaire or hand them out and collect them. The main problem with this is that you are using somebody else’s information and it is not specific to what you want.

My questionnaire was split into two different sections. My first section was asking questions to find out what kind of person was answering the questionnaire. I wanted to know these because then I would know what the public already had and where it needed to be improved. The section set of questions were about the actual product not about the person. With these questions I was able to find out what I needed in the bag and what was not needed in the bag. I asked 10 people these questions.


INSERT FIRST QUESTIONNAIRES


Questionnaire Results

My questionnaire was split into two different sections. My first section was asking questions to find out what kind of person was answering the questionnaire. I wanted to know these because then I would know what the public already had and where it needed to be improved. The section set of questions were about the actual product not about the person. With these questions I was able to find out what I needed in the bag and what was not needed in the bag. I asked 10 people these questions.

Join now!

My first question was “Have you got a sports bag?” 7 out of 10 people said that they already had a sports bag which showed that the majority of the people a little bit about sports bag so my results would be useful. This also showed that I have a lot of competition from different sports bag companies.

My results show that a lot of people already have a sports bag so I have a lot of competition and these people know what they like. I will have to make mine better than all ...

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