Market Research for a new sweet. I asked the question Chocolate do you prefer?, to detect what type of chocolate the people in my target market prefer; I have used these results and determined that my target audience prefer milk chocolate.

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Sweet Enough

Designing the Product

The product is the most important aspect of the marketing mix. The product can be a service or even a holiday destination. Products have both tangible and intangible benefits. Tangible benefits include benefits, which can be measured such as the top speed of a car. Intangible benefits are benefits that cannot be measured such as the enjoyment the customer will get from the product. It is important that the product is changed as necessary to bring it up to date and prevent it from being overtaken by competitors.

A good product must have many different assets to be successful. A successful product must have features which make it stand out from the competition, this is also known as unique selling point, a USP, the product must be functional and do the job that it is made to do and therefore satisfy the customer needs, the product must live up to the customers’ expectations in terms of quality and the product must be affordable.

The product must also conform to legal requirements, the product must be aesthetically pleasing, this means the product must be attractive to appeal to customers, ideally the product should be environmentally friendly, and finally the product must have repeat trade therefore the customers will want or need to buy this type of product more than once.

The product life cycle is a graph which informs people about the various stages a product goes through between its initial development and its withdrawal from the market. The product life cycle can be used to measure sales and ensure that a product is still popular with the customers, this can be seen through five separate stages; Product development, Launch, Growth, Maturity and Decline.

Product development is the stage that includes the designing, producing and developing of the product. The launch or introduction is the stage that includes the product going out into the market, this is a risky stage. Growth is the stage that, if the launch is successful, includes a high number of sales as the product is popular. Maturity is the stage that includes the product sales leveling off as the product becomes less popular. The decline is the stage that includes the sales starting to fall until eventually the product is removed from the market.

However extension strategies can prevent decline because the company could change an aspect of the product, such as colour or shape, or reduce the price of the product or re-launch the product leading to the sales of the product to start growing again.

Having collected and analysed all the results, I will now the use results to produce a product which appeals to my target audience.

I asked the question “Chocolate do you prefer?”, to detect what type of chocolate the people in my target market prefer; I have used these results and determined that my target audience prefer milk chocolate. My results inform me of this because 76% of my customers prefer milk chocolate, whereas only 8% prefer light chocolate, 4% prefer mint chocolate, 8% prefer orange chocolate, 4% prefer chocolate made of goat milk and 0% prefer dark chocolate, therefore my product is a milk chocolate product.

I asked the question “Do you like extra toppings/fillings, if so what?” to identify what type of topping or filling, if any, my customers prefer. I have used these results and learned that my target audience prefers to have a caramel filling and a nut topping than anything else. I gained this information from my results because 39% of my customers prefer caramel filling and 23% prefer nuts, whereas only 22% prefer no extras, 3% prefer honeycomb, 10% prefer coconut and 3% prefer toffee, therefore my product has a caramel filling and nuts as a topping.

I asked the question “What shape would you prefer the chocolate to be?” to perceive what shape the customers would prefer the chocolate to be; I have used these results to determine that my target audience prefer square shaped chocolate. My results inform me of this because 29% of my customers prefer squares, whereas only 25% prefer bars, 7% prefer cubes, 11% prefer balls, 3% triangles, 7% prefer stars, 14% prefer animal shapes and 4% prefer boob shapes, therefore my product will be in square shapes.

My product is made from milk chocolate and contains a caramel filling with a nut topping. The chocolate is in square shapes and of a medium size. The end product will look like this:

Designing the Packaging

Packaging is how a product is seen by the customer. It is a method used by many businesses to make their product distinctive and stand out from the competition. Packaging can refer to how the product is wrapped or even how it is displayed, it is all about creating a superior image of your product over the competition. Good packaging must have many different assets to be considered successful; the packaging must be of an appropriate size, the packaging must have legible font, the packaging must have an enticing colour, these will all help the packaging to be attractive. The packaging can also have other features, such as competitions, stories and jokes or the packaging can have a unique shape to become eye-catching.

To add value to packaging companies have numerous methods, which include; competitions, celebrity endorsements, facts, stories, give aways, jokes, displaying other things, initial research etc. Companies often change packaging to attract new customers, compete with rivals, manipulate the customers into thinking that it is a new product, for special events, such as the world cup, seasonal packaging, for example Christmas, practical purposes, such as the grips on lucozade bottles or make it cheaper and environmentally friendly.

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Having collected and analysed all the results, I will now the use results to produce packaging for my product which appeals to my target audience.

I asked the question “What material would you prefer the packaging to be made from?” to discover what material people in my target market would prefer the packaging to be made from, I have used these results to determine whether or not to produce packaging made from cardboard, plastic, foil or others. My results tell me that there are more customers who prefer packaging made from foil than there are customers who prefer anything else; ...

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