Unit 17 Marketing Intelligence Assignment Copy

Unit 17 Marketing Intelligence Assignment Copy

Introduction

Marketing is defined as creating, communication and delivering value to the customers. Marketing is one of the very important functions of any organization for the success of its products. Organizations need to show the benefits of its products with the help of Advertisement and Promotions. Marketing is also defines as the business of selling and buying goods. There are many important concepts involved in Marketing. Segmentation, targeting and positioning is the first step before launching any products. SWOT analysis also comes under marketing. Marketing mix includes 4Ps i.e. Price, Product, Place and Promotion. In case of service industry some other factors such as people, process etc. also comes into picture. Marketing activities helps a lot in achieving customer satisfaction. Advertisement and promotion of the products is very important to communicate the value of the product to its potential customers (Penaloza, 2012). It also helps in attracting more customers and increases the market share of the company. The two important concepts which will be discusses in this report are buying behaviour of the customers and various marketing research techniques. Every individual buys a product on the basis of different criteria and this is called buying behaviour. For some customers price of the product is major factor and for some of them quality of the product is most considerable factor. Report will discuss various stages involved in decision making process of a customer. There are various factors which influence the buyer behaviour. Marketing research is other important concept of marketing. It helps in knowing the customer behaviour and on the basis of that organization can create and launch its products. Positioning of the products can be done after doing strong marketing research. Various ways of marketing research will be discussed in this report. Competitor analysis is very important before entering into any business and before launching any product in the market. PEST analysis is also required to understand various internal and external factors which can impact the business. Implementation of all the above mentioned marketing concepts helps a lot in building strong brand and in getting customer loyalty. Various case studies will be discussed in the report to understand various marketing concepts.

Task 2

Evaluate different types of market research techniques and prepare a marketing research plan to obtain information in the scenario above

Marketing research is the way to connect marketer with the customers, consumers or end users. Marketer tries to get information related to his customers. Marketer tries to get feedback and collect about his brand or about the customers. Following are some of the marketing research techniques used by the marketers:

Primary research

In this research marketer gets information directly from the customer. It includes surveys, direct observations, interviews, focus groups etc. This process is time consuming and costly but it gives very accurate and valuable information.

Secondary research

This method involves collecting information from already existing sources such as information from the internet, magazines, journals etc. Marketer can use data from already done researches and from customer database. Secondary research might not be latest and updated but it helps in taking quick decisions. It is used before primary research to get the initial understanding of the subject.

Quantitative research

With the help of this research method marketer tries to collect numerical data such as surveys on customer return, sales or revenue figures, financial trends, online or phone questionnaires etc. It helps in designing pricing strategy and in knowing the size of the market (Newman, 1998).

Qualitative research

With the help of this research marketer tries to know the attitude and views of the customer. Surveys, interviews, focus groups etc. can be used to do qualitative research. Customers’, interests, needs and habits of the customer can be identified with the help of this research.
In the scenario given in the case, Sainsbury says that they focus on customer satisfaction which is their priority. This Marketing Intelligence Assignment report will use various marketing research techniques to validate Sainsbury’s statement and to find out if its customers are satisfied or not. Both primary and secondary research methods can be used to validate this statement. Qualitative research will be the better way to get the information. Sainsbury’s marketer should prepare a questionnaire which should include questions which can answer our question of customer’s satisfaction.

Evaluate techniques that you will use to assess customer response

The techniques which I suggest to know the customer’s view point about Sainsbury are:

Internet or magazines

In this method marketer should read reviews of the customers about Sainsbury on various review providing websites. Customers write their reviews about the products sold by Sainsbury which will help a lot in making base for our research. Marketer should not just depend on one website or review from one or two customers but a complete and extensive secondary research is required to get an idea about the statement provided by Sainsbury in the given case study.

Survey questionnaires and interviews with the customers

The very effective method in primary research will be survey with the help of questionnaire. A questionnaire will be developed including questions such as knowing the quality of product, customer service, store environment, delivery, order placement etc. Marketer team will also try to speak to the customers directly to know their views and to take their feedback and complaints (Taylor, 1984). Questions will also include knowing the customer’s personal information such as age, income, sex etc. It will help in segmenting and targeting the customers. Sainsbury will also be able to design positioning strategies for the products. Positioning strategy should relate with the customers. Positioning strategy should be such that customer should be able to know the advantages of the product by just listening the tag line of the product or the organization.

Secondary data: Use sources of secondary data to achieve the research objective of the scenario above

As discussed above reviews of the customers on various websites and viewpoints of magazines and journals will be used to collect the secondary data. There is a website named trustpolici.co where reviews of the customers about Sainsbury can be seen. One of the good reviews about Sainsbury is that it has very good and fast delivery. Customer does not have to wait much but he can get his product within one hour of ordering the product. It also has some bad reviews like “Sainsbury started good but now it is not worth buying”. Customers think that its prices are higher. There are some customers who are happy with the customer service provided by its employees and they are also happy with the fast delivery system of the organization (Burns, 2006). But there are many bad reviews also. Hence with the secondary research it can be said that the statement mentioned by Sainsbury in the given case study is not always accurate. All the customers are not satisfied with the organization.

Primary data: Design and complete a customer satisfaction survey for the scenario above and review the success of a completed survey

Following will be the content of the survey questionnaire:
Name of the Customer:
Age:
Sex:
Occupation:
Address:
Apart from the above personal information following customer satisfaction related questions will be included in the survey:

1. Please rate the quality of products from 1 to 5, 1 being highest and 5 being lowest.
2. Please rate the delivery of products from 1 to 5, 1 being highest and 5 being lowest.
3. Please rate the service provided by employees from 1 to 5, 1 being highest and 5 being lowest.
4. Please rate the price of the products from 1 to 5, 1 being highest and 5 being lowest.
5. Please mention the competitors’ products which you think are better than Sainsbury’s products.
6. Please rate the ease of ordering Sainsbury’s products online from 1 to 5, 1 being highest and 5 being lowest.
7. Please rate the website of the organization from 1 to 5, 1 being highest and 5 being lowest.
8. Please rate the brand image and customer loyalty
9. Are you a loyal customer i.e. Are you involved in repeat purchasing from Sainsbury. Please answer yes no
10. If No please recommend the improvements and please give your feedback and complaints
11. Please rate the overall customer satisfaction with Sainsbury from 1 to 5, 1 being highest and 5 being lowest.
12. Some products from different companies will be listed and customer will be asked to rate these products and give the reasons for that.

Assess the validity and reliability of your market research findings

Primary and secondary research methods mentioned above were used for marketing research to find out the customer satisfaction towards Sainsbury’s products. After assessing various websites and journals for customers’ review I found that customers are not fully satisfied with Sainsbury. Customers have praised service and delivery of the products but customers feel that products are no worth buying as prices are higher. Hence secondary research is not as valid and reliable as compared to primary research. Organization or its competitors can forge the online reviews and these reviews can be misleading.
If we talk about primary research through direct surveys and interviews the data collected will be valid and reliable. Sainsbury will be able to get clear picture of its brand and products. It will take more time and it will be costly as compared to secondary research but it will be latest and more valid and reliable. Interviews can help in finding out the correct sentiments about the customers. Sainsbury should have a feedback form and security guard should request all the customers to fill that feedback form. It also comes under primary research and it will also be valid and reliable.

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Task 3

Carry out an assessment of market size trends within a selected market of your choice.

Market size is defined as the total sales happening in a market. Number of units sold is sales volume and revenue generated from this sale is sales value (Melitz, 2008). To calculate the market share of an organization knowing the market size is the first step. Organization also needs to know the market share of its competitors. Trends in market size can be found by comparing it with the values of previous years. This can be explained by taking below example of smart TV market in United Kingdom:

Above graph shows the number of units sold per quarter in UK. Bars in the chart shows the market share. Market share is growing with the rate of 60% per quarter. Market share in the first quarter of 2014 was 45%.
In the initial years market size increases rapidly as the product is new to the marker and more and more people tries to buy the product. After some years a saturation period comes and market size becomes stagnant. At that time competitors fight to attract each other’s’ customers. Demand is higher in the initial years of entering into the market as compared to supply so organizations try to capture new customers and try to meet their requirements and needs. Sometimes just using the sales value can be misleading because it does not consider increase or decrease in the prices. So using sales volume or value would be a better idea to compare your growth with the previous years.

Describe the plan, and carry out a competitor analysis for Nokia.

Nokia is one of the reputed organizations in mobile phone market. It is Finnish based company and it has been very successful in implementing its marketing strategies (Graham, 2008). Nokia Lumia will be used to explain marketing plan of Nokia. Marketing mix of Nokia is as follows:

The two major Competitors of Nokia in the smartphone market are Apple Inc. and Samsung.
Apple entered in Europe in 2007 and Apple’s IPhone has around 25.3% market share in the entire Europe. Apple sells high end phone and it has diverse customer base. Samsung is the market leader in smartphone industry with around 33% market share. It sells low end to high end phone for all types of customers. Samsung overtook Nokia in 2011 in terms of market share.

Porter’s five forces

Threat of entry: Threat of entry is high as it requires huge capital investment.
Power of suppliers: It is low because of high competition in suppliers.
Threat of substitute: It is low as no product can replace a smartphone.
Rivalry among existing competitors: As discussed major competitors in smartphone market are Apple and Samsung which are producing new products with new features after regular intervals of time. Rivalry is high.

Using the selected organization above, evaluate the opportunities and threats for a given product or service.

Following are the threats and opportunities in this market”

Threats:

Threat of competitors is very high. Apple and Samsung are the strongest competitors and there are other players HTC and Motorola which are also entering into smartphone market. Nokia entered late into smartphone market and behaved as a follower. Other major threat is its operating system Symbian. But now Nokia is collaborating with Microsoft to use windows as its operating system (McCullagh, 2011).

Opportunities:

Partnership with Microsoft is the biggest opportunity Nokia has. It can help in gaining competitive advantage and to come up with innovative products with better features. Other opportunity is to expand its Nokia Lumia series with different price range and with different features. Nokia can use its brand name to increase the demand of smartphones in the market.

Conclusion

Buyer behaviour is very important factor which needs to be understood by each and every marketer to be successful in the market. There are various stages involved in marketing purchase decision making process from need recognition to post purchase decision. Primary and secondary research are the two main marketing research techniques used to understand customer’s viewpoints about your product or organization. This report also studied Nokia’s marketing strategies. Competitor analysis of Nokia is also done with the help of porter’s five force model. Nokia has to develop some new strategies to survive in smartphone market.

References

Burns, A. C., & Bush, R. F. 2006. Marketing research. Globalization, 1, 7.
Hoyer, W. D. 1984. An examination of consumer decision making for a common repeat purchase product. Journal of consumer research, 822-829.
McCullagh, D. 2011. Microsoft collects locations of Windows phone users.CNet News, Published: April, 25, 2011.
McGuire, W. J. 1976. Some internal psychological factors influencing consumer choice. Journal of Consumer research, 302-319.
Melitz, M. J., & Ottaviano, G. I. 2008. Market size, trade, and productivity. The review of economic studies, 75(1), 295-316.
Newman, I. 1998. Qualitative-quantitative research methodology: Exploring the interactive continuum. SIU Press.
Peñaloza, L., Toulouse, N., & Visconti, L. M. (Eds.). 2012. Marketing management: A cultural perspective. Oxon: Routledge.
Simon, H. A. 1959. Theories of decision making in economics and behavioural science. The American economic review, 253-283.
Taylor, S., & Bogdan, R. 1984. Introduction to research methods. New York: Wiley.