Executive Summary
Deli depot is a chain of fast food restaurants and experiencing some difficulties in penetrating the market. Losses have been recorded in the past financial year, all being attributed to poor marketing strategies, sub-standard services offered and poor pricing of the food amongst other factors.
There is need to strategise on how the business can be accepted within its area of operation and this can be improved by increasing the depot’s reputation within the specific competitive environment. The business should make more use of the media to improve on its publicity and also improve on the quality of its services.
Introduction
Market research refers to the process where there is systematic gathering of reports about consumers, competitors and the market after which they are analyzed to produce the expected results.
The research always help in doing various things such as launching new product or service, improving on the existing products and services and expansion of new markets. It is also used for identifying the potential places where a particular product can do well. This is usually generated on the basis of age, gender, location and most importantly the level of income (Hair et al, 2008).
Market research consequently helps companies when it comes to decision making on development issues and new products, it basically represents the consumer in relation to the company’s products. It is used by business owners in day to day basis. It is used basically to find sellers and in making crucial business decisions.
It is used to find out the need of the market and whether the items already in sale need some modifications to meet the market requirements and vice versa. The goal here is to come up with the best approach that can help in the process of acquiring, distributing and supporting supplies and services (Hair et al, 2008).
Market research plan
Defining the research problem
The Deli depot recorded a loss in the past financial year; the business has increasingly lost customers from far distances and also experienced low sales. The business wants to set out programs that will enable it cut down on expenses and at the same time increase the volume of the sales in all their centres of operation. The business needs some strategies on how to overcome the competition posed by other related business in the market.
Objectives
- To improve on the sales of the business hence increasing the profit margin
- To strategise on how to take over the market from other competitors
- To come up with a good team of employees with the right attitude towards the business.
Research Design
The descriptive research was used where the consumers were approached to answer some questions concerning the business and the market. Research questionnaires were used both structured and un-structured to obtain the primary data.
Collecting and analyzing data
The raw data was collected from the questionnaires distributed to 150 respondents, was verified, corded, tabulated and then recorded on the excel sheet for analysis.
Results
SECTION 1
SECTION 2
SECTION 3
Gender 0 – female 1- male
Statistical Analysis
Findings covering analysis of the Market research plan
The amount of money spent on marketing the business reduced in 2007. The new shopping centre recorded a loss despite high sales in 2007. The customers streamed in during the massive advertisements on the launching date then suddenly the number went down, this was due to poor marketing strategy, Deli Deport has used the same brand and methods for fairly a long time.
There is need for change in advertisements to match the current taste of the generation (Hair et al, 2008). According to the questionnaires the public revealed that there has been a drop in the quality of interaction between employees and the customers. The food prices are not that affordable to most consumers.
The employees have been competent enough in their service and have offered the customers satisfactory quality food. The depot has not offered the consumers with a wide variety of food, their menu is rather restrictive. The consumers always prefer to dine in restaurants that are hospitable, having friendly and competent employees.
They also like where they are offered wide variety of food and the service prompt. There is also the decline on the number of people that dine in hotels, the level of satisfaction has declined thereby customers rarely recommend the restaurant to others. The business spent less in marketing the company through advertisement in 2007, there was also a decline in the public relations. This can be attributed to low sales realised in the 2007 financial year (Hair et al, 2008).
The data on the SPSS shows that there were more female heavy users than male and higher percentage of male light users than female. The percentage on usage indicated that Deli deport attracted more heavy users than light users this might be attributed to the food prices. Deli deport need to strategise on how to get hold of the light users by offering variety of food and making good use of advertisement.
In the issue of area coverage the deport has attracted only those within its locality i.e. those living at close range, this is contrary to previous years when it received customers from further distances most of which were female (Hair et al, 2008) .
Majority of the customers spend averagely $10 to $20 most of them being female. This shows that Deli depot attracted mostly the middle class earners. Higher percentage of people that drive to the deport come from within 1 km range and most spend averagely $10 to $ 20.
The number of friendly employees within the depot is moderate tending to attract averagely, excel data X1. The number frequenting the deport due to prices is on the decline as shown by excel data X2. The high number of competent employees has also boosted the depot’s validity Excel data X3. Majority prefers wide variety of food and fast service X5 and X6.
Strategies and Recommendations
Deli depot lacks some theoretical and practical framework that can enable them to check and study the relationship existing between the structure of the behaviour of the employees and its ability to attract constituent support (Hair et al, 2008). The research has shown that most people rely on the reputation of business organizations when making decisions on who to purchase from and sometimes where to seek employment (Jones et al, 2000). By looking at this the depot can improve on its ability to attract and retain customers.
The Marketing officer can rely on corporate reputation in times of decision making in the areas such as purchases of products, recruiting employees and deciding on the business operations in different towns and shopping centres. Corporate reputation also influences the ability of a company to attract and retain consumers (Yoon et al, 1993; Fombrun and Shanley, 1990).
The depot generated a lot from its new outlet during the first days of launching because of the publicity it was accorded. This clearly indicated that business organizations can only manage their good name by investing a lot in individual images through advertisements in the media and information intermediaries (Balmer and Gary, 1999: Ruth and York, 2004).
This will help in availing the identity of the business to the public. The individual experiences should also be given a priority and the public relation department allocated more funds (Alessandri, 2001; Cornelissen, 2000).
The marketing research is always open to bias arising from statistical analysis and many other sources. The errors related to statistical analysis are realised from the failure to use appropriate statistical methods. This ranges fro the failure to adjust for confounding variables, or failure to appreciate the assumption of normality and equality of variance underlying the parametric significance tests.
To avoid the bias, the market researcher must first of all try to understand the research problem from the perspective of the consumers. This is so as to avoid the lack of sensitivity and the understanding that may arise from the consumers cultural behaviours. The other measure that the business can take is to hire researchers from different cultural back ground so that the different facets of the research problem can be well handled (Hair et al, 2008).
The business also needs to include rigorous study design and hence employ various techniques especially in the quantitative research. The observers need to be recognized as research instruments and the information obtained should be considered tentative till corroboration by information collected through other means possible (Hair et al, 2008).
The restaurant also needs to evaluate the research on the basis of economic condition. The researcher should evaluate the restaurants in terms of the region where they are situated. This will give the researcher a good sample to work with.
Other factors such as market potential index, population, inflation, unemployment rate social class should be considered when deriving the questionnaires. The cultural factors must also be considered for this will give the business the know how on particular dishes preferred in a particular area. This may include the people’s attitude, differences in lifestyle, religion, language, literacy, values, gender roles and role of family.
There is the need to improve on the brand name, that is to say include data on both local and foreign consumers consuming their dishes so as to give an impression that their food is of international quality. The marketing manager is therefore under obligation to ascertain the consumer segment and the food offered in order to produce a preferable strategy that would convey their brand name effectively to the targeted market.
A new brand positioning strategy should be designed to enable the marketing manager strengthen their brand’s equity in the market competition. Another strategy that they can adopt is the use of the local consumer culture positioning (Hair et al, 2008). This helps in associating the brand name with the local cultural meaning reflecting their norms and identities. This depends on the locality and can well be used in the shopping centres. This also calls for need to understand the consumer evaluations of the brands.
Market analysis need to be done on the target market first. This is especially in shopping centres before any new branch is launched. The information on the competitors, consumers and the kind of food stuff preferred should be obtained first. The techniques to be employed include; customer analysis, competitor analysis, risk analysis, product research, advertising research and e-mail survey.
The use of the internet in the modern technology can easily make the restaurant to be in touch with its customers i.e. the use of face book. It easily generates more business from the already identified customers since no mailing and printing costs are involved. It ensures instant delivery which save quite on time (Hair et al, 2008).
Conclusion
The current business organization behaviours based on reputation quotient may not as much indicate the attractiveness of a business to consumers when basically compared to the potential employees and consumers (Fombrum et al, 2000). The product or service branding has a lot of implications in the marketing of any business.
Findings have shown that the consumers always are willing to pay higher prices for products that are from the highly reputable business organizations (Devine, 2001; Landon and Smit, 1997). The economic and the social performance of the company should be improved for this to be realised (Fombrun and Van riel, 1997; Kiriakidou and Millward, 2000; Vergin and Qoronfleh, 1998).
The marketing research provided a very good link between the business and its future markets. The inclusion of the activities such as specifications, the gathering if data, analysis, and the interpretation of the information helps the management to understand better the market.
It also helps in identifying the market problems and the opportunities arising which aids in the formulation of the courses of marketing action. A successful marketing research must be able to recognize the specific diversities in terms of culture, demographics, economy and other factors.
References
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