To: Festus
From: Harry
Subject: Describe how your selected organisation or any other organisation uses marketing
research to contribute to the development of its marketing plans. Please remember to
discuss types and marketing research methods you have been taught during your lectures.
Date: 02/12/2015
Microsoft use market research for many different reasons and to find a lot of information
about their customers. There are two different types of market research, primary and
secondary research, these can be either qualitative or quantitative methods of research.
Primary research is marketing research carried out by the organisation themselves, this is
usually done after secondary research as it is more expensive and time consuming. Internal
primary research carried out by Microsoft can be looking at their own sales figures from
previous years, or looking at their customers data saved to a central database. External
primary research can consist of questionnaires or surveys and interviews. They can use this
information to help know when to sell certain products and at what price. Internal primary
research can help an organisation to develop market plans because they can base their
objectives around the sales they made in previous years, for example Microsoft can aim to
increase their sales of a certain product by 5% from the year before. External primary
research on the other hand can help an organisation to improve and develop, by asking the
people who buy and use their products Microsoft can adapt to satisfy the customers.
Secondary research is research that has already been gathered by the organisation
(internal) or another company (external). Internal secondary research can be sales reports or
market research that has been carried out in previous years. External secondary research
that Microsoft use would be trade journals, industry reports and census data. This type of
research allows the business to build an understanding of the markets they operate in,
before using more focused and expensive research from primary sources. By looking at
trade journals and industry reports Microsoft are able to predict whether new or existing
products and services will work well in their industry. Census data on the other hand can
give details on the customers who will be purchasing their products and services. This is
useful because they can find out information about their target market, for example their
income, who they live with and ages. Microsoft can base things like pricing and distribution
on this to allow the right customers to get the right products and services.
Qualitative research will give a wide range of answers due to subjective questions, methods
used to gather this information include interviews and focus groups. The answers they’ll get
will be based on personal experiences and feelings as qualitative questions will ask
someone why they like or don’t like a certain thing. This can be the organisation themself,
their products/services or changes to prices. The information gathered from this will help
Microsoft to know their customers opinions on their brand and pricing decisions. They can
use this to decide on pricing and promotion of their products. Other information they can get
from qualitative research is customer's preferences and interests. This helps them to keep
their products or services relevant to the target market and competitive to other businesses.
From: Harry
Subject: Describe how your selected organisation or any other organisation uses marketing
research to contribute to the development of its marketing plans. Please remember to
discuss types and marketing research methods you have been taught during your lectures.
Date: 02/12/2015
Microsoft use market research for many different reasons and to find a lot of information
about their customers. There are two different types of market research, primary and
secondary research, these can be either qualitative or quantitative methods of research.
Primary research is marketing research carried out by the organisation themselves, this is
usually done after secondary research as it is more expensive and time consuming. Internal
primary research carried out by Microsoft can be looking at their own sales figures from
previous years, or looking at their customers data saved to a central database. External
primary research can consist of questionnaires or surveys and interviews. They can use this
information to help know when to sell certain products and at what price. Internal primary
research can help an organisation to develop market plans because they can base their
objectives around the sales they made in previous years, for example Microsoft can aim to
increase their sales of a certain product by 5% from the year before. External primary
research on the other hand can help an organisation to improve and develop, by asking the
people who buy and use their products Microsoft can adapt to satisfy the customers.
Secondary research is research that has already been gathered by the organisation
(internal) or another company (external). Internal secondary research can be sales reports or
market research that has been carried out in previous years. External secondary research
that Microsoft use would be trade journals, industry reports and census data. This type of
research allows the business to build an understanding of the markets they operate in,
before using more focused and expensive research from primary sources. By looking at
trade journals and industry reports Microsoft are able to predict whether new or existing
products and services will work well in their industry. Census data on the other hand can
give details on the customers who will be purchasing their products and services. This is
useful because they can find out information about their target market, for example their
income, who they live with and ages. Microsoft can base things like pricing and distribution
on this to allow the right customers to get the right products and services.
Qualitative research will give a wide range of answers due to subjective questions, methods
used to gather this information include interviews and focus groups. The answers they’ll get
will be based on personal experiences and feelings as qualitative questions will ask
someone why they like or don’t like a certain thing. This can be the organisation themself,
their products/services or changes to prices. The information gathered from this will help
Microsoft to know their customers opinions on their brand and pricing decisions. They can
use this to decide on pricing and promotion of their products. Other information they can get
from qualitative research is customer's preferences and interests. This helps them to keep
their products or services relevant to the target market and competitive to other businesses.
