Marketing Research

University Degree Business and Administrative studies

Thames valley university principles of marketing

PRINCIPLES OF MARKETING

CASE STUDY

MARKETING RESEARCH

KINGS HOTEL

NAME: NOMAN AHSAN

ID: 9658008

MODULE LEADER: VIV KRIEFMAN

I have chosen this particular case study because my main interest in this course is marketing research. Marketing research is broader and is about reaching the whole of a company marketing activities. In some organizations such research would probably includes monitoring the effectiveness of its advertising intermediaries and pricing position.

What marketing problems is this research trying to help solve?

Because there is not only one problem the king’s hotel have got right now. The research is trying to solve many of the problems and those are

Customer needs

Targeting.

Pricing.

Promotion.

The first and the most important thing is advertisement because advertisement is the most important step in any kind of business and right there the advertisement they are doing is having a multi language brochure, have a good relationship with the Krakow tourist office and some posters at the local airport this is what they have got and obviously this is not good enough advertisement especially with the hotel which have got bad image and which is based in the center of the Krakow in Poland. Manager needs to adopt method of advertisement like media, radio, T.V, Vouchers and they should have to advertise their business much better at the airport with different and interesting billboards in a that way so that whenever customer are in Krakow they will remember their hotel.

Secondly they have to rebuild the infrastructure of their hotel from inside and outside as well to fulfill the customer needs with providing good customer services. They have to recruit more staff so that if customer got any problem the staff is there for their help. The manager just cant rely on the tourist during summers but also for the people who travel for business and some other purposes so therefore he needs to target his group into two segments such as tourist and the people who travel for business. The manager should also know that he got competitors as well that mean he is not the only one in the karkow running business but also a lots of hotel business are running in karkow at the same time so he needs to be very careful and clever he needs to find out what his competitors are doing what there strategies and what they are giving to customer and what is the maximum price customers are willing to pay and for this he needs to saturation pricing strategy to find out about the maximum customers are willing to pay so after rebuilding the hotel and giving a new look to his hotel he should have to start with the low price to attract customers with free services if he is the clever business person to get hold on the market and after this when he knew that now his hotel is running quite good he can increases his price in order to get profit.

What information do you think that the hotel manager would actually need in order to investigate this problem?

Obviously the manager needs to do a lot of research to investigate the problem. It is very important to always gathered the actual information to beat the competitors

MAJOR USES OF MARKETING RESEARCH

. Research into customer needs and expectations

. Customer surveys

. Employee Research

. Key client studies

I will say that the manager needs to start up with the secondary research. Secondary research involves the use of secondary data. This is the information which already exist in ...

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What information do you think that the hotel manager would actually need in order to investigate this problem?

Obviously the manager needs to do a lot of research to investigate the problem. It is very important to always gathered the actual information to beat the competitors

MAJOR USES OF MARKETING RESEARCH

. Research into customer needs and expectations

. Customer surveys

. Employee Research

. Key client studies

I will say that the manager needs to start up with the secondary research. Secondary research involves the use of secondary data. This is the information which already exist in some firm it may be the existing business documents or other publications.

Secondly its quick, relatively inexpensive information required can be found at government household survey. By using secondary research the manager could collect data from internet to see how the hotels in west look and how they get their customer satisfied and their desire to come back to the hotel from there they can get information that already exists. In Krakow there is a tourist officer who locates accommodations for the tourists and I think that it can help a lots because kings hotels have a good relationship with the tourist officer. Manager needs to get the information form competitors because he need to check their websites or he might need to book a room in their hotel so that he can find out the difference about their customer service, price and the facilities they have got there for customers because the summer season is coming up in four months and this the only option the manager have got left and when the summer season ends he have got time to do primary research

Primary research involves collecting primary data. This is information, which does not already exist. In other words it has to be collected by the researcher. Primary research is important because manager needs to understand what factors motivate to an individual customer to choose a hotel. Why manager choose the primary research method because the main advantage of primary data is that the firm, which initially collects it, will be the only organization with access to it. That mean doing primary research he can exactly find out what the main things, which motivates the customer to choose something and his problem as well.

To what extend and why do you feel the research method employed is appropriate for gathering the information need?

The methods the managers have used to gather the information. I think is the best methods although primary is the expensive research more than a secondary but still its worth it. First he used secondary method because this research method is cheapest, quickest and its also less time consuming and that research is based on that information that already exist. With secondary research manger can get the information form competitors this may be for example in the form of promotional material and a price list because the kings hotel is located in Europe and now days the European Union provides a wide range of secondary data which can be valuable for the hotel managers because he is operating his hotel in European countries while the primary or field research is concerned with generating new information direct from the target population. He selected the primary research as well although it expensive for him but it stills worth it for him. He preferred to do the questionnaire method this research is the best source to get all the information. Because with primary research you have got open questions for customer primary research also involves personal interviews this involves an interviewer obtaining information from one person face to face conversation also got telephone interview and the advantage that manager have got is that the telephone interview is cheaper than personal interview and the last one is called postal survey which involves the use of questionnaires and as alternative method the manger could also use a suggestion box so the customer can write their own opinion rather crossing something one questionnaire.

Criticize the questionnaire outlined in the casein term of choice of question, their wording and their response mechanism?

The questionnaire in the case study is not a good questionnaire. The problem of the manager is that he has made the questionnaire in that shapes that its makes no sense. The questions are very demanding and they are not free of choice. The manager has put his project forward instead of putting the customer first the question in the questionnaire are fine but the way he asked the question is not fine. The customer has no other choice instead of writing good about the hotel. Give the customer time and option to express himself. So now I would like to add some more question and extend it to 10 questions and these are the question I would like add to the questionnaire.

. About their customer services (option to tick)

Excellent.

Good.

Average.

. Quality of food (option to tick)

Excellent.

Good.

Average.

. Overall what would you said about the value of the price paid (option to tick)

Excellent.

Good.

Average.

. The comment box at the bottom of the Questionnaires to get the feed back

I would also put incentive together with the questionnaire in the form of Sweets so the people would fill it because normally without incentive people just don’t care.

In my opinion the first question doesn’t make any sense because it does not matter weather the customer is male or female. Most of the people might just answer Yes to his question or just circle one thing but this is not clear enough so there should be a box next to male and female to cross for the customer.

The question number two is important to classify the age group using the hotel so basically we don’t need to know exactly how old are the customer is I will give age group (18-24,25-34,35-54,55 and so on

The third question is also very important. So the hotel manager needs to know where to advertise properly but some customers might have used bus, cab and other ways of transport to get to the hotel so we need to clarify that customer can tick more than one box. I will also leave some space next to the box (other) so the customer can add another ways of traveling to the hotel.

The answer for question four should be positioned in a short time period

(1-2 days, 2-3 days) and so on because especially people who travel for business purpose do not stay a week or more than a week in a hotel.

In question number five the customer should be able to tick the option given.

For question number six I think there is no need for this question and if this question is important for the manager. It do not tell you again to tick more than one box if appropriate.