In market research, companies have two types of data in research and they are primary and secondary data. How you obtain the data on your market research depends on what type of information you use. I have used primary research, which involves a lot of interaction with the target market. Secondary research, which is also known as “desk research” involves using data that has already been created or provided by one of the following:
Government statistics
Market research companies, e.g. Gallop
Newspapers
The Internet
The advantages of this market research are that the information is already available and it is cheap and also you can find out what other competitors are doing, but this information may be out of date and difficult to make sense of. And the information may not be relevant. To avoid this, primary research is done also known as field research and this information that is newly created and can be collected either by research firms, i.e. Gallup and Mori, or can be collected by the firm itself. There are lots of ways that you can conduct field research and they are as follows.
- Test marketing
- Surveys
- Observation
- Consumer panels
- Questionnaires
- Interviews
- Electronic (EPOS)
- Postal
- Face to face
- Telephone
- Open ended
- Group interviews
The advantages of this kind of research are that you obtain the information you want; the information is up to date and the competitors will not have this information but this information is expensive, is difficult to obtain and takes longer to obtain.
In order that I can decide whether my idea will be feasible I have decided that I need to conduct some market research. The market research that I will conduct will be primary. This consisted of a questionnaire made up of specially selected questions that may draw the answer we want from the pupil. I have decided that this is the most appropriate due to the nature of the business I am intending to set up. Also because the target audience that I want to attract to buy my service are within our school community, therefore it is important that I gain the views and opinions of the younger students within school. We put together a questionnaire for our market research, which consisted of the questions that you see below.
Questionnaire
How much would you pay for a Valentines Day card?
£1.00 £1.25 £1.50 £ 1.75
How much extra would you expect to pay for the valentine card to be delivered
25p 50p 75p £1.00
What year group are you in? (Please circle)
Yr7 yr8 yr 9 yr10 yr11 6th form
What would you buy them for Valentines Day?
Cards jewellery
Chocolate teddy's
Roses other
Perfume
If you have picked other, please will you state your answer______________
Our target market is the year nines in our school. I found that I naturally aimed this questionnaire at the year nines as they may be experiencing a first love and are new to the giving of presents to loved ones. We are selling valentines cards aimed at both male and female and also year nines are our target market as they hang around in one big group in the library. We asked about 60 pupils 30/male 30/female, questions from our questionnaire, forty-one pupils said they would pay a pound for a valentines card, four said they would pay one-pound twenty-five, eight said they would pay one pound fifty and seven said they would pay one pound seventy five. We then asked them how much extra they would pay for a delivery service and sixty pupils said that they would only pay twenty-five pence for the charge of the delivery service of the cards given the choice, they also said given the choice they wouldn't pay anything for the delivery they would have it all included in the price. So I took this onboard and decided to include delivery in the price.
Tally Chart.
In order that we could analyse our results it was necessary for me to construct a tally chart as this clearly displays the responses that I have gained form the students who completed our questionnaire.
Question
Answer
Tally out of 60
How much would you pay for a Valentines Day card?
£1.00
£1.25
£1.50
£ 1.75
41
4
8
7
How much extra would you expect to pay for the valentine card to be delivered
25p
50p
75p
£1.00
50 pupils said 25p
2
5
3
What year group are you in?
Yr7
Yr8
Yr 9
Yr10
Yr11
6th form
11
6
28
3
8
4
What would you buy them for Valentines Day?
Cards jewellery
Chocolate teddy's
Roses
Perfume
Other
32
0
0
6
18
1
3
3 people said that they would cook a meal for their “loved one”
