To find out the needs or expectation of their consumer for the product, an organisation must carry out market research.
Market research provides information that helps businesses to recognise and respond to market opportunities and to develop suitable products to meet customer needs. Market research could be quantitative or qualitative data. From the market research, the organisation can identify the factors which might satisfy customer needs such as:
- Benefits of the product
- The product specification
- Packaging and quality control of the product
From the case study I can see that when Jan Calzon took over as a president of SAS airline, the management was facing problems, as they were cutting costs. Carlzon’s objectives was to find new ways to compete and build its revenue.
The targeted customer for SAS was frequent-flying business people. Jan Calzon found out that, all other airline was offering wider seats, free drinks and other amenities which were available to any class including business class. So Jan Calzon has to find out other needs which have to be better than his competitors. The major problem was on-time arrival. It is the first priority for any business people to get their destination on time. With on-time arrival, business people want faster check-in and also they want to receive their luggage fast.
A business must achieve a competitive advantage in terms of the marketing mix (Product, place, price, promotion) offered to their customer.
Being competitive is a vital to any business. All businesses are affected by competition, without competition a business wouldn’t survive. For example SAS airline in close competition with other major airlines like BA and Easy jet. A business might compete for following reasons:
- Being better than other competitors to gain more customers.
- To get the best resources, man-power etc.
- Being the first choice for the customer by better advertising and promotions.
- To get biggest market share to expanding their business.
A business must be competitive by offering a better price. It is obvious that if a business offer a low price for a new product which is selling in a higher price in other businesses.
If a product is selling in different businesses, it is obvious that if one of the businesses offer the cheapest price for that product, it is likely to have more customer than others. For example, from New York to London, SAS is offering £440. On other hand Air France is offering only £266 (www.airline-network.co.uk).
The third principal of marketing is; Business must continuously monitor everything that affecting business success, both internally & externally, and make a plan to develop as a result of this research.
It is an essential to any business to monitor effectively how the business is performing or serving the customers. By monitoring, a business can make a future planning for any development to the business. Planning and monitoring gives more clear reasons why business is not successful. From the case study, SAS airline was not monitoring effectively so they were losing their profit and also their potential customers. When Jan Carlzon did his market research by monitoring the performance of their staff and how they were serving the customers. He realised that the staffs needed standard training. Because the staffs are the first people who met the customers.
It is the main role for a manager in every department to monitor everything. For example the role of a production manager is to keep costs to a minimum and monitor wastage.
