Introduction
Marketing research is a marketing discipline that connects the customers, the public, and the consumers to a particular marketer by means of information. Marketing information helps marketers in coming up with strategic marketing decisions that can enhance the marketing process and monitor its progress.
Due to the increasing change in current market and market diversity, there is a critical need to carry out package redesign for market products in order to catch up with the emerging market requirements, and revitalize the product’s brand. Brand equity is strategically a vital aspect when it comes to brand market analysis (McDonald, 2007).
Importance of marketing research
The marketing outcomes and effects result from a market product without a brand name when compared with the same products with brand names. Giving the orange juice products a new packaging is important because the company can decide to charge consumers the premium prices.
However, before going forward with the package redesign program, orange juice Company should evaluate the company’s brand equity and other crucial elements such as profit margins, consumer’s familiarity with the product logos, market share, visual elements, quality perceptions, brand language, and other important brand values (McDonald, 2007).
Packaging research is important for under-advertised brands or non-advertised brands. Product package in a retail shop greatly influence consumers when making decisions on the items to buy. Good package copy and design attracts consumers to buy a particular product (McDonald, 2007).
There is a need to address the orange juice consumer’s concerns when making a decision to change the product’s packaging. The company needs to change the existing brand package with respect to a prior research on consumer’s objectives (McDonald, 2007).
There is a need for great care in the process of final package design evaluation. This is to ensure that the introduced design package does not break consumer’s continuity with the existing product demand. A radical brand design may result into market share decline for the product brand.
If a product brand has a small market share, the resultant risks of the introduced brand design are relatively lower. Therefore, a radical change in the product design for existing brands must go along with thorough advertisement, as if the product is new in the market (McDonald, 2007).
Secondary research strategy
When carrying out packaging research strategy for the orange juice brand, the company can use external secondary data sources such as commercial research organizations and competitors. Commercial research organizations can help to gather previously researched information on the market trends for other similar brand packages.
For instance, information on a similar brand packaging such as Pepsi products can help draw conclusion on the consumer reaction when the company decides to change the brand package for its products (American Marketing Association, 2004). Secondary research in marketing research strategy involves the use of already existing data to carry out research analysis on the appropriate product brands.
The company can also use the competitor’s strategies especially for similar brands that sell highly in the market to come up with a competitive packaging brand in the market. Although it may appear cheaper and faster, secondary research strategy is not much reliable especially in cases where first-hand information is required. It can therefore, provide misleading information (American Marketing Association, 2004).
Primary research strategy
The company can use primary research strategies such as conducting interviews to collect data on the consumer reactions concerning the proposed brand package. It involves collecting original data to analyze the product’s branding requirements based on the consumer needs. The interviews can be orally or written. The consumers give detailed information on how they feel about the brand package.
This information can further assist the orange juice company to improve on the brand package based on the consumer needs. This type of research involves first-hand information and is therefore, much reliable compared to secondary research. A market survey can also assist the company to collect data on the market trends and consumer preferences on the company’s products.
The information gathered can later help the company make a decision on whether to repackage the brand based on the consumer preferences. Primary research is highly demanding and is therefore, expensive compared to secondary research (American Marketing Association, 2004).
Conclusion
Marketing research plays a major role in assessing and identifying the changing marketing mix elements for a product brand. It analyses how these elements generally affect the customer’s behavior based on a given product brand.
It is broadly categorized into two forms namely; consume- based marketing research and business-to-business marketing research. It therefore, provides managers with the necessary, reliable, relevant, valid, accurate and up to date information concerning a particular brand in the market.
References
American Marketing Association, (2004). The Definition of Marketing. Retrieved September from web.
McDonald, M. (2007). Marketing Plans, 6th ed., Oxford, England: Butterworth-Heinemann.