Unit 3 P3&P4:
Business market research is the process of collecting data to determine whether a particular product/service will satisfy the needs of your customers. With effective market research in your company you can gain valuable information about your competitors, economic shifts, demographics, the current markets trends and the spending trait of your customers. Sainsbury’s use market research to keep a close eye on their competition. Sainsbury’s also use market research to guarantee success with marketing campaigns and in-turn sales.
Primary research is gathering new data that has not been collected before. For example, interviews with groups of people in a focus group or surveys using questionnaires.
Secondary research is gathering existing data that has been produced already. For example, researching the internet, company reports and newspapers.
Both of these research methods can be done internally and externally.
Internal primary research could be sales figures from the business’s own products and it could also be customer data held on a central database.
External primary research could be questionnaires and surveys, mystery shoppers and focus groups.
Internal secondary research can consist of reports from sales and regional representatives and also previous marketing research.
External secondary research can consist of trade journals and websites, books and newspapers, census data and public records.
Qualitative and quantitative is one form of research, and in some cases it can involve both qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative research is subjective and often open ended. For example if asda did an interview with customer question that would be brought up is why you bought this particular product, leaving you to give an open answer. This type of research is used to find out how customers perceive an organisation. The negative about