BP Company is one of the world’s leading international oil companies selling oil and gas products as the major product. The company provides its clients with energy for heat and light, petrochemical products, retail services, and fuel for transportation. The company has employed more than 83,400 workers worldwide, oil reserves exceeding 17,700 million barrels of oil equivalent, is operational in over 30 countries, refines more than 2,352 thousand barrels daily, and had sales and operating revenues exceeding $375,517 million in the year 2011. BP Company is involved in oil exploration, oil mining, refining of oil, transportation of oil products, and byproducts, generating low carbon energy and social responsibility. The company operates as BP, Amoco, ARCO, Sohio, Castro, and Aral in different parts of the world.
In order to understand the market well, the researchers will employ various market research tools, namely interviews, sampling and statistics, observation, online and web data, face to face, phone calls, central location intercept, and depth interviews. The above tools are broadly categorized as qualitative research tools and quantitative research tools (Bradley 32). The primary research instrument to be employed by the researchers will be interviews and will be carried on consumers, distributors, manufacturers, and competitors. This will enable the researchers to substantially reach their decision without prejudice and favor. The researchers will ensure they reach a considerable number of their audience that truly represents the general market. As mentioned earlier, the researchers are not limited to the use of interviews as the only tool in their research but will also employ other tools and research instruments. Different research tools will cater for different audiences and needs, for instance, online surveys will be used to reach BP products’ consumers throughout the world while observation tool will be used in the local market to enable the researchers to get primary information regarding the response of the market to BP products (Karen & Ian 76).
The researchers will use different methods on different demographic and psychographic groups. For instance, the researchers will use online surveys, web forums, and email to collect data from the youths, whereas they will use interviews and observation to collect data from elderly people. Where the target audience is unavailable physically, the researchers will carry out phone interviews to ensure they collect all necessary information to make the right conclusion and recommendations. In all these methods, there will be questions regarding the competitors, what should be done for BP as a company to compete effectively and ways in which BP management has failed in marketing their product. A deep analysis will be done on BP’s production and sales volumes over the years to determine the trend and the reasons behind the trend. This will help in the better understanding of the BP history, market share and ways to increase the market share.
According to researchers, BP oil products are highly valued and widely used throughout the world. The wide range of products have enabled the company to capture a large market share and if their innovation continues at the same rate, we believe BP Company is headed to be the leading oil company in the world (Joseph 52). The company has an advantage of operating under different names and some of her subsidiaries are located in good geographical locations with large oil reserves, for instance, Aramco, which has the ability to pump 12 million barrels per day and have more than 259 billion barrels of oil reserves.
Works Cited
Adams and Brace. An Introduction to Market and Social Research: Planning and Using Research Tools and Techniques. London: Kogan Page, 2006. Print.
Bradley, Nigel. Marketing Research: Tools and Techniques. 2nd Ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Print.
Hair and Wolfinbarger. Essentials of Marketing Research. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2008. Print.