Market Research and Consumer Buying Behavior in Grand Days Out - Case Study Example

Decision Making Introduction Decision-making is a very complex process and this process affects every other aspect of the organization. Therefore, this must be done with utmost care and after considering everything that needs to be considered. Two details that contribute to the decision making process are the information collected in market research and how marketing professionals understand consumer behaviour. This report highlights the importance of market research and consumer buying behavior in the light of Grand Days Out plc, an organization that owns and operates theme parks and other leisure activities. It starts of by identifying three Critical Success Factors for the company. It discusses the key decisions and information needs. Next, it highlights the importance of the marketing department and other employees of the organization. As the report continues, it provides a market research plan for Grand Days Out plc which can be used to attract older population. At the end, it discusses the importance of understanding consumer buying behaviour and the consumer decision-making process. Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for Grand Days Out There are many matters that a business needs to concentrate on. However, some of the matters need more attention than others. Critical Success Factors are those important areas of activity that need to be performed well with full attention in order for a business to achieve its goals. (MindTools) The goal of our company, as you all know, is to increase our market share and compete with the strong competition out there. However, we are not at a stage where we can put a lot at risk. There are many Critical Success Factors that you all might think are critical for the company, however, according to me, the three critical success factors are firstly, attracting the grey euro, increasing company morale and retaining current customer. The following diagrams summarize the three Critical Success Factors, the key decisions and their information needs briefly. Critical Success Factor No 1 Critical Success Factor No 2 Critical Success Factor No 3 The first Critical Success Factor is attracting the future grey population of Europe. Since our target customers have always been the younger market, in order to attract the older population, our marketing department will have to change the way our potential customers see our services. Therefore, our key decision is to change our marketing mix so that newer markets (grey euro) can be attracted. In order to change our marketing mix, we will have to carry out a market research and study our target market thoroughly so that we can design our advertisement campaign and our services accordingly. Our information requirements are therefore sources of information on these people, their requirements and how we fulfill them. We can use primary and secondary research to collect this data. Secondary research can be used to find out older population's statistic. Primary research can be used to find out their requirement. This could include carrying out focus groups, one-to-one interviews and surveys with randomly selected respondents between the ages of 50-60. This research will help us figure out the niche in the market and what our target customers want from our services. Our second Critical Success Factor is increasing the morale of the company employees. This is absolutely necessary in order to increase productivity and hence, efficiency. For this, our key decisions will be to invest in training and development of skills of our present employees and also provide the staff with benefits. However, it is not as simple as this. We need to carry out research to find out what areas our staff needs training programs for and what motivates them. Some employees can be motivated by monetary while the others can be motivated by non monetary benefits. By carrying out this research, we can find out exactly what will increase our staff's morale. Interviews, observation and surveys can be used to identify the key areas of employee development and also the type of benefits that can be offered to the employees. Retaining current customers is our third Critical Success Factor. This factor is critical because we must understand that winning new customers is much more expensive than retaining old ones. Therefore, we must do all that we can to improve relationships with our customers and hence keep our customer base strong. Relationship marketing is a strategy which builds an emotional bond with our customers which in turn increases brand loyalty. Research needs to be carried out to find out what incentives are needed to make our relationship with our customers long lasting. Once this is done, we must introduce a strategy which will provide the customers those incentives and will make them believe that we value them the most and that we are honored to be providing services to them. The Role of Marketing Department and Other Employees The marketing department is very necessary for an organization. Today's competition is so strong that only a market oriented company can survive. Therefore, the marketing department of a company allows it to survive. It is like the link between customers and the organization. It knows and understands what the customer wants and also the gaps in the market. This is the reason why it directs the rest of the departments in developing, producing, fulfilling, and servicing products or services for their customers. The marketing department's research has no meaning until it is applied to the goods and services supplied by an organization therfore it cannot act independently. Because of this, it has to make sure that it interacts with various departments throughout the organization and gets input from them. This input benefits the organizations in two ways. It helps the rest of the company understand and support the marketing efforts and secondly, it also provides some invaluable insights into what customers want and new ideas that may have slipped past the rest of the company. For example, the service technichians from the technical departments and the customer services representatives have a great amount of insight about what the how the customer feels and what he wants. The involvement of other departments is equally necessary because, the marketing department will only tell the other departments what the customers want. The rest all depends on the other departments which includes production of goods and services, etc. Market Research Tools and Techniques In order for our company to reach it goals, it must first find out what our target market is looking for and also the niche in the market. In this case, our target market is the older population of Europe and the market niche is entertainment for them. It will gather information regarding both the customer and the market gaps by conducting market research. Market Research involves gathering and analysing data from the marketplace (i.e. from consumers and potential consumers) in order to provide goods and services that meet their needs. There are various tools that we can use in our market research. But before we decide on one, we need to understand the importance of the one which is the most cost efficient and will also give the most accurate results regarding the market. Before we get into the market ourselves, we will go over the literature that is already available. This is called secondary research. We can find out about our target customer's attitudes, lifestyles and preferences, by using data directly published by other people in the past. This method of researching saves cost and time. It helps build a base for our future research and we can use the data obtained from these as a starting point. However, the statistics may be outdated and the results from this may not be completely relevant to our research. Another drawback of secondary research is that the method of collection could have been biased as well; therefore, the results may not be fully reliable. After this, we will go for primary research. As the name suggests, this research is first hand research that our organization will carry out by using tools like interviews, observation, surveys, focus groups, field trials, etc. All these tools have their own advantages and disadvantages. An organization will only select a tool after fully identifying and analyzing their pros and cons. For our market research, we could start of by carrying out focus groups. The people who will be part of the focus groups will be randomly selected average 50+ European adults. This method will help us get in-depth accurate information about our target market if carried out properly. This method may be time consuming and costly but the information obtained from focus groups will help us decide on a questionnaire design for surveys which will be carried out with a larger sample. Questions in the survey could be opinionated and open ended. I suggest that surveys could include questions like what the 50+ age group would actually want in a visit to the park, why they would or wouldn't visit the park, what they really like about the park, and if any new things should be introduced to attract people like themselves. This will help us understand our target market's opinions and attitudes better. Although the results obtained from these surveys will be very accurate and relevant, carrying out surveys on such a large scale might be expensive and time consuming. Analyzing the responses of the respondents, especially the qualitative data, may also get very complicated. Consumer Buying Behaviour In order to completely understand our target audience, we need to understand their buying behaviour that largely determines how we will be providing the service. Consumer buying behaviour is defined as the "process by which individuals search for, select, purchase, use, and dispose of goods and services, in satisfaction of their needs and wants." (Business Directory) Consumer buying behaviour can be classified into four groups: complex, dissonance-reducing, variety-seeking and habitual buying behaviour. All these four groups identify four types of customers. A variety seeking consumer buying behaviour for example will be the one in which variety of goods and services are needed to choose from while habitual buying behaviour is the one in which the customer is loyal to a particular brand and will go for that no matter what. This buying behaviour of the consumers determines how they perceive our park and the extent to which they will be involved with our company. Once an organization has understood its customer's buying behaviour, it has understood what it needs to know about its customers. It can then provide them service accordingly. For example, if our average 50+ European has a variety seeking buying behaviour, we will ensure that when he comes to our park, we have a variety of activities that he can choose from. This variety will satisfy him and this is how the consumer buying behaviour model can be used by an organization. However, a customer's buying behaviour largely depends on his decision-making process. The consumer's decision-making process includes all the stages that a consumer goes through before he actually spends his money on something. It is summarized in the table below. The Decision-Making Process Generally, the decision-making process has five stages. It starts with the customer realizing that need for something. This is what our target customer's want from our park. In this stage, our target customer, who is an average 50+ European, will realize that he is not getting much leisure time. He will realize that if he gets more entertainment, he will be in a better state of affairs. Once our average 50+ European has recognized the problem, he will attempt to solve it. Therefore, the second step in our consumer decision making process is the information search. In this stage our target customer will look for all the information possible. This information could be coming to him from commercial, public, personal and experiential sources. The source may be internal or external. Internal sources include his previous experience with a park or his previous perception while external sources include advertisements. At this stage, our customer will go over all the advertisements that were targeted towards him. These advertisements have a great deal of influence on where he will start his information search and this is where our marketing department comes in. We need to make sure that our advertisements have such an impact on our customer that we come in their minds in the second stage of consumer decision-making process. Once our customer has done his search, he will start evaluating all the choices he has. He will try all the alternatives and after trial and error, he will choose the most preferred service. This is the third stage of the customer decision-making process. This stage is very critical for us because the consumer's evaluation of his experience with our park will depend on the service that is provided to him. It depends on the incentives that are provided to him. Therefore, this is where the rest of the departments come in. All the departments will come together under this stage and make sure that our 50+ European is completely satisfied with the service provided by us. In the fourth stage, our 50+ European will make a decision about what park he would want to go for. He will base this decision on impact of advertisements, his information search and his evaluation of different amusement parks. The fifth and the final step of the consumer decision-making process involve the customer evaluating his decision. This is the post-purchase behavior stage. If the evaluation of the customer shows that he is satisfied, he will come back to our park and become loyal. And if he is unsatisfied with his experience with out company, he will carry out the entire decision making process once again and choose a different amusement park the next time. Conclusion In conclusion, I would once again like to emphasize on the importance of concentrating on an organization's Critical Success Factors. Once Grand Days Out plc manages to successfully accomplish these success factors, it is not too far from achieving its goals. However, in order to achieve its goals, it must carry out market research. This is where the marketing department comes in. The marketing department will carry out market research and will attempt to understand its target customer's needs and wants. It will use various tools and techniques to carry out the research. It will then use the results obtained to direct the rest of the departments on how to provide the goods and services to their customers. Another very important dimension of completely understanding your customers is getting to know their buying behaviour and decision making process. This will help the Grand Days Out plc understand the consumer's psyche. A consumer's buying behaviour and decision making process will also help a company know how and why the consumers will buy their products and once the company knows this, it can strategize accordingly. References 1. Blythe, Jim. Essentials of Marketing. Prentice Hall. 2004 2. Galloway, Les. Frank Rowbotham and Masoud Azhashemi. Operations Management in Context. Butterworth-Heinemann. 2004 3. MindTools, Critical Success Factors. 2008. 5 July, 2008. 4. Business Directory. Consumer Buying Behavior. 2008. 5 July. 2008. Read More