Marketing research.

Introduction

Marketing research provides the mechanism for identifying and anticipating customer requirements and for measuring whether customers are satisfied by these product offerings (Crouch & Housden, 1996). As a market research manager I have attempted to conduct a survey showing local attitudes towards my organisation.

The organisation I’m referring to is the association of voluntary organisations in Wrexham or AVOW. AVOW’s mission statement is to be ‘committed to the development of a strong voluntary sector for the benefit of the people of Wrexham county borough’. AVOW provides information to the voluntary sector, community organisations and the general public. See appendix 1 for further details.

In attempting to research community attitudes towards AVOW, perhaps it would be appropriate to begin by discussing research methodology. Then It might be fitting to look at problems within the organisation, followed by the questionnaire results and analysis.

Research methodology

Qualitative research is full of meaning and information. It doesn't rely on statistics and is more concerned with reason than factual figures. It is commonly used in interviews and group discussions. Quantitative research is based on statistics and figures. It is commonly used in questionnaires and representative samples.

With qualitative research the sampling method should be designed to include all possible points of view, although it does not have to denote proportionally groups in the population. Quantitative research requires the sampling method to reflect all points of view as well as in the proportion they exist in the population (ozco.gov.au, 2003). Therefore only organisations that have used AVOW should be surveyed to determine their beliefs and attitudes towards the AVOW.

A good sampling method ensures that each member of the population has an equal chance of being selected, and that the characteristics of the sample reflect those of the population from which it is drawn, this confers high confidence. A sampling method subject to bias confers low confidence. The smaller the sample, the less confident, the larger the sample, the more confident. (Types of sampling see appendix 2)

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Problem identification

Appendix 3 shows the DECIDE model. The model shows how marketing decisions should be made through a series of six steps. The first part of the DECIDE model requires me to identify AVOW’s marketing mix problems. The 7p’s of the marketing mix are; product, price, promotion, place, physical evidence, people, and process, these are a set of marketing decisions that management make to implement their position strategy and achieve its objectives (Doyle, 2002)

Using the 7P’s I have found that as a charity run for charities it’s not always easy to charge at higher ...

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Problem identification

Using the 7P’s I have found that as a charity run for charities it’s not always easy to charge at higher prices. AVOW has very low prices to try and accommodate as many charities as possible but could possibly higher there prices in order to afford to become a better service.

Advertisement for extra volunteers is very low key mainly found through existing volunteers, an advertisement campaign is needed. The website is a good medium for advertisement but is currently offline.

At present AVOW only covers Wrexham however Wrexham County now includes a larger geographical area, AVOW has only one office in the town centre which can exclude neighbouring towns and villages which are also part of Wrexham.

As AVOW deals with charitable organisations which include disabled groups, facilities are not in place to cater for these groups. Wheelchair access is not available at AVOW.

Staffs are not trained sign language even though a small but significant group of members are deaf. There is also no literature available in Braille for the visually impaired.

Questionnaires

Primary data refers to the information that is developed or gathered by the researcher primarily for the research project at hand. Secondary data refers to the information that has previously been gathered by someone other than the researcher and/or for some other purpose than the research project at hand. Types of secondary data include internal data (e.g. database marketing), external data, published sources, syndicated sources, database sources.

The advantages of secondary data are that it can be obtained quickly, is inexpensive compared to secondary data, readily available and enhances existing primary data. The disadvantages are that the measured units may not match the researchers needs, class definitions may not be useable, data may be out of date, may be difficult to assess credibility of the data.

To begin the questionnaire it is useful to start with normal background questions as these are easy to answer and ease the respondent into the questionnaire. You do not want to put off the respondent with difficult questions at the start. We are familiar with background questions but it is important to only ask those background questions that are necessary.

Generally there are two types of question to ask, open format or closed format. Open format are ‘those that ask for unprompted opinions’ (cc.gatech.edu, 2003). So there is no pre-set responses, the respondent can answer the question however they choose. Open format questions are good for soliciting a range of data that will truly reflect the opinions of the respondents, as it is impossible to predict the full range of opinion. It is common to end a questionnaire with an open format question in order to gain ideas for improvements.

Open format questions however cannot have statistical analysis performed on them and cannot be tabulated. They have to be read individually which can be time consuming and costly which may not be practical for AVOW’S lower budget. The respondent can also interpret the answer differently from other respondents. More time is also placed on the respondent with open format questions and the danger is that they will become bored and not answer the questions properly.

Closed format questions usually take the form of multiple choice questions; these are easy for the respondent to answer. There needs to be enough questions to cover the range of answers but not so many as the distinction becomes unclear. This would be around five to ten possible answers (cc.gatech.edu, 2003). For questions where the range is from easy to difficult etc it is easy to think there should be an odd number of responses however this allows a neutral or no opinion response, an even number of responses would force respondents to stop ‘sitting on the fence’. However the respondent may actually have no opinion.

Closed format are easier too easy to calculate percentages on and therefore cheaper for AVOW to use. Sphinx survey lexica make it easy to write out, and perform analysis upon. Closed format questions also make it easier to track opinion over a period of time by administering the same questions to a similar group of respondents at a later time. Closed format questions allow AVOW to filter out extreme or useless answers that can occur with open format questions.

Whether your questions are open or closed format, there are several points that must be considered when writing and interpreting questionnaires, due to word constraints imposed on this essay please see a summary of these at appendix 4.

Analysis

Appendix 5 shows the questionnaire that I decided upon, and the results that I have gained throw the use of Sphinx. Appendix 6 describes the tools and what Sphinx is about the information is taken from the website.

Question one and two shows that I have used a good spread of respondents apart from in the 36-45 age groups where only 6.7% were of this age. The AVOW survey looked at an almost equal proportion of male and females with 53.3% male and 46.7% female. I stood outside AVOW to ask respondents to fill in my questionnaire in order to as many people as possible who have used AVOW I was so happy to have a 100% response from people who’s organisations had used AVOW.

Only 6.7% of respondents thought that AVOW didn’t have a satisfactory service, with 33.3% on the top end of the scale with very satisfied. The majority respondents surveyed found out about AVOW through a current user, with 35.3% finding out this way. Only a small number just 5.9% found out from T.V. and the website. 23.5% found out about AVOW from leaflets and the same percentage from AVOW personnel.

The service received from staff had the majority of being excellent at 33.3%. Although there was still a high percentage who thought the service was satisfactory. Again a high proportion of respondents found AVOW to be very useful 26.7% although a higher proportion thought that the service was just good.

A small amount of respondents found AVOW’s service overall to be poor. 26.7% found the service to be good and the same amount found the overall service to be excellent. All the respondents are planning on using AVOW’s services again. Everybody I interviewed was already a member of AVOW so I was unable to establish weather other members of the public had knowledge of AVOW.

Recommendations

From the results from Sphinx (Appendix 5) it is apparent that only a small proportion of volunteers are from the 36-45 age groups. Although this would be a very important group to recruit from, because they are old enough to be responsible and, young enough to have energy to put into the groups. A recruitment campaign needs to be designed to attract members from this age group.

35% discovered AVOW through current users, this would be a good way to advertise AVOW. AVOW could ask to place promotional leaflets in members charity shops, or posters in windows.

AVOW could also use newspaper or radio advertisement to notify the general public of the service they offer for them. Such as how to set up a charitable trust, or information on setting up childcare services. Leaving advertisement to word of mouth alone could be causing AVOW to be missing out on key business for them in the Wrexham area.

Nine responses were given for the question what would you do to improve AVOW. More literature as definitely noted as what AVOW needed to improve on. It could be possible to produce information packs on things such as how to fundraise, these could be charged at a small price and possibly reduce the need for consultants that are paid.

Longer opening hours was another complaint. This could be rectified using the internet as a means to book rooms and a password system could be used to access members only information.

Conclusion

This essay has attempted to explore using the DECIDE model and various others means community attitudes towards the AVOW organisation. In doing so it was found that members of AVOW found the service to be very high in standard.

The essay has shown that there are various problems with any type of research technique and that reliability can never be 100%. The questionnaire performed was only analysed from 15 respondents such a small sample may have been taken from people who only like AVOW and may have missed out on those who find the service below standard.

Future research will ideally go on to ask the same questions at a later date for comparison and also different questions in order to gain further information on community attitudes towards AVOW.