BSBMKG607 Manage Market Research Assessment Task 1

Assessment Task 1: Written Assessment

Q1.

Marketing research is "the process or set of processes that links the producers, customers, and end users to the marketer through information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process. Marketing research specifies the information required to address these issues, designs the method for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, analyzes the results, and communicates the findings and their implications."

It is the systematic gathering, recording, and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data about issues relating to marketing products and services. The goal of marketing research is to identify and assess how changing elements of the marketing mix impacts customer behavior. The term is commonly interchanged with market research; however, expert practitioners may wish to draw a distinction, in that market research is concerned specifically with markets, while marketing research is concerned specifically about marketing processes.

Q2.

Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, securing, managing, leading, and controlling resources to achieve specific goals. A project is a temporary endeavor with a defined beginning and end (usually time-constrained, and often constrained by funding or deliverables), undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives, typically to bring about beneficial change or add value.

The primary challenge of project management is to achieve all of the project goals and objectives while honoring the pre-defined constraints. The primary constraints are scope, time, quality and budget. The secondary and more ambitious challenge is to optimize the allocation of necessary inputs and integrate them to meet pre-defined objectives.

For a successful project, the following principles are necessary assets when charting a path to completion. These principles of project management can be applied to any level or branch of a project that falls under a different area of responsibility in the overall project organization

• Project structure
• Definition phase
• Clear goals
• Transparency about project status
• Risk recognition
• Managing project disturbances
• Responsibility of the project manager
• Project success

Q3.

Relevant legislation, codes of practice and national standards that may affect aspects of business operations includes, but not limited to the following:

- Australia Direct marketing Codes of Practice

-Federal Privacy Act

-Australian Environmental Code

-Intellectual Property legislation and Code of conduct

-Anti-spam legislation

-Duty of Care

-Equal Employment Opportunity Act

-Sex Discrimination Act

-Australian Association of National Advertising Code of Ethics

Q4.

Steps for Marketing Research process are as follows:

1. Identifying, Defining and Evaluating the problem
2. Research Plan and Objective
3. Data collection
4. Information Analysis
5. Presentation of findings
6. Making the decision

Q5.

Market Research helps define the business’ marketing options in terms of product, place, price and promotion. This way your offering would meet a specific customer needs or demand. It can provide insightful information about your market, product, audience, competition, and more. When you use a comprehensive research library, you can make decisions with greater clarity and confidence. By having research to backup your marketing decisions, you can optimize your brand strategy choices and minimize your risk for failure. It is an excellent way to find the best market or target demographic for a product or service. By focusing your efforts to the right markets, you can see faster results, improved efficiency, and greater overall performance from your marketing campaigns. In addition, if your target is already defined, you can use marketing research to better understand your target consumer and to uncover critical behavior drivers and attitudes that inform their purchase decisions.

Q6.

There are several ways to categorize the various market research methods. The vast majority of techniques fit into one of six categories: (1) secondary research, (2) surveys, (3) focus groups, (4) interviews, (5) observation, or (6) experiments/field trials.

Q8.

External consultant and service providers are separate entities that provides services such as consulting, software development — including system integration and application service providers (ASPs) — and outsourcing. ESPs supplement the skills and resources of an in-house IS department.

External consultant and service providers can do the data collection as well as the analysis in the market research, as to compare it with the one gathered by the company itself. As with this it would have a different or impartial view as to the matters, the organisation can then have a good grasp or understanding of the market or competition that they are in.

Q9.

In choosing external consultants, one must follow the following criteria:

1. Timely Delivery and Financial Stability – turnaround time is critical and is often a barrier which prevents market research from happening because sometimes it can take too long. All organizations want to work with a market research supplier that can deliver insights in a relatively short amount of time and won’t close up shop half way through fieldwork because it can’t pay the electric bill (kind of obvious).
2. Knowledge and Responsiveness – clients want to work with a research team that knows its business and can take the data and findings and apply it to recommendations to improve business. Responsiveness is also key and ties in nicely with timely delivery. Speed is essential.
3. Quality Data Collection Techniques – not only does data need to be collected fast but it needs to be high quality. Quality control measures and management of telephone fieldwork is critical but it’s even more critical with online and panel studies when surveys are self-administered by respondents. Here are 5 data integrity checks for online surveys to handle your “daydreamers”, “impostors”, and “speeders”.
4. Price and Access to Market – price is always on everyone’s list but can it be a competitive advantage? Interestingly, organizations with research budgets under $100,000 were more likely to rate price as being a more important factor than those with budgets over $100,000. Access to market is key when selecting a focus group facility to recruit participants in a nearby market. It is also important when choosing a panel vendor which may have access to key targeted audiences (physicians, high-level decision-makers, etc.) that other firms do not.
5. Experience and Consultative Skills – organizations hiring a market research firm want to know that the team they are working with has done this before. No organization wants its project to be the guinea pig for a methodology or for the first project for a new analyst. Consultative skills tie in with the research firm’s ability to listen to the client’s needs and then deliver on them.

Q10.

Market Research plan should involve gathering of information regarding the following:

1.industry and market environment

Research into industry and market factors will focus on information about any political, legal, economic, social and cultural issues or trends that can affect your business.

Industry and market environment research might cover:

• business regulations
• market demographics (e.g. age, gender, income)
• market size and trends
• marketing channels
• sociographics (e.g. beliefs and attitudes, interests, lifestyle factors).

2. Customers - in order to develop a customer profile

You can use customer research to gather information on who your customers or potential customers are and what, when, where and how they buy. Customer research can also give you valuable insights into your customers' attitudes towards your business and your products and services.

Customer research might cover:

• customer demographics (e.g. age, gender, income)
• social and lifestyle trends
• needs and expectations
• attitudes towards you and your competitors.

• Competitors

Your competitor research will gather information about existing and potential competitors. You can use your competitor research to gather information such as your competitor's current market advantages, weaknesses in their promotional strategies, and how their customers view their products and service.

Competitor research might cover:

• current turnover and market share
• pricing structures
• products and services
• marketing, advertising and branding..

Q11.

Presentations usually used to present market research findings are as follows:

1. Tables

Tables are one of the most efficient ways of presenting data. The figures in the rows and columns show results that enable the reader to see the raw data and, if necessary, use the information for further calculations. A table can hold far more information than a chart

and remain intelligible. They do, however, require the reader to work on the data more than in a chart.

2. Charts

A picture has always been worth a thousand words. Graphs have more impact than tables because they simplify the data and pull out key findings in pictorial form.

3. Texts

Text forms the narrative in a written report and as such it is used to tell the whole story. Text is also used in tables and charts in PowerPoint slides to describe and add explanations to the findings.

A PowerPoint slide deck, that is prepared to report on the findings of a survey, will normally have text to sum up the conclusions or for an executive summary. Text should aim to clearly and simply present the findings and so needs to be written in short simple sentences. Frequent headings that break up the text will help people speed read and gut the report. Bulleted text can similarly be used to give impact to points.

BSBMKG607

Manage Market Research

Asessment Task 2: Projects

Q1.

Customer satisfaction is difficult to measure due to several reasons. Counting on customer satisfaction owing to their feedback is not the case because most people prefer keeping quiet when satisfied.

Methods that ABC company can use are as follows:

1. Direct method which is to directly contact the customer to get their feedback.
2. Indirect method which can be obtain from customer’s complaint and customer’s loyalty.

Q2.

The specifications that ABC company needs the external consultant to determine are as follows:

1. With regards to their new toy “Spiderman”
   1. Whether the price of the product is reasonable
   2. Whether the promotion that they did should be extended or not?
   3. Whether their promotion achieved the desired effect
   4. What are the customer’s feedback/response on their new toy?
2. As a toy manufacturer
   1. What are their position in the market?
   2. What are the customer’s response to their toys in general?
   3. What are the other needs/wants of the customer’s with regards to toys?

Q3.

ABC company can do surveys, either through phone interviews, face to face interviews or customer feedback card/ questionnaire. Also they can obtain information from customer’s complaint sheet or they could check from the sales figure whether customer’s keep coming back for more.

Q4.

Problems with data gathering represents several concepts that to the non-researcher may be quite complex. But basically validity boils down to whether the research is really measuring what it claims to be measuring. For instance, if a marketer is purchasing a research report from a company claiming to measure how people prefer the marketer’s products over competitors’ products, the marketer should understand how the data was gathered to help determine if the research really captures the information the way the research company says it does.

While research validity is measured in several ways, those evaluating research results should keep asking this simple question: Is the research measuring what it is supposed to measure? If the marketer has doubts about the answer to this question then it is possible the results should also be questioned.

To establish a method of measurement as valid, you’ll have to use all three validity types, which are:

• Content validity: Consult with other experts to refine the measures and to ensure that you’re covering all aspects.
• Criterion-related validity: Correlate the measure with some external gold-standard criterion that your measure should predict, such as conversion rates, sales, recommendation rates, or actual usage by customers.
• Construct validity: Correlate the measure with other known measures. Correlate a new measure of usability with the SUS (System Usability Scale). Correlate a new measure of loyalty with the Net Promoter Score. High correlations indicate convergent validity. If your measure is supposed to measure something different—delight versus satisfaction—then look for low or no correlation to establish discriminant validity.

Q5.

Comparing the results or findings of a market research to your research objectives is a way to determine whether result is useful or relevant. The first step in making a market research is to identify or define your objective, as such when doing a research it is to determine whether your product and its price is acceptable to the market. So long as the research you have done aims to achieve your goals, then it is likely that the findings you have would be relevant or useful to you.

Any conclusions you reach should align with your initial research objectives and business goals in general. Review all the data collected and ensure that there aren’t any gaps, examine the major trends or problems within your industry, analyse any strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and use your research to make decisions about your marketing mix.

Q6.

The final report should have the following:

• Create a title page. Include the title of the report, client names, business name and author names. The title page should look clean, professional and aesthetically pleasing.

• Attach a table of contents. It will serve as a useful tool so clients can skip to areas of interest without having to read the entire report.

• Summarize the report in the executive summary. The executive summary is a one- or two-page explanation of business information in your market research report, according to a report from the Bryant University website. This allows your readers to receive the gist of the report without reading the entire thing, especially during presentations and meetings.

• Write an introduction, which addresses background information, function of the business, target audience and objectives of the business. The introduction should be about one page.

• Write the qualitative research section of the body. This section outlines the focus group research step and the questions answered. Describe the participants in the research, their needs, conclusions and how they affect your business.

• Write the survey research section of the body. This section should include what questions were asked in surveys, who took the surveys (broken down by groups), the answers to the questions and how they affect your business.

• Summarize the types of data used in drawing conclusions. Include why you chose the research methods you did, how they helped you and how they will affect the business.

• Share your findings based on your research. Reveal all concrete conclusions discovered during the research. Explain these conclusions in-depth in a clear presentation format.

• State your conclusions and call the reader to action. Your conclusions should be stated in broad form and directly address results found in your research. Never draw conclusions your findings do not directly support.

Project 2

Market Research plan

ANEW Clinical

Avon newest anti-aging cream

Summary

Avon Products, Inc, known as Avon, is an American international manufacturer and direct selling company in beauty, household, and personal care categories. Avon had annual sales of $10.0 billion worldwide in 2013.It is the fifth-largest beauty company and, with 6.4 million representatives, is the second largest direct selling enterprise in the world .

Avon Products launches its newest anti-wrinkle serum called ANEW Clinical. This market research project hopes to discover more information regarding market trends in Anti-wrinkle serum.

Objectives:

This research aims to answer the following questions:

1. What the consumer’s attitude to anti-wrinkle products?
2. How would Avon take advantage of this information when applying to promoting ANEW Clinical?

Existing Knowledge

ANEW Clinical Anti-Wrinkle Line Erasing Serum with A-F33 is a fragrance-free serum, with groundbreaking A-F33, formulated to help double collagen levels in just 24 hours. After two weeks, crow’s feet wrinkles show a dramatic improvement.

Previous research shows that there are a lot of anti-wrinkle serums or creams that are out in the market. With tremendously abundant selection, companies that sells such creams, compete with each other not only on the level of product quality, but also on being able to anticipate and accurately assess consumer needs and attitudes towards it. Knowing these factors would assist the company to improve satisfaction levels which would lead to increase in revenues and market share.

Intended Outcomes

Research would show that consumers nowadays are keen on buying anti-wrinkle/aging products. Both men and women will likely buy this kind of product. ANEW Clinical would get a good share in the target market.

Target Demographics

Our general approach is to target a number of individuals with specific questions that we believed would be able to satisfy our research objectives. Since our research focuses on anti-wrinkle products, our target demographics are those that are above 40 of age, regardless of sex.

Data Collection

Our methods of data collection will be best suited to the project at hand. Online surveys, delivered via emails were used for data collection. Phone interviews were likewise use by researchers to those that doesn’t have access to the internet.

Research Methodology

In conducting our research, we mainly used online surveys. Survey questions were delivered via emails and an online data collection tool was used to collect data, by doing so it is highly efficient and speeds up things a bit. Phone interviews by outsourcing to call centers were likewise use. As a direct selling business, we also got answers from some of our clients.

The series of questions on the survey would be as follows:

1. The sex of the correspondents
   1. Male
   2. Female
2. Age of the correspondents
   1. 30-35
   2. 36-40
   3. 41-45
   4. 46-50
   5. Above 50
3. What brand of product are you using?
   1. Avon
   2. Shisheido
   3. L’oreal
   4. Clinique
   5. Other Brands
   6. None
4. How many times do they use the product?
   1. Once a day
   2. Twice a day
   3. Once a week
   4. Twice a week
   5. Specific answer
5. What is your annual household income?
   1. Less than $40,000
   2. $41,000-$60,000
   3. $61,000-$75,000
   4. $76,000-$100,000
   5. More than $100,000
6. How would they rate the product that they are using from 1-10, as 10 being the highest.
7. If given a cheaper product, would they transfer to it or stay with they chosen one.
8. How much are they willing to spend for the product?
   1. Below $50
   2. $51-100
   3. $101-$150
   4. $151-$200
   5. Above $200
9. How do you think the product you are using can be improved?
   1. Better customer service
   2. Better quality
   3. More promotion or discount
   4. More availability
   5. Better packaging
10. What is the most important factor when selecting an anti-aging cream?
    1. Price
    2. Quality
    3. Brand reputation
    4. Packaging
    5. Referrals
    6. Others
11. Where do you usually purchase anti-aging cream?
    1. Department store
    2. Direct Sales
    3. Online
    4. Chemists
    5. Salons
    6. Others
12. What is your most important resource for information on anti-aging products?
    1. TV
    2. Newspaper
    3. Internet
    4. Magazines
    5. Skincare specialists
    6. Others
13. How often do you purchase anti-aging products?
    1. Less than once a year
    2. Twice a year
    3. Three times a year
    4. Four times a year
    5. Five or more times a year

Timeline

Task 1 Online Survey

Once email has been sent to the correspondents, a period of 30 days will be waited so that all the correspondents would have time to answer the questions.ollated.

Task 2. Phone Interviews

Same amount of time was likewise spent by call center agents to get all the necessary answers by several correspondents.

Task 3. Tabulation of Results

A day will be given to the researchers to tabulate the results from both online surveys and phone interviews:

Task 4. Analysis

Once all results are to be gathered, 5 days will be given to the researchers to analyse the data collected.

Task 5. Conclusion and Recommendation

10 days will be given to make a conclusion and recommendations.

Proposed Budget (during the research)

Researchers’ Salary $10,000

Phone Bill $1,000

Internet $500

Materials for drafting report $100

Printing Cost $50

Total $11,650

Ethical Consideration

Confidentiality are clause included in the survey form. No personal information are to be asked during the survey or interview. All information containing personal information that might arise during the conduct of the interview will be deemed as confidential as such any use against the correspondent would be a violation to privacy law and as such would warrant a criminal charge against the person using it. No wiretapping is to be used during the phone interviews. In case, the interview is to be recorded, consent from the interviewee should be taken, otherwise interview became invalid.

Consent should be demonstrated through answering of the survey forms or phone interview. No coercion is allowed to happen. Once survey forms are sent, and no reply from correspondent meant that correspondent doesn’t want to be interviewed and that should be deemed as final.

Further Outcomes

By having this market research, Avon Products would know how they fare in the market of anti-aging cream. They would be able to know how to improve their product so that it would get a better share in the market, as well as how to make their products more available to their consumers.

BSBMKG607 Project Plan Assessment Task 1

BSBMKG607 Staffing support plan Assessment Task 2

BSBMKG607 Manage Market Research Assessment Task 1