Market Research and understanding of Consumer Behaviour

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Introduction:

Market Research and understanding of Consumer Behaviour, This modern age is the age of competition and in this competitive world, everybody has to have up to date information regarding every aspect..So that for being successful, large and complex or even small organisation should have a good understanding about market strategy and its environment, whether company/organisation is making profit or loss,Understanding-of-consumer-behaviour are they providing good services or they needed to do some improvement? For that, it is essential to do research and have knowledge of the market called

Market Research. According to Armstrong and Kotler (2005) Market Research is a process to collect the data, expands it according to a specific position and then reporting the relevant data. On the other hand to identify the effectiveness of Market Mix (Price, Product, Promotion, Place, People, Promotion and Process) market research gives lots of ideas.

In addition, it is very important for the Board of Director/Managers in their decision making on the subject of launching a new product or changes in the same product regarding quality, price or services.

Moreover, market research and consumer behaviour is also related to each other. As stated by Lake (2005, p. 1), “The study of consumer behaviour tells why consumer act the way they do, why they buy, what they buy and why they buy from, who they buy from.” Hence to examine the consumer behaviour and to bring a new product to the market, Research is vital.Understanding-of-consumer-behaviour

The following paragraphs will explain why a commercial organisation do Market Research and what they do for this research when bringing a new product or services to the market and is it helpful for them if they have too much knowledge about the consumer behaviour or is it harmful for them.

Market Research:

Introduction:

Various organisations ensures significant amount of marketing research before incorporating any changes in their marketing strategies or lunching a new product in the market. It is not necessary that marketing research is only conducted at the time of the launch of the new products but rather it is an ongoing process.

Understanding-of-consumer-behaviour.In order to establish the bases of this project Kellogg case study was taken into consideration to evaluate how important market research can be for one of the most famous and world’s leading producer of cereals. In 1980’s Kellogg launched one of its product by the name of Crunchy Nuts Cornflakes.

In 2003 the company launched the extension of the product by the name of Crunchy Nut Cluster and was extremely popular. This case focuses on the launch of Crunchy Nut Bites another addition to the family of Crunchy Nut Corn flakes.

Kellogg adopted a market oriented approach to carry on the research for this product, focusing on the needs of the consumers and anticipating what changes consumers need in the product. This approach was of great significance as it aims to produce and manufactures a product that is relevant to the target market.

The types of research conducted were mainly primary and secondary research. Primary research consisted of the quantitative and qualitative research. Qualitative research mainly involved taking reviews from the customers in respect to their feeling, opinions and attitudes whereas quantitative was focused on statistical analysis.

The case defined the process of the marketing research in four stages namely, discovery, selecting the best idea, crafting the idea and the forecasting sales. The first stage involved the focus group to whom the product was presented to in the form of prototypes including the mini crispy lattice product and nutty triangle. The attitudes and the opinion of the focus group were captured.

This stage enabled the company to figure out ideas that were appropriate. The next stage involved choosing the best idea, further evaluation was done and quantitative data was selected in terms of comparing all the ideas captured in the first stage. In this stage the Crunchy Nut Bites received the most votes, whereas all the other ideas were also evaluated in context to the sales potential.

The third stage involved the further evaluation regarding the taste of the product and hence further four prototypes were developed and presented to the representative groups of the consumers. This enabled Kellogg to select the best one. The fourth stage was based on forecasting sales of the product and later comparing the actual sales to the expected sales.

As for Kellogg marketing research proved out to be one of the most importance stage for bringing the actual product into the market and this product was launched in the year 2008 and earn a total of 6.9 million GBP in the first year of launch.

Following are the theoretical implication of marketing research, ranging from decision making to the most basic of analyzing consumer behaviour.

Marketing research and decision making:

Marketing research is pivotal in order to make relevant marketing decisions for an organization. It provides an imperative for an organization to know what range of products it should maintain in its portfolio…