Dalbog mineral water is a business owned by a farmer who wishes to reduce his reliance on farming. He has a borehole on his land which provides a mineral water and so the farmer wishes to install a small bottling plant

University Degree Business and Administrative studies

DALBOG MINERAL WATER

Dalbog mineral water is a business owned by a farmer who wishes to reduce his reliance on farming. He has a borehole on his land which provides a mineral water and so the farmer wishes to install a small bottling plant on his farm so he can produce and sell his product on the UK market.

There is a requirement to find out:

Competitors prices and annual sales

Whether the water is accepted by the public

Whether the taste and packaging will attract consumers

The market to be researched is the beers, spirits and soft drinks market. There has already been some correspondence with a distributor who is prepared to distribute the product if it is up to standard.

Firstly, secondary research (desk research) should be used to discover competition, their prices and their annual sales. It should also be used to discover what the safety and product standards across Europe are. Secondary research can also be used to establish the purchasing trends of bottled water.

The FT profile can be used to conduct this particular part of the research. The FT profile is a market research service which is available online. It will allow access to detailed information on companies. This is where the competitor’s annual sales can be found as well as various other company information.

Secondary research should also be used to:

Define market trends and competitive structure over the past five years
Determine the strengths and weaknesses of the existing suppliers of water. E.g. their prices, promotions, distribution and service
Become familiar with the main buyers of water
Identify the main buying criteria when purchasing

Exhaust all aspects of secondary data as it is remarkably cheaper and less time consuming than primary data.

Secondly, primary research must be used to establish the market potential and to indicate appropriate market entry strategies.

Quota sampling can be used to identify the main buyers of water and it is set up so that it should represent the population. And this could be conducted through a face to face interview.

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Secondly, primary research must be used to establish the market potential and to indicate appropriate market entry strategies.

Quota sampling can be used to identify the main buyers of water and it is set up so that it should represent the population. And this could be conducted through a face to face interview.

As most of the main buyers of water will be people in the physical and sports industries, I am going to suggest that names could be drawn from an enrolment list in companies such as fitness first and research could be conducted through group interviews. Samples of the water could be provided for the respondents to sample. This would provide us with a response on the taste of the water.

A sample stand could also be constructed in one of the main supermarkets. When a customer samples the water a simple questionnaire can be handed out alongside the sample.

I decided to use secondary research to its full potential as it is considerably a lot more cost effective than primary research. It is very specific and inclusive of all the information required. Other companies have already obtained the data, either for a business-related basis or because they normally gather information to give out. Secondary research allows its user to define the current market trends and examine the competitive structure over up to five years. It also enables the profiling of the new business’s potential competitors. Data on the strong points of competitors is readily available as well as their weak points. Access to potential rival’s products, prices, promotions and service is also available through secondary research. We can also identify the main buyer of water without primary research.

I suggested using the FT profile for research as it is easily accessible through the internet and offers a broad variety of information. The Ft profile provides access broadsheets such as the Financial Times, International Herald Tribune etc. It also allows access to global news databases.

Also relevant to our specific topic, the FT profile enables access to company and industry news, statistics and trend as well as, wide-ranging market coverage. This is useful as full market research reports on consumer products are also available. Thus saving some research time and finances.

I suggest using quota sampling to collect information about the water from the public. Quota samples are produced when the interviewer is given certain instructions as to the types of people to be interviewed and also the number of people to be interviewed. For example, the decision could be made that 100 non-working males aged between eighteen and twenty-five are to be interviewed as well as 200 full-time working males in the same age group and the same for the female population. As the interview is aimed as the consumption of water the younger population could also be interviewed.

The quota is set so that the sample should ‘represent’ the population. The criteria for defining the quota sample should be targeted at the structure of the market. Examples of the criteria that could make up a quota sample are: age bands, employment, the structure of the family unit, location, car owners etc. The sampling method is not random, so sample is not statistically representative.

The advantages of quota sampling are:

Quick set up
Lower set up costs
Fieldwork costs are lower
Fieldwork completed more quickly

However the disadvantages are:

Sample is no statistically representative
Needs knowledge of population to set quota
Interviewer bias in respondent selection

Because our research is on bottled water I believe that an interview should take place at a physical health centre as many if not all the people who attend a gym will drink water at some point to re-hydrate themselves. I thought group interviews could be the best possible solution to the interview process at this point. Group interviews are not used for generalisation but do give information on the attitudes of particular interest groups. The group normally consists of between six to eight people who have been selected as the target group. The interviewer will introduce topics and encourage responses and then record their findings.

Group interviews can be useful if there is a limited budget and also if the company is relatively new and does not know exactly what they need to be researching. The speed of data collection is fast and the respondents are more likely to respond due to the situation. The interviewer is also able to use visual aids and ask complex and sensitive questions with the ability to achieve a response. However, the disadvantages of group interviews are that there is potential for the interviewer to be bias and encourage answers from the respondents that may not be their own. The interview is based on a targeted group and so there is not the ability to reach dispersed population.

I also suggested that the interviewer hands out samples of the water during the interviews and perhaps constructs a sample stand in a physical fitness centre and large supermarkets. This could enable the public to sample the water and give a response on the taste. Small questionnaires could be handed out alongside the samples of water. To encourage the consumers to fill in the questionnaire accurately and hand it in, the questionnaire could involve a small prize draw. The advantages of this type of research are: it is very cheap, there is an ability to ask sensitive questions and receive a truthful response and there is no possibility of interviewer bias. However the disadvantages of this type of research outweigh the advantages as with a self completion questionnaire the response rate is very low as the questionnaires are normally disposed of. There is no chance of the questions being flexible as most of the questions will have to be yes or no questions.

I could have suggested the use of telephone surveys as a larger number of respondents could have been reached and the research could have been carried out very quickly. However a telephone survey must be designed so that the interviewer gets all the information required in a space of ten minutes as with out visual aids the respondent will loose attention. Although it is cheaper to carry out a telephone survey I did not think it was appropriate to this type of research. There is not a high response rate due to the bad press from telemarketing. Most people hang up the minute they hear the words quick questionnaire. There is also a fairly high chance of interviewer bias.

All in all any of the types of research I have suggested could be used in this particular project. The one I would emphasis the use of is the group interview as it is most appropriate to this project. However, many of the other methods of research can be adapted to the type of research required.