The importance of identifying and • Provide a product or service that customers will buy
satisfying customer needs • Increase sales
• Select the correct marketing mix
• Avoid costly mistakes
• Be competitive
Types of segmentation How and why di erent businesses use segmentation to target customers,
including:
• Gender
• Age
• Income
• Location
Purpose of market research • Identify market opportunities
• Understand customers and competitors
• Collect information about demand, competition and the target market
• Reduce the risk of poor business decisions
Using market research • Qualitative and quantitative ndings can help businesses make decisions
about products, prices, promotion and target markets
• Businesses can use tables and charts to identify trends and patterns in
market data
Difference between qualitative and • Qualitative market research is collecting information about potential customers’
quantitative market research opinions and preferences about the characteristics of a product; open
questions allow respondents to express their own views by not limiting their
responses.
- Data collected is likely to give a greater depth of information but hard to
analyse
• Quantitative market research is using sampling techniques such as surveys
where the ndings are expressed numerically; closed questions allow a limited
choice of responses and are easy to turn into statistics for analysis.
Difference between primary and • Primary research is collecting information rst-hand for a speci c purpose by a
secondary research business
- Provides data that is up to date, relevant and speci c to the needs of the
business
- Can be more expensive and time-consuming compared to secondary research
• Secondary research is using already existing information from published
sources that has been collected for other purposes
Market size vs market share • Market size is the total number or value of sales from all rms in a market for a
product or service
• Market share is the proportion of total sales within a market that is controlled
by a business
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, Business — Marketing (paper 2)
Methods of market research to include • Questionnaires (primary)
primary and secondary: - Cheap
- Can collect a lot of information if the sample size is large enough
- It’s likely that not many people respond
• Surveys (primary)
- Cheap
- Can collect a lot of information if the sample is large enough
- It’s likely that not many people respond
• Interviews (primary)
- Can be biased if researcher asks leading questions
- Allow detailed answers and follow-up questions
- Can provide qualitative information
- Time-consuming and potentially expensive
- Results may be affected by interviewer bias
• Focus groups (primary)
- Small group of people discuss their opinions of a product
- Faster than interviewing several people individually
- Quieter individuals do not get their opinion heard
• Internet research (secondary)
- May not be relevant to the business
- Cheaper than primary research
- Easily found and instantly available
- Information may be outdated
• Printed press eg newspapers (secondary)
- May not be relevant to the business
- Cheaper than primary research
- Easily found and instantly available
- Information may be outdated