We could also do e-mails to people as this is quick and easy to reply to and many people nowadays have a computer and again they could send it off to be registered as a graph.
We could offer loyalty cards to customers to keep them interested in the company and they could earn points for holidays to Southend if they get certain amounts of points will win you that trip.
To keep track of our efforts we could do sales figures which will tell us what is selling and what is not. If this works we could order more stock of this certain product and to help any other stuff that is not selling we could every now and then move the products around to try and attract more people to the products that aren’t selling to well. We could also record how many garden forks are being sold to customers but only record this every 200 that are sold. This will vary between different products that are being sold for big products we could do every 30 lawnmowers being sold and for small products like plant pots do every 350 pots being sold to customers. This may vary between things that are being sold regularly to things which are being sold every now and then. Also to increase our sales we could go online as that will cover a larger area than just at the store it will give us a wider range of people to order this will be getting more profit for the business. But we need to find some delivery service to deliver the goods to the customers we also will have to have a variety of van and even lorry sizes to cope with the different order and sizes of products being ordered by customers.
We could also use a system to track customers online to see what they buy and what they don’t buy. Also this could tell us if they are regular customers online and whether they are just browsers for the first time. This will also help any one who needs a new lawnmower but they are doing too much things to go into the store and buy one so they just go online and order one. This wills have the customer more free time to do more important things.
Now we have discussed what we will do to put our point across. Now if most of the people in the area say yes we can start asking what people want in their local garden centre again we could do postal surveys, e-mail people again and even do some door surveys but keep it short as people don’t like their free time to be wasted.
We have the majority of e-mails and questionnaires in and on the most of the e-mails people are disagreeing with the garden centre as they feel that it will damage the area and many people like to keep the woods. As many places that are located around here are all built up and they would prefer if the woods were kept as they are.
On our postal survey not much of them came back only 30% out of 80 surveys were posted that is a low income for the survey of the business but only 8 of the people said they don’t want a garden centre in the area they live in because it will spoil the surrounding area that they live in.
Criteria M1: Explain the contexts in different marketing research methods are appropriate.
Observation
The advantages of using this research method was that it may get the most amount of information taken from people whether they want a garden centre and find out how many people go into the shop and come out with bags. And this will also help use find out how many people go in and come out with shopping bags from that store or you could even see what people are buying in the shop and find out what people are not buying in the shop.
The disadvantages of using this is that you can’t confront the person and ask them what they want in a garden and whether they feel that this is doing well and what they would improve in the shop and what is good about the store and what is bad points that the store needs to improve to fur fill their needs in the store.
Telephone survey
The advantages of this are that you can program a computer to ask the questions and store the answers to the computer to be analysing on the results of the survey. You don’t have to pay some one to ask the question on whether they think the garden centre would be a good move for the business or not.
The disadvantages of having this type method of research is that will take time to change the questions that have been given if people have more answer they are limited on what to say and if they hear that it is a telephone survey they may even hang up before the first question has started.
Epos (electronic point of sale)
The advantages of this system is that it can record any people that are new to looking at the store online to people that are regular customers that are getting general equipment they may need for the garden centre say pots that they are ordering as they are buying lots of plants as well.
Sales Personnel
This is something I didn’t do as I felt it was a waste of time as some people will want to get going on what they have to do in the store. But this may be a mistake as this could have helped us in gathering data for the garden centre project.
In the end of the results we have taken from all the research we have done for this project of building a garden centre in the area. It has proven not to well as most of the letters are complaining that they would rather not have a garden centre their as they feel that it is a spoil to the forest and it may damage the surrounds of the area and it could cause problems for the wildlife that surrounds the area. also with all this loud banging and crashing from the work men building this garden centre is that it could cause of the wildlife to run away to safer location as well as all of the possible fumes that could damage the health of the wildlife a lot of the letter that were sent back were full of problems that this building will cause and a lot of people will miss there walk in the woods
