Evaluate ways in which David could assess how PCL’s marketing activities assist in the achievement of its business objective. (13)
Marketing is the management process that identifies, anticipates and satisfies customer needs profitably. It ensures a business has the right product, at the right place, at the right time and at the right price.
If David wants to assess whether something works the best way to find out is through market research. Market research can be used to evaluate the success of marketing activities that David has already conducted, this will allow him to see whether they are helping the business achieve their objective. There are two methods of market research which are primary and secondary, primary research is research that has not yet been conducted and have to be done by the business, this is a more expensive and time consuming method of research but gives more specific results as the business can find out exactly what they want to. Secondary research is research that has already been conducted which means it is usually free and a lot less time consuming that primary research, although it may be hard to find the specific research data you wanted and the data may not be up to date. PCL’s current objectives are to meet their business principles and increase demand, increasing demand is not specifically mentioned in the case study as an objective but he is looking to take over another business and question two of the exam asks to discuss the appropriate pricing strategies that would increase demand in the coming months which indicates they are looking increase demand. Market research is the systematic analysis of data on potential customers, competitors and products.
One market research method they could use is secondary research into the past company records to find out whether the demand for their products changed when they introduced new