research used to contribute to the development of a selected organisations marketing plans
I will be looking at how Thorpe Park would use secondary research as well as primary
research and how they would carry out this type of research method. Usually when a
company is collecting data, they want it to be valid so that they can get the results that they
actually need to collect. Secondary research can be a valid if it is collected from the right
source and if it is up to date. For example: Thorpe Park would use secondary research to
find research out how many tickets were sold from other companies such as Lego Land or
Chessington so that they can see how many more or less tickets Thorpe park has sold than
them which is a good way to see whether you are doing worse or better than your
competitors. Although this may be a quick and easy method of market research, the data
may not be valid as it could show other data which would not be relevant or it may not
include data that Thorpe park need as well as the data could be incorrect if it is from a
random source on the internet.
Secondary research can be very useful and can help a company a lot when they do not want
to spend the money and spend time on their research. Secondary research is also a way of
obtaining data that cannot be obtained with primary research. It also shows what areas the
company needs to improve on and what it is doing well. For example, Thorpe Park may be
doing well with their rides but they may need to improve their restaurants. The information
that has been collected can also allow Thorpe Park to know what prices that they can charge
and whether their prices are too low or too high.
Recommendation 1:
My recommendations for Thorpe Park would be to not rely on secondary research as it is
not always a valid source of information. Primary research will always be a better way to get
valid results and when primary research is done correctly, the data that has been gathered
will usually be valid and will give the company the best results. If Thorpe park were to
completely rely on secondary research then I would suggest that they use a variety of
sources from the internet to back up their information as well as they can get all of the data
that they wanted to collect from the beginning. They could use sources such as books, the
internet (most common), or even government publications. Government publications can
provide Thorpe Park with information such as another company’s income from one year
compared to Thorpe parks, they can get documents about legal information as well as
policy’s. The strengths of using this would be that you can get a variety of information that
you need as well as you have information about competition at a cheap price.
Thorpe Park also use primary research to collect data first-hand. This type of market
research is more beneficial for the company as they are able to get answers for specific
questions that they want to be answered. The team doing the research can use questions in
the research that need to be answered to help make Thorpe Park’s research effective. One
form of primary research is qualitative research which is worded data. This form of primary
research is useful if Thorpe park want to gather information about what people thought of
their theme park but qualitative research would not be used to find out how many tickets
were sold in 2015, this would be found with primary quantitative research. Qualitative
research is useful because Thorpe park are able to find out what types of rides their