What Is Market Research? Why Is It So Important to Your Marketing Mix? Market research is the objective process for generating information to help you make strategic business and marketing decisions.
Marketing is an essential part of business. However to ensure your marketing plan is successful, it is essential for a business to take a customer view across the marketing mix. Whether it is products, or pricing, distribution or communications, consumers can provide important information to feed into the strategic decision making process.
The most common way to gather this information is through consumer surveys or focus groups. Through market research consumers can tell you which products they find appealing and why. They can provide an indication …show more content…
My question is, "can you afford not to?" Even businesses that have been trading profitably for a while can benefit from market research to ensure they are continually meeting their customers ' needs in terms of the products and services they provide. Here 's a real life story of what happened when one of the most well-known companies in the world - McDonalds, launched a product without taking the time to understand their target market.
McDonalds decided they wanted to expand their product offering in order to attract an "older more sophisticated" crowd. They hired a top-notch chef to design a range of gourmet sandwiches called the "Deluxe Line", and hired a marketing agency to promote it.
The marketing agency (who were clearly very good at writing taglines that appeal to children) went to work and came up with the tagline "Especially for Grown up Tastes". They also designed a great web promo where you could click on Ronald McDonald and he will teach you step by step, the "Deluxe Line Dance" All up McDonald paid around $300 million to launch this new …show more content…
I don 't know exactly, but needless to say, McDonalds was out-of-pocket, $300 million dollars out-of-pocket. By doing a few qualitative groups among their target market "older sophisticates" (however McDonalds defines them), they could have found out such things as:
• Would anything at all ever entice "older sophisticates" into McDonalds?
• Would the promise of a deluxe sandwich make them want to try McDonalds?
• What sorts of perceptions do people have about a product described as "Especially for Grown up
Marketing is an essential part of business. However to ensure your marketing plan is successful, it is essential for a business to take a customer view across the marketing mix. Whether it is products, or pricing, distribution or communications, consumers can provide important information to feed into the strategic decision making process.
The most common way to gather this information is through consumer surveys or focus groups. Through market research consumers can tell you which products they find appealing and why. They can provide an indication …show more content…
My question is, "can you afford not to?" Even businesses that have been trading profitably for a while can benefit from market research to ensure they are continually meeting their customers ' needs in terms of the products and services they provide. Here 's a real life story of what happened when one of the most well-known companies in the world - McDonalds, launched a product without taking the time to understand their target market.
McDonalds decided they wanted to expand their product offering in order to attract an "older more sophisticated" crowd. They hired a top-notch chef to design a range of gourmet sandwiches called the "Deluxe Line", and hired a marketing agency to promote it.
The marketing agency (who were clearly very good at writing taglines that appeal to children) went to work and came up with the tagline "Especially for Grown up Tastes". They also designed a great web promo where you could click on Ronald McDonald and he will teach you step by step, the "Deluxe Line Dance" All up McDonald paid around $300 million to launch this new …show more content…
I don 't know exactly, but needless to say, McDonalds was out-of-pocket, $300 million dollars out-of-pocket. By doing a few qualitative groups among their target market "older sophisticates" (however McDonalds defines them), they could have found out such things as:
• Would anything at all ever entice "older sophisticates" into McDonalds?
• Would the promise of a deluxe sandwich make them want to try McDonalds?
• What sorts of perceptions do people have about a product described as "Especially for Grown up