UP Week 2 Importance of Market Research Development of A Marketing Strategy Discussion

Respond to peer in 175 words or more

Response 1:

Marketing research is a very necessary step in creating a marketing strategy. You wouldn’t go out and spend thousands of dollars on a vehicle without doing some research about the vehicle (safety ratings, gas mileage, reliability, etc.). Or at least most of us wouldn’t. It is the same thing for a company. Research is an important step before creating a marketing strategy. It just would not be responsible to create, promote, and attempt to sell a product/service without the research to back it up. That is a recipe for failure. Marketing research provides a company with feedback that can be used to create a successful marketing strategy. The feedback will give you insight on who your prospective customers are, what they want/need, how to keep them coming back for more. The information is then used to define target market, choose the best images to promote product with, the appropriate price range for the product, and more. For example, two people are wanting to open a bodybuilding gym in the Fort Lauderdale area. They choose to skip the marketing research and just go for it. If they would have done their research prior, they would have found that Fort Lauderdale has the highest percentage of people in the country that are 65 and older. With the large percentage of retirees in the area, it would have probably been best to open the bodybuilding gym in an area of Florida that has a larger audience that would be interested in bodybuilding. The chances of their gym staying afloat is slim. This is one example of why research is key.

Donohoe, A. (2019, August 08). Advantages and Disadvantages of Customer Feedback Surveys. Retrieved September 26, 2020, from https://bizfluent.com/facts-5611783-advantages-disadvantages-customer-feedback-surveys.html

Response 2:

Marketing research is crucial to the development of a marketing strategy because without data to form actionable information, a company is only guessing how to position its product or service within the market. Marketing research is a tool of risk mitigation as well as it improves marketing decisions about a product or service a company is offering.

For example, a well-known fast-food restaurant wants to market a new healthy menu to appeal to the health-conscious consumer on the go. They must begin by defining the marketing problem and setting the research objective as well as suggesting some possible marketing actions. In this case the restaurant wants to know how the target market will react to its new menu. The company will then determine how it will collect the data, identify the constraints to the research and what data is needed to support the marketing plan. The company then will conduct research using both primary and secondary data through surveys and taste tests as well as industry third party research and other resources. The company will then analyze the findings and present the data to senior management so that actions can be taken. In this case the research determined that it will be better to focus more on lunch time an in between snacks as this is an unfulfilled area in the market that can be capitalized on. This five-step marketing research approach helped the company in determine the best marketing plan to ensure success. Had the company not put in the research, the product would be more at risk to succumb to competition and have no positioning within the market.

Kerin, R. A., & Hartley, S. W. (2019). Marketing (14th ed.). The University of Phoenix eBook Collection database.