As everyone revealed their answers, we recorded the data.
MARKET RESEARCH
There are two main types of market research. The first one is Primary research and the second is Secondary research.
Primary research or Field Research is obtaining first hand data for a specific purpose. Normally, the data is gathered by face-to-face interviews, by telephone or by questionnaires through the post. This is called a survey.
Secondary research or Desk Research is the use of second hand or existing data that has already been collected. Secondary sources of information can include old company reports, government statistics and previously collected data.
We decided to produce a questionnaire, as it would allow us to collect Primary Data or First hand data that is most up to date and that is most relevant to us. Information & data such as facts about our target market, their interests and views that can help us in setting up our sports shop. We also had to research into the background and purposes of sports shops in our area for our own use.
We hoped to collect data to find out facts like how often people shop in sports shops and how much they usually spend. To find this out we asked questions like ‘How often do you purchase products from a sports shop?’ and ‘How much do you spend on average in a sports shop in a year?’. These were closed question with options that the public can choose, for example; ‘Less than £100, £101-£200, £201-£300, more than £300’ We would use the results of these questions to give us an idea of the demand of sports products and how much people are willing to spend.
Another question, we asked, ‘Do you purchase products from a sports shop for fashion/leisure wear or to participate in sports?’ This question can be used to find out whether we need to provide our audience with sports clothing/equipment for specific sports or whether we need to provide more casual sports wear for general purposes.
To find out for which sports we would need to cater for or supply clothing and equipment for, we asked our respondents ‘Which sports do you regularly play and purchase equipment for?’ We can then see what the most popular sports are and we could supply equipment for them knowing that there will be a demand for them.
We already know that consumers do purchase sports clothing for fashion/leisure wear. We wanted to find out what are the types of clothing they mostly purchase for fashion/leisure wear, so we asked ‘What type of sports wear do you purchase for fashion/leisure wear?’ This question was again a closed question with multiple-choice answers; ‘Training shoes, Tops, Hats/Caps, etc. Also, to be more specific, we needed to find out what the most popular brand names were within the local area, so we asked again another closed question, ‘Which brand names do you regularly buy?’, this will give us an idea of what brand names we need to provide and stock.
The other type of question is an open question, where the respondents are free to write their comments/opinions & whatever they want. We asked some open questions such as ‘ What are the positive/negative aspects of your local sports shop?’ This will help us in providing customer satisfaction as we hope to find out what the customers think are good aspects of a sports shop, which we could take into account.
Investigation into JD Sports
JD Sports is a famous sports shop in a popular shopping centre near the centre of town. Its aims are to provide the whole of the local community with good quality sports clothing for different sports, clothing for fashion/leisure wear and training shoes for leisure wear and for various sports.
To do this, JD Sports has to keep a very wide range of stock in stores. A wide range of training shoes for males and females, various sizes and styles at different price ranges.
Most of the training shoes are for fashion/leisure wear as this is what most of the their target market purchase training shoes for. They also provide shoes for particular sports such as football boots, basketball shoes and running shoes.
JD Sports also stock a very wide range of clothing from small sizes for children to very large sizes for adults. They stock clothing for many different types of sports but mainly clothing for fashion/leisure wear such as branded shirts and tops etc.
JD Sports is a sports shop that mainly targets customers who purchase clothing and shoes for fashion/leisure wear. Therefore JD Sports had to find a location where there is a large community who purchase clothing on a regular basis. They also have to make sure that the local population has a middle to high income rate so they can easily afford their products.
There are advantages of this sports shop within the local community such as;
It provides jobs for people within the community, It provides people with a choice of different products in different shops, Allows competition with other shops that benefits customers. The disadvantages can be that it may cause a larger crowd in the shopping centre, May be competition for other stores or it may be overcrowding the number of sports shop in the area.
EVALUATING QUESTIONNAIRE
Here is an evaluation of some of the important questions from my questionnaire:
- ‘ How often do you purchase products from a sports shop in a year? ’
The results of this question would show us if there are a good deal of sports shop users and consumers in the surrounding area, enough for our business to survive, and how often they visit a sports shop. By looking at the results table, we can see that about 100% of the population visit a sports
shop at least once a year. About 55%of the
population visit the sports shop more than
6 times a year, we can assure ourselves that
there will be enough customers to keep
our business up and running. We can
decide that we will have to keep a large
stock in the shop at all times as there will
be a lot of customers all year around.
-
‘ How much do you spend on average in a sports shop in one year? ’
It is clear that 44 people, out of the 98 questioned,
from the local population spend £ 100 - £200 a
year in a sports shop and about 30 % of the
population spend over £200 a year. We can tell
that there will be a good inflow of cash throughout
every year and there will be many sales.
This gives us the impression that this population is
made up of people who regularly spend money on
sports products and can comfortably afford to pay
for the products.
This can help us as it shows us that we will need to have a sufficient amount of stock at all times and have products that range in prices, from low to high as there are people who spend not a lot, up to £100 a year and there are people who spend a lot, £300 + in a year.
- ‘ Which sports do you regularly play and buy equipment for? ’
We asked this question to help us find out what the most popular sports are within the local community. By looking at our responses, we found out that Football is the most popular sports played and that equipment is bought for as 46 people chose it. This tells us that we will have to stock more football equipment, such as boots and shin-pads, more than equipment for any other sport. We can also stock some equipment for the other popular sports such as racquet sports (20 people) and cricket (15 people). Our prices may depend on whether if the other local sports shop provide such equipment, if they do then we have to compete with low prices and if they don’t then we can make our prices higher.
- ‘ What type of sports wear do you purchase for fashion/leisure wear? ’
We found out that our target market’s main want in this are is training shoes as about 86 people out of the 98 surveyed, purchase training shoes for fashion and leisure. In order to meet the demand for training shoes, we need to provide a very large range of training shoes of all sizes. Also, we will need a large stock and range of tops as 65 people said they purchase tops for fashion/leisure and 60 people say that they purchase tracksuit bottoms for fashion/leisure wear. Our prices will have to e very competitive, as nearly all the other sport shops will be providing sports clothing.
- ‘ Which brand names do you regularly buy? ’
This question is also important as we
have to provide the right or most popular brand names within this community, or otherwise there won’t be much sales. We found out that the most popular brand name is Nike with 88 people selecting it. The other popular brand names are Adidas with 62 people selecting it out of nearly 100 and Reebok with 42. In order to keep our business as successful as it can be, we l have decided to mainly stock these more popular sports brand names as they are most in demand. Also, nothing is going to stop us from stocking the less popular brand names as there are people who purchase these
brands as well.
After collecting this data and sing our method of a questionnaire, the results we collect may not be 100% accurate. This is because a questionnaire on paper may give the surveyors the power to write anything or answer in whatever way they want. This may mean that they don’t answer truthfully or don’t take the questionnaire seriously. We included closed question in the form of multiple-choice questions that may not have been answered truthfully because they may be embarrassed.
Another weakness of our questionnaire could have been the fact that we used open questions. This could have been a negative point because a lot of people may not have answered these because they may be more time consuming and require more thought.
As a small independent business, the most sensible option for us would be to hire a small advertising agency such as Connexus Group Ltd. or Admedia world wide which can be found in the Yellow Pages directory, that could advertise for us in the local area.
ADVERTISING OUR SPORTS SHOP
Our sports shop is a local independent shop and will consider the less costly and local methods of advertising our shop and products, such as advertising in the local newspaper or by posting / handing out leaflets within popular areas, such as shopping centres or markets. These methods are cheap, affordable by our sports shop as we have a budget of £4000 per annum, and affective in getting the message out. There are other methods that we can also consider, such as advertising on busses and bus shelters. These methods are affective as well and we could advertise on bus routes that run past our sports shop. There are the more expensive larger methods of advertising like on TV or on the radio but this would be too expensive for our budget, being an independent sports shop. This would be advertising nationally, which we don’t need to do being a local shop and people would not come from miles away to visit a single shop.
ADVERTISING METHODS:
MY ADVERTISING PLAN:
We have decided introduce our sports shop to the community by advertising the shop as ‘Opening Soon’ at the end of the month of May. The shop will originally open mid- June. This will be near to the beginning of the season of summer and people may be dragged into buying or renewing their wardrobes by purchasing new clothes for the summer. Also, this is the time when good weather comes around and people are starting to get more involved into sports. To advertise our shop, we will need to catch our target audiences attention and persuade the to come to our shop to purchase our products. We are considering a local newspaper to be a good idea to introduce and advertise the opening of the shop. Also handing out leaflets within the local population as soon as the shop has opened, as a form of direct contact, which will make them aware of the existence of the sports shop. This part of our advertising campaign will take place across the month of May and June.
Our next part of the advertising campaign will take place before the peak season of Christmas, in November and December. Here we really want to catch the populations attention and attract them to our shop. We are planning to advertise on bus shelter boards, at popular bus stops such as near the town centre or near our shop, as they are very effective and will be noticed by many people. We may also decide to again advertise in the local free newspaper about our shop and all the Christmas offers etc. Another way of advertising which will not cost anything and will be always useful is by Word of Mouth, which we can use at any time.
The following year we will have to advertise about the January sale and to keep people informed about our sports shop but we wouldn’t have to advertise so effectively and we wont have much of our budget left any way. We may want to find a long term but less costly way of advertising such as on busses. The advertising should last as long as possible up to the following year of our budget on advertising, which is May. In the next year we may decide to change our advertising campaign according to how well or successful the first year was and also we will not have to advertise the opening of our shop and introduce it to people, as they may already know it exists.
