1 Marketing research is a systematic, objective collection and analysis of data about a particular target market, competition, and other environment inluding internal and external environment. It always incorporates some form of data collection whether it be secondary research or primary research which is collected direct from a respondent.
The marketing research aims at meeting the needs of its market where a company needs to understand its customers. With the change or development internal and external environment of company, the product market will varies from many factors such as customers' wants or demands.
Since meeting consumers' needs is the basic commercial laws, and important for the company's survival and profits making, the company can do some efforts to create more customers' utilities (satisfaction) by marketing research. At the same time, customers' satisfaction will be maximized if they are provided the right prodcts, in the right place, at the right price and with the right promotion(abbreviated 4P in next text). The 4P's product mix is closely correlated with the marketing research.
With the coming of the products' market growing and mature, the quantity of competitors increases, there is no more space available of prodcts' profits making. In order to survive, to keep the existing profit, or to increase the profit, company have motions to explore the potential markets by marketing reseach.
2 (a)Primary data is the information collected for particular(specfic) purpose at hand. Secondary data exists somwhere, gathered for another purpose.
The difference between the primary data and the secondary data can be listed as follows:
Just as its name implies, primary data is the first hand information, while secondary data is the seond hand information. That is to say, primary data is field research which is gathered by an organisation for its own specific purpose. Seondary data is desk or library research which is gathered from the library and internal organisation, etc. So we can conclude that secondary data is started first, the more expensive, time-consuming primary research will be used only when missing information has to be collected by marketing research.
Secondary data comes from both the internal database and information publicly available(marketing intelligence). While primary data can gathered from outside the organisation.
There is the difference in the instrument of the two data. Primary data can gathered through survey . We can survey the targeting by mail, phone, or internet. It can collected through observation by ethnographic research, or sending its staff to observe. It also can gaghered information by focus group interivewing and by experimental research. While the secondary data can be sorted from public available information and internal information. the public available information may include government's report of industry, the news of competitors' website, the references form library, free industry research database, public limited company's information, etc.
(b)There are five main (key) advantages of secondary data. The fist, it is cheaper and can be obtained more quickly. The seond, Vast quantities of information covering a wide range of subjects are available. The third, since secondary data exists somewhere, it has already been analysed and processed. The fourth, organisations have gathered information over many years and trends and patterns can be identified so that the data is used because public receive it undoubtedly. The last, Governments produce statistics about markets and consumer habits, so if the change of environment can be neglected, the resources about markets can be used.
The disadvantages of secondary data includes as follows:it is provided to pulic, so it can not provide specific information for a particular organisation, that is to say , the rivals possibly have the same accesses to gain the similiar information. It ages easily , so it is possibly out of date. Secondary data is not specially prepared for the specific problem of marketing, so the outcome maybe be biased.
(c)◆ Government statistics about social trends from the Annual Abstact of Statistics.
◆ The financial accounts of rival company.
◆ Sales records from within the company to identify growing/declining areas.
◆ Newspaper articles about the latest toy crazes in America.
◆ Census figures which highlight population changes.
◆ Government statistics about the state of the economy.
3◆ The company could carry out questionnaires in retail outlets, such as retailers and other middlemen by telephone, personal talk or online.
◆ the company could visit parent and toddler groups to observe how children play with toys.
◆ The company could invite pre-school children to play in the observation room exlusively bulit for research, the marketing managers could watch or observe the children's behavior by scanners or through the window outside the observation room.
◆ The company hire an well trained person who was good at marketing research to observe the parent and children's buying behaviors.
◆ The company could organise focus groups to discuss new products with groups of 10-12year olds. The company could create a flexbile and comfortable talk/chat environment, start from an interesting topic so as to calm down the groups, then induct them to speak their true views on the exploration of the new product.
◆ The company could carry out the quesitonnaires to make sure the customers' buying preference and their habbits of buying toys , by this process, the company can gain some resources about the development of the new products for added customer market which can be described with 10-12year olds.
◆ The company could send out questionnaires to the toy buyers for exsiting products in different retail stores such as toy stores , super markets, etc. The contact methods are available which are mail, phone, personal talk, and online. If the outlay for marketing research is enough , the suggested method is personal talk. Because this method is easy to control the quality of research.
◆ The company could organise focus groups to discuss exsiting products with groups of pre-school year olds. Since the customers' characteristic, the form of research maybe variable and flexible. Maybe playing games with them is available while carrying out research. By chatting with them, marketing managers or marketing researchers can know their needs for the toys.
◆ Since the industry is becoming even more competitive, gathering more secondary data of rival company's marketing activities is a quite right choice. We can analyse the rival companys' sales figures to see how they had adapted their product ranges. We can go to library for basic reference of rival company, we can gain the free data from the government statistics of industry, we can also gain the information of rival company on the internet ,especially on the rival company's website which includes formal information and informal information like BBS' news.
◆ For gathering more information of rival company, we can use the ethnographic research.we can hire a person specially trained for marketing research. The person will observe the buying behavior of their own consumers and rival companys' consumer, then analysis the difference between the two kinds of consumers. Finally give the different marketing strategy .
◆ The company could use secondary sources such as government statistics to identify changes in the market place.
◆ The company could gather information of book order of government for the primary scholar or pre-school children through the report of government 's work which can be received freely and through government authoritative website.
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