AQA A Level Business 3.3 - Decision Making to Improve Marketing Performance

3.3 – Decision Making to Improve Marketing Performance


Marketing Objectives

Examples of key marketing objectives:
 Maintain or increase market share
 NPD
 Improve customer service
 Enter a new market
 Build a competitive advantage


Benefits: Drawbacks:

 Useful measure of success  Easy to be too ambitious with
marketing objectives
 Prioritises use of resources  Markets constantly evolve and data
quickly become outdated
 Ensures functional activities are
consistent with corporate objectives


Marketing objectives are influenced externally be MEDICC, and internally by:
 Business culture
 Corporate objectives
 Functional areas




1

,3.3 – Decision Making to Improve Marketing Performance


Primary and Secondary Research

Primary / field research – First hand data collection for the needs of the business.


Benefits: Drawbacks:

 Tailored to the business’s needs  Expensive
 Trustworthy  Time consuming
 Kept private – away from  Risk of bias
competitors


Methods of primary research:
 Focus groups
 Interviews
 Surveys
 Mystery Shoppers – Someone is employed incognito to assess the quality of goods or
services.
 Product Testing – Small-scale launch of a new product to gather data on it in a test
market.




Secondary / desk research – Collecting data that already exists that was collected for a
different purpose.


Benefits: Drawbacks:

 Quick and easy to collect  Can quickly become outdated
 Cheaper  Not tailored to the business’s needs
 Specialist reports can be expensive


Methods of secondary research:
 Government produced data
 Internet
 Industry magazines




2

, 3.3 – Decision Making to Improve Marketing Performance


Quantitative and Qualitative Data

Market research is split into:
1. Collecting information
2. Analysing information
3. Making decisions based in this information


Quantitative data – Data that can be expressed numerically


Benefits: Drawbacks:

 Easily spot trends  Lack of detail
 Quick and easy to analyse  May lack reliability if sample size is
small
 Easy to compare with competitors /  Doesn’t explain trends
company history




Qualitative data – Opinions and views that cannot be expressed numerically


Benefits: Drawbacks:

 More detail  Harder to measure
 Explains trends  Biased questions may lead to biased
results
 Focused on customer needs and  Time consuming to collect and
wants analyse




3