In pairs, make a list of the different techniques that companies can use for market research

This could be 'primary' data (information for a particular project) or 'secondary' data (collected for many purposes and often used as a starting-point). They will certainly know methods for 'primary' data such as the interview in the street/shopping centre method. They may also think of telephone surveys. Newspapers and magazines ask " subscribers to fill in questionnaires about their publications and they usually offer a free copy or similar gift to the people who accept. Handing out free samples and asking consumers to write back with their comments or giving them a follow-up" phone call, is also popular for certain products. Sources for" 'secondary' data can include statistics, company reports, articles in journals, official information, etc. 3.In pairs, make a list of the different techniques that companies can use for market research.

Market research

The importance of market research

Listen to Steve Moody, the manager of the Marks & Spencer store in Cambridge, giving a hypothetical example of a marketing failure — a product that reaches the shops but fails to sell.

1 What does Steve Moody say is the role of Marks & Spencer's head office?

2 What is the example of a product that fails to sell?

3 In these circumstances, whose fault would it be that the product failed? What had not been done properly, before the product was delivered to the stores?

4 Who would be the only people in the company that would be able to find out what is wrong?

5 What action could Marks & Spencer take?

6 How does Steve Moody describe the relationship between head office and the individual stores?

2. Tapescript

^INTERV!EWER You're responsible for operational management, the management of people, but not product development. Could you say something about the role of head office?

^{STEVE MOODY} Obviously, head office, the nature of what head office does in terms of selecting the products and then deciding on the quantities they buy. Obviously when they do that we have great success stones, that we develop a new product, say it's a new food recipe dishes that we introduce, it might be a new tie range, or foods from the Far East, and we introduce that and it sells very well and obviously that's fine, and usually head office don't require a lot of feedback on that.

However, they could buy a particular new type of fabric, say it's a lycra fabric which we've not used before and we develop a range of ladies' underwear, for example, with that, we buy large quantities of it, we display it, we think it's the right price, we think we've chosen the right colour, everybody in head office actually thinks it's going to sell really well. It then goes out to 50 stores and for some unknown reason the customers don't want to buy it. So in those cases obviously we have a commitment there of stock that we've bought, we need to do some investigation as to find out why it's not selling and therefore head office would then come and talk to us and not simply to me but my sales staff to say, well, you know, what have we got wrong here, is it the make-up of the fabric, is it the colour of the fabric, is it the texture, is it the price, and obviously try and take some remedial action, in terms of is it price, then maybe we would reduce the price. If it's colour we would go and see what we could do. So we have large input into head office on a daily basis in terms of feeding back communication and obviously sales figures and very much it's a partnership between ourselves and head office

Date: 2015-01-12; view: 1567