I will also carry out some market research on my product, analyse it and evaluate it.
Methodology
In order to achieve my aims I will need to carry out some market research on my product. Market research is the gathering and analysis of information about what people want or like, or what they actually buy. It is important that a business carries out market research before it begins production so time; money and effort are not wasted on products which people don’t want. By investigating the market you can discover customers’ wants or needs, competition, research new products, different promotional methods and analyse better places to sell. There are two types of market research primary research also known as field research and secondary research also known as desk research.
Primary research is investigating the market first hand it is when you do your own work. It is useful for finding out new information and getting customers views of your products. The advantages of primary research are that it provides information that is up to date, relevant and specific to your product however the disadvantages are that its expensive to collect, its time consuming and it needs a large sample size to be accurate or otherwise the data cannot be generalized to the population as a whole.
For Primary research you can use the following ways to collect the data:
- Face to face interviews – street surveys, hall surveys, shop surveys, door to door household surveys, home interviews by appointment and business surveys.
This method would be good for Cadburys to use because it would mean that they got a wide range of opinions of a lot of different people.
- Focus groups – when a group of people who use the same product are invited to meet up and provide their opinions on its use. They may all be draw from the same market segment or industry. Focus groups are good at testing existing customer’s reactions to new or developed products.
This method would also be good for Cadburys because they could easily find out how their existing customers will react to their developed products.
- Panels – Groups of consumers who agree to keep a diary or fill in forms regularly to provide information about their attitudes or habits.
This method would not be one of the most useful methods that Cadburys could use because peoples attitudes and habits won’t help them to develop new products.
- Telephone interviews – Although there are many advantages of telephone interviews e.g. saves money because the data is feed straight into the computer no forms to be processed, people don’t like being rang at home in there own time. Customers regard this method of research as intrusive.
This method would be good for Cadburys because they could select areas etc to get opinions of certain types of people.
- Postal interviews – This is a very cheap method of interviewing but very often the response rate is less than 10%.
This method would not be very useful to Cadburys because the response rate is not high enough to get a wide range of answers and the small percent of people who respond would not be very useful.
- Phone in polls – customers ring different numbers for different responses, very limited for market research purposes.
This method would not be very useful for Cadburys because only a small percent of people would actually ring in and their would not be enough people to get accurate information.
- Taste testing – This can be performed in a supermarket, hall etc. This method records customer’s reactions to new or changed food products.
This method would be very useful to Cadburys because they could get people to taste their new or developed products and get a wide range of first hand responses.
Secondary research is using data that has been collected by another source. It is useful for looking at the market as a whole and analysing past trends to predict the future. It involves things like government polls, data from research organizations e.g. Gallop, and also newspaper and magazine articles. The advantages of this type of research are that it is cheaper than primary research and the data is easily found and readily available. On the other hand the disadvantages are that the information is often out of date, it’s not always relevant to your needs and is not specifically about your product. The data may also be incorrect and not belong to a trustworthy source therefore primary research is better to find out correct, specific and updated information.
The method of primary research I will use is questionnaires. A questionnaire is a set of questions printed on paper and handed out to people ready to answer. The advantages of using a questionnaire are that you have control over what questions you ask as the questions can be exactly what you require with detailed information being collected which can be analysed later on. You will also obtain the correct amount of information. But the disadvantages are that it is time consuming and expensive and you can’t question everyone in the world. Questions should be clear or otherwise the person answering won’t understand and care should be taken to avoid bias and misleading questions or otherwise you will get incorrect results.
The reason why I will use questionnaires is because although it is time consuming and expensive the questions can be specifically about my product and I will be able to collect a lot of accurate and up to date information which I can then analyse later on in order to help me analyse the marketing mix. In order to do this I will have to carry out a sample using a relevant and an unbiased sampling method. There are lots of different types of sampling methods e.g. random sampling, quota sampling, target sampling, systematic sampling, geographical sampling etc.
Random sampling is when each member of the population has an equal chance of being selected. It is when the total population is known and people are selected from a list at random or by using a calculator to help generate random numbers. This would be inconvenient for my needs because I don’t know the whole of the town.
Quota sampling is often used in market research surveys. It is when you choose a certain target market to question e.g. to question 30 people include 3 men over 60 years of age, 5 men between 40 and 60, 6 men between 20 and 40, 6 men or boys under 20, 3 young schoolboys, 4 businessmen, and 3 men dressed in working clothes. There is a high chance that the groups may be unrepresentative of the whole population and you may not get a good spread of results. I won’t use target sampling because I don’t want clusters, I want everyone to have an even chance of being selected.
For Secondary research I sent out A letter to the Cadbury Company and requested some information about the dairy milk product, I also went on the Cadburys website to find some information about the product.
