Good Foods Company
Good Foods Company specializes in wellness-related products and plans to introduce a range of plant-based products. To anticipate the attitudes and purchases of customers, it is important to conduct a survey and collect data about potential customers and their characteristics. The purchase intention should be estimated by focusing on the need to buy the identified products and potential impressions. The current level of market penetration can be evaluated via tracking and categorizing consumer actions on the Internet (Slade 2018). For example, likes of posts that discuss one or another aspect of plant-based meat show the extent of interest. The review of other companies that work in the given field is another method that can be applied to gather the necessary information. Most importantly, a survey of the customer is the key strategy to understand their preferences and expectations.
Among the areas that require research, it is possible to list customer characteristics, preferences regarding certain product types, shopping habits, media consumption, and their overall views on plant-based meat. Namely, to target several categories of customers, information on their age, gender, income, education, and family is needed. Depending on these characteristics, it would be possible to choose the most relevant marketing and distributing strategies. Customers’ purchase places play the main role in connecting with local groceries, supermarkets, or other providers. The general views on the products being offered determine the way the company would introduce them to the market and promote them. For example, if customers are well-aware of the benefits of such products, more attention can be paid to selling strategy. However, if the target audience is hesitant to buy such meat, there is a need to design an extensive promotional campaign to clarify why exactly people should purchase it (Van Loo, Hoefkens, and Verbeke, 2017). Ultimately, the media used by different categories of customers should be clarified to either use or reject as a channel of marketing.
Considering that Good Foods needs to define customers’ opinions and anticipate their behaviors, descriptive research should be applied. This type of research is a complex type of sociological analysis than intelligence research since it involves obtaining empirical information that gives a relatively holistic view of the object being studied (Hulland, Baumgartner, and Smith, 2018). Conducting descriptive studies requires the development of more complex and detailed research, using methodologically proven tools. They ensure its greater reliability in the process of revealing the most important elements of the object under study. This design is usually used when the object of study is a relatively large community of people who are characterized by various features. In the case of the chosen company, it is critical to create multiple choice questions and ask customers to respond.
The advantages of a descriptive research method include the opportunity to collect the unique insights of consumers. The quantitative nature of the chosen research design will allow grouping and analyzing data statistically, which increases the credibility of findings (McQuarrie, 2015). The significance of the results can also be measured towards the opinions and preferences of customers. In the given case, the participants will be asked in a natural and unchanging environment. A good example is an anthropologist studying a tribe without any influence on the behavior of its members. In comparison, experiments often adversely affect the normal behavior of the subjects, although they provide data that can be analyzed. Descriptive research is to be used as a precursor to the quantitative method as a general overview that provides some valuable markers. Quantitative experiments can be expensive and time-consuming, but they are useful to address the stated research objective.
Sample
Sampling is one of the most effective methods for introducing a new product to the market, as well as improving and boosting sales of products that are already being sold. For collecting the necessary information on the clients of Good Foods, it is proposed to use river sampling as a methodology for conducting online research. It implies the situation when respondents are not taken from a database (panel) but are attracted in real-time among the Internet users specifically for this survey (Callegaro, Manfreda, and Vehovar, 2015). By attracting respondents from the entire Internet, and not from a pre-selected database (panel), it is possible to achieve greater representation. The river sampling prescribes the interaction with an audience that has Internet access, and therefore the representativeness of the river equals the representativeness of the online audience. By placing offers to take the survey at various thematic sites, the researcher receives a sample in which respondents from different socio-demographic groups are equally represented.
Accordingly, the participants will be invited to pass the survey via the company’s social media accounts and the official website. Taking into account that the introduction of plant-based meat implies the exploration of both existing and potential customers, it is important to distinguish between these two categories. Before answering the survey questions, they will be asked to identify with one of the mentioned groups. Furthermore, the clarification of social and economic characteristics would be useful to understand the target audiences. For people with lower incomes and larger family sizes, it is possible to suggest the role of products at lower prices. At the same time, it can be hypothesized that those with higher income and education would be more aware of plant-based meat products in general. Along with the mentioned groups, the target populations would include families with several children.
By defining the characteristics of the respondents, it will be beneficial to develop further market introduction strategies. For the proposed survey, the sample size can be identified as 150 persons per each of the determined groups of customers. Such a sample size would ensure that all the tendencies are taken into account. The larger the sample size, the smaller the error regarding customer data. In this case, the error falls in the inverse quadratic dependence that implies increasing the sample by four times increases the accuracy by only two times. This means that at some point, increasing the sample size will not give any particular advantages, and also means that fairly high accuracy can be obtained with a fairly small sample.
The qualitative type of sampling will also be based on the snowball method, implying the fact that almost every representative of the target group can name one or more people who are in this group. Therefore, first, interviewers by special methods look for the first respondents, and those, in turn, suggest who else can be surveyed. As a result, the number of respondents is growing like a snowball. All potential respondents for specific research will undergo the so-called prescreening, answering the questions asked by the researchers to identify their eligibility. The eligibility criteria will include age, family size, income, and interest in plant-based meat products and wellness. All closed questions will be aimed at better defining some characteristics of the respondents. This may include an understanding of characteristics or behavior, for example, age group or how many hours respondents spend on the Internet every week. They can also be used to interview respondents about opinions or relationships, for example, how satisfied they are with the goods or how much they agree with some marketing campaigns.
Questionnaire
A questionnaire survey consists of a written appeal to respondents with a questionnaire containing an ordered set of questions questionnaire. It may be full-time or part-time (telephone, postal, online, and so on), including individual or group sessions (Montaguti, Neslin, and Valentini, 2016). A typical form involves the introduction (information on the content of the questionnaire and the purpose of the study), information part, classification part (socio-demographic information about the respondent), and final part.
A questionnaire survey consists of a written appeal to respondents with a questionnaire containing an ordered set of questions questionnaire. It may be full-time or part-time (telephone, postal, online, and so on), including individual or group sessions. A typical form involves the introduction (information on the content of the questionnaire and the purpose of the study), information part, classification part (socio-demographic information about the respondent), and final part.
Questionnaire for Good Foods
- How satisfied are you with our company?
Very satisfied
Seems to be satisfied
Not very satisfied
Completely dissatisfied - What words would you describe plant-based meat products? You can choose several options:
Excellent quality
Useful
Unique
The price matches the quality
The price is too high for this quality
Useless
Low quality - How do these products fit your needs?
Great
Enough
More or less
Not enough
Does not match - How would you rate the quality of the products?
Very high quality
High quality
Medium quality
Low quality
Very low quality - How much does the price match the quality?
100%. You can ask for more for this quality.
Compliant
It seems to correspond
Not quite consistent
Not at all consistent. The price is too high. - Have the company meets your expectations about the product?
Yes, of course!
Sometimes
Did not fit most expectations
Did not answer at all
Did not answer and did not convince - How long have you been our customer?
This is my first purchase
Less than six months
From six months to a year
1-2 years
3 years or more
I have not bought anything yet - How likely is it that you will return for a purchase?
Very high
High enough
Maybe I will be back
I am hardly going back
Not coming back - What is the source that directed you to this survey?
Facebook
Instagram
Official website - Do you have any suggestions, comments, questions?
Reference List
Callegaro, M, Manfreda, KL & Vehovar, V 2015, Web survey methodology, Sage, New York, NY.
Hulland, J., Baumgartner, H., & Smith, KM 2018, ‘Marketing survey research best practices: evidence and recommendations from a review of JAMS articles’, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 92-108.
McQuarrie, EF 2015, The market research toolbox: a concise guide for beginners. Sage, New York, NY.
Montaguti, E., Neslin, S. A., & Valentini, S. 2016, ‘Can marketing campaigns induce multichannel buying and more profitable customers? A field experiment’, Marketing Science, vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 201-217.
Slade, P 2018, ‘If you build it, will they eat it? Consumer preferences for plant-based and cultured meat burgers’, Appetite, vol. 125, pp. 428-437.
Van Loo, E. J., Hoefkens, C., & Verbeke, W 2017, ‘Healthy, sustainable and plant-based eating: perceived (mis) match and involvement-based consumer segments as targets for future policy’, Food Policy, vol. 69, pp. 46-57.