Who is Thorpe Park? And what is Market Research?
Thorpe Park is a theme park that is based in surrey that is owned by merlin entertainment.
Merlin Entertainment is an organization that owns a variety of theme parks around the UK.
Market Research is when a specific market is selected and its size and other departments
are measured for a specific purpose.
What are the limitations of market research?
Validity – Validity is the accuracy of your measurement. Are you measuring what you
actually want to measure?
Reliability – Reliability is the how much the results would change if the research were to be
repeated. Would the results change if it repeated the research with the same conditions and
participants?
Cost and Time effectiveness – This is the assessment of the financial impact and effort to
obtain and assess data. Is it the cheapest and fastest way of getting the best results?
A limitation of market research is Validity. Thorpe Park want to know that they have the
right results that they have collected but if they have secondary research then they cannot
make sure that their data is valid. When Thorpe park use secondary data, they have to make
sure that their research is actually valid and that they don’t have the wrong data. If Thorpe
Park’s data was not valid then this could have a huge impact on their market planning.
Thorpe Park’s market planning would be affected by the validity of their research. If Thorpe
Park use research that isn’t valid then their market planning will not be reliable, which
means that they could spend a lot of money on a product that their customers do not like
and will not use. Therefore, Thorpe Park would lose out on money that they have spent due
to their research being invalid. If the data is not collected properly by using primary research
then the results will not be valid. Primary research can be the most valid form of research
but it can also be invalid. For example, if Thorpe Park were to do a questionnaire that is
primary research but if the questions that are asked within the questionnaire are not what
need to be asked, then their research will then become invalid.
An example of how Validity could be a limitation for market research and how it would
affect market planning would be that if they were to use secondary research to collect
results about theme parks such as ‘how many people bought products within Thorpe Park in
2014’ but they wanted to find out ‘how many people bought a ticket at Thorpe Park in 2014’
then they would not have the correct information. Which means that the market planning
that they wanted to do would not be correct. Therefore, Thorpe Park would have wasted
time and money getting their research and by doing their market planning wrong due to the
research not being valid. This could be the same for primary research. For example, if
Thorpe Park had a questionnaire that was asking questions about LEGOLAND but they
needed answers about their company, then this would not be valid and would not help