Subway uses this kind of Primary Research to find out “what is important for lunch?” and “How much do you spend on lunch in average?” This gives Subway an insight on what customers are looking for in lunch and how much they would be willing to spend. By doing this Subway will be able to vary on the price of their sandwiches to gain more customers because not everyone is willing to pay a certain price for a sandwich therefore they make cheaper to more expensive sandwiches to vary on customers. This kind of market research is appropriate for what they are trying to find out because they ask straightforward question to get quick answer to make it simple. Also the fact that they give the options on what to answer makes it simpler for Subway to add up the statistics to get an overall result on the queries they asked. However some people feel annoyed when they get approached to fill out a questionnaire meaning they won’t be willing to fill it out. In the end Subway would get a lot of information from this but they might miss out on some of the customer’s insight because they might not be willing to take a few minutes to fill out the questionnaire. Therefore they should engage customers with other types of research methods to get even more information.
In the end, this is an appropriate way of getting the information they want to acquire. But the down side is not everyone would be willing to give their time to answer the questionnaire.
Subway Primary Research
Bar Graph sourced from - http://www.slideshare.net/Akihosugitatsu/subway-marketing-plan
Another Primary Research method is surveys however they take longer to develop, but are easier to administer than other types of market research.
As you can see bellow Subway has used a survey to conduct market research to find out “What time of the day you most likely spend money on food” This helps Subway find out what time of day people are most likely to eat therefore reaching out to them at those certain time of days to gain more customers. Also they find out what their main customers are by taking in the data if they are students or non-student. I’m guessing they asked the public that to see if there are any correlations. This kind of market research method is appropriate for this marketing situation because it’s easy to understand and straight to the point and it gives you multiple answers.
Qualitative & Quantitative Research
Market Research can be either qualitative or quantitative or both. It is important to understand the difference between qualitative research and quantitative research since they are so different. Qualitative Research is a that is used when data can be observed and quantitative when data can be measured.
Quantitative Research is a research method which is used to collect data, modelling and analyzing customers, markets and competition in the market. When the data is gathered, the results are evaluated. Qualitative methods do not include statistics or measurements at all.
Subway market research is quantitative as many of market research are. To find out who the potential customers of Subway might be, a survey is made. A questionnaire is used as a main tool to analyze customer preferences and the prospects of opening a Subway restaurant.
Subway Qualitative Market Research
Subway Quantitative Market Research
Secondary Research
Secondary Research - (also known as desk research) involves the summary, collation and/or synthesis of existing research rather than primary research, where data is collected from, for example, research subjects or experiments.
Industrial Research – these involve research about industrial goods and services i.e. items sold to trade and not to the private individual.
Consumer Research – investigates end users of consumer goods and may look at the market as a whole or divide the consumers into categories or segments.
Ad Hoc - This is a special type of research specifically for a particular client, or for a particular market.
Continuous Research revolves around asking the same questions over a period of time at regular intervals from the same group of respondents to gain insight into changing tastes and trends of products bought.
Omnibus Research – surveys include a mix of questions on different subjects from different organisations.
Uses And Limitations Of Market Research
Accurate, up-to-date information obtained by marketing research can be of enormous value to an organisation in gaining and/or maintaining its competitive edge. However, there are a number of reasons why, in reality, these potential benefits may not be realised:
Budgetary constraints – Gathering and processing data can be very expensive. In these cases, organisations such as Subway may be forced to rely on data that is less than ‘perfect’ but that can be accessed more cheaply, e.g., from secondary sources.
Time constraints – organisations are often forced to balance the need to build up as detailed a picture as possible regarding customer needs etc. against the desire to make decisions as quickly as possible, in order to maintain or improve their position in the market
Reliability of the data – the value of any research findings depend critically on the accuracy of the data collected. Data quality can be compromised via a number of potential routes, e.g., leading questions, unrepresentative samples, biased interviewers etc. Efforts to ensure that data is accurate, samples are representative and interviewers are objective will all add to the costs of the research but such costs are necessary if poor decisions and expensive mistakes are to be avoided.
Legal & ethical constraints – the Data Protection Act (1998) is a law that has a number of implications for market researchers collecting and holding personal data. For instance, researchers must ensure that the data they obtain is kept secure, is only used for lawful purposes and is only kept for as long as it is necessary.
Cost Effectiveness and Validity of Market Research
A questionnaire is cost effective and it’s a good way to do market research because you get a range of answers from people from different ages and different backgrounds. A negative of using a questioner as a marketing tool is that people might lie about their answers so you don’t get a just and real opinion of what people think about your products and from this you cant make a valid decision and your finding wont be valid, but you wont know if they gave false opinions therefore its always best to run a questionnaire twice to increase the validity of your market research.