primary and secondary research
Secondary and Primary
Methodology
I am going to use three different sorts of methods, which are listed below:
* Primary Research - Questionnaire, to find out about people's opinions and what they would prefer. Here I would ask 25 people to answer my questionnaire, where they would have to be honest. By doing this I would know what people would prefer and not prefer. What they like best and what they don't like best.
* Secondary Research -I would used all kinds of websites to find out the market on soft drinks and the one website that I would look at is: www.keynote.co.uk. I would be using this website as it is reliable and it gets updated often.
* Sampling Method - I would ask people some questions from a certain group and then I would have to compare it with both primary and secondary research.
Primary Research
There are many different methods for Primary research, such as:
* Focus Groups
* Face to Face Interviews
* Postal surveys
* Telephone Interviews
Focus Groups
Focus groups are an economical method of obtaining useful qualitative information from consumers. There are some advantages and disadvantages for focus groups, such as:
Advantages:
* Face to Face interviews
* Truth expressed in other languages
* Interview also could be recorded so they could get back to them
Disadvantages:
* Cost of training and travel
* Time consuming
* Supervisor must be appointed
I would not use this type of research because I do not have a lot of experience for this particular research, which means lack of experience and also there are some facilities that are not available to me.
Face-to-Face Interviews
Face to Face Interviews means that you interview a person that is sitting in front of you so that it makes it easier to communicate. I am able to collect this sort of data from:
* Streets Surveys
* Shop Surveys
* Household Surveys
* Hall Surveys
* Home Interviews
* Business Surveys
I would use Street Surveys because they would give me clear information and also I would get straightforward answers and the first impression. On the telephone you do not know what his or her first impression is.
There also are advantages and disadvantages for face-to-face interviews, such as:
Advantages:
* Communication is clear, less chance of it getting distorted
* Generally have a good response rate
* See interviewers mood, can change approach
Disadvantages:
* Difficult to organise
* Costly - pay for research and travelling
* Time consuming
Postal surveys
Postal surveys is a very cheap method of interviewing people, which means a lot of different organisations use this type of method because it does not cost them anything. Postal surveys are delivered to your door so that clients are satisfied with our service.
Advantages:
* Easy to carry out
* Easy access to respondences
Disadvantages:
* May take ...
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* See interviewers mood, can change approach
Disadvantages:
* Difficult to organise
* Costly - pay for research and travelling
* Time consuming
Postal surveys
Postal surveys is a very cheap method of interviewing people, which means a lot of different organisations use this type of method because it does not cost them anything. Postal surveys are delivered to your door so that clients are satisfied with our service.
Advantages:
* Easy to carry out
* Easy access to respondences
Disadvantages:
* May take a period of time to deliver
* Responses are not reliable
I wouldn't use this type of research because it would be time consuming, and also because some people could be lying, not exactly telling the truth. I also would not be able to afford it because I am new to the market.
Telephone Interviews
Questions asked over the telephone are increasingly popular as they are both convenient for both the interviewer and the interviewee. The interviewer could ask the interviewee questions without leaving the room or office and the interviewee could answer the questions just by sitting at home comfortably.
Advantages:
* Easy to carry out
* Conducted by the interviewer
Disadvantages:
* People could be lying
* Very costly, £1.50 - £1.75 per minute
I would certainly not use the telephone interviews because it is very costly and not reliable because we both, the interviewee and the interviewer are not talking face to face, which makes it hard to believe if the interviewee is telling the truth.
Primary Research
What are the strengths and weaknesses of Primary Research?
The strengths of Primary Research is that all the information that I would be collecting would not be inaccurate, because I would be the one asking the questions, which is face to face interviews, which means that this information would certainly not be out of date. Any uncertainties can be explained and I would make sure that my questions carry no bias. To ensure this I did a polit research on 5 respondents. Any problems that these interviewees had with the questionnaire rectified to guarantee that my research would be reliable. My research is valid because the questions that I asked were quite straight forward, they were very clear to understand. I didn't really try to mislead anyone and I also used Quota sampling that guaranteed that my entire target market is equally represented.
The weakness of Primary Research is that it is time consuming and the major weakness is that people that the people doing the questionnaire, could be giving you the false information.
Secondary research is information that already exists; this type of research is based on information taken out of studies, which is performed by the government agencies, trade associates, chambers of commerce and also other organisations. To find out about secondary research it would be easy for me to go to the local library and also the Internet. Even though secondary research is not too costly, it also is not quite accurate. Secondary research could be divided into two categories, such as:
* External Research
* Internal Research
External Research
This involves looking at data gathered by industry experts, trade associations, or companies that specialised in gathering and compiling data about different companies.
Internal Research
Internal research is where my company, for purposes other than market research, but which you can use to measure what the market will do in the future, gather data.
Secondary Research
What are the strengths and weaknesses of secondary research?
The weakness of secondary research is that the information might not be upgraded or it could be 2 - 5 years old information. Some information could even be copyright.
The strength of secondary research is that the information that I would find out would be free of charge and also reliable. I would say this because all the information that I have gathered is all issued by the government, which tells me that it would not be false.
I use secondary research to get some information that has been done for others. The sources that I used were that I observed and interviewed my competitors; I used the statistics website and also the Keynote website. I used the Keynote website because it is an established website, which sells their research to other companies; they are established research company, as years of experience in market research. I used the statistics website because I had to find out about the market for soft drinks and see how well they are doing, especially Coca Cola. In my opinion I think that the data that I have collected from the website is all reliable because it is updated every month and that I could rely on this data.
Primary research would give me more accurate research, which means that primary research is very important when I am going to revitalise a Coca Cola brand. Primary research is normally based on statistical methodologies that involve sampling as 1% of the target market. Even 1% could give me an accurate representation of a specific market.
To do my market research I would do a questionnaire, which would have 14 questions. My questionnaire would have only two heading, which are very important for me. For example, what the consumer thinks of the drink.
* Purchase of Product
* Attitudes to Sales Promotion
These 2 headings are very important for me because they are the ones that would tell me whether the customers would buy the drink and what would be the best way to sell the product.
Sampling
Sampling is a small representative group of the target market and I have 25 people to ask for my questionnaire, which would be equal. The benefits of sampling are that:
* It is very cheap for me
* Inputting and analysis of data is quicker for me
* Its got greater flexibility and control of research
There also are some disadvantages for sampling, such as:
* The sample is unrepresentative of my target market
* The sample is too small
* The people who I have asked do not respond
* I introduce bias by leading the interviewee
* Questions, which I have asked have been incorrectly constructed
There are a number of methods for sampling:
* Random Sampling
* Stratified Random Sampling
* Cluster Sampling
I would not use these three methods of sampling because all three of these have some disadvantages, such as:
Disadvantages for Random Sampling:
* I would need an extensive database for my target market.
* It is very difficult to make sure each person has an equal chance of being chosen.
* Random sampling is expensive and also time consuming to arrange.
The method that I have chosen is Quota Sampling because this is the easiest one to do and also it is very cheap for me because I have to put in no money for this method. This method allows interviewers to go to the street corners to interview some of the people who where comes first in sight, as long as they end up achieving the correct quota. Quota sampling is the one used most frequently by market research companies.
Secondary Research
I have researched and found out that the global marketing battle, yet still continues between the two competitors Coca Cola and Pepsi, where they both have been competing for many years, and this affects the market for soft drinks in the whole of United Kingdom. According to www.keynote.com, it says that the report covers their main battleground, which means that the £5,000,000,000 market for carbonated drinks, also while examining the £1.5 billion market for concentrates, for example, squash and ready to drink fruit drinks.
According to www.keynote.com, the largest soft drinks organisation in the United Kingdom is Cadbury Schweppes and they had the rights to sell its UK rights to Coca Cola in 1997 and this operates as a leader outside its domestic market. Coca Cola Enterprises Ltd has produced their own brands, such as, Coca Cola, Diet Coke, Fanta, and also Lilt.
The PepsiCo range is only in the United Kingdom, which is in second place for Soft Drinks Ltd and the reason for this is because they kept a stronger relationship with Robinson's Squash and many others. It also says that in third place in the market is GlaxoSmithKline PLC and they are the owners of two major soft drinks called, Lucozade and Ribena.
It is read that brand loyalty is very important to major companies, such as Coca Cola and companies like these spend loads on marketing and product innovation to develop the product and keep it simple. Coca Cola have produced new flavours and inventive types of packaging and they are constantly bringing out new flavours, such as, Diet Coke with Lime, Lemon Coca Cola and also New Diet Cherry Coca Cola. Therefore, some consumers are becoming more stylish, which means that some soft drinks have recently have had some marketing problems by making over - zealous claims concerning about their products.
Source: http://www.keynote.co.uk/kn2kl/21292_01//doc_20.htm?uni=1141298988
Cola Coca Slashes Global Workforce
Coca Cola's advertisements have been working a lot around the world and they are very successful. In the 1990's Coke was known as one of the most successful globe trotting American consumer product companies.
Source: www.keynote.com
Poonampreet Kaur Bhachu
