Research and Markets: Domino's Pizza - Case Study Example

Introduction Effective environmental analysis involves evaluating the external marketing environment of a company. External environment, in this case must include the operating, industry and the remote environment. This process is significant because it affects the customer relations as well as the acquisition of human, financial and natural resources, raw materials and information. The significance of good market research besides environmental scanning in the success of other marketing related activities in business is explored. More specifically, Domino’s Pizza is used as an example to illustrate the types of market research and environmental scanning it should apply and why this is important in its business success. Significance of Good Marketing Research and Environmental Scanning As a Basis of Success for Related Marketing Activities Market research and environmental scanning is important for businesses because it involves evaluating the environmental forces, which create opportunities and threats for businesses. The markets are affected by the environmental forces, which can be best assessed through careful environmental scanning and analysis. Marketing research is an essential foundation for any marketing relating activities because it helps the business or the organization to understand the needs and the desires of its target customers, which is crucial for success of marketing activities (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007, p. 103). Market research and environmental scanning are beneficial to business organizations when successfully carried out because they help in realizing good financial rewards, increase the market share of the company besides augmenting the customer awareness on the goods and services the company offers across the market segment. Market research and environmental scanning must incorporate information on the analysis and evaluation of socio-cultural, economic, technological and political as well as the legal forces that affect the marketing environment, ultimately affecting the other marketing activities (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007, p. 103). Marketing research helps businesses to understand effectively and manage customer relations to ensure that the customers are satisfied with the services and products that they receive from the organization (Pride, Hughes, & Kapoor, 2012, p. 305). The marketing relations with customers are part of business foundations. Marketers strive to maintain positive relations with their customers. Through marketing research and environmental scanning, businesses can make marketing decisions and activities effectively while focusing on realizing long-term and satisfying relations with the customers. Marketing research helps business organizations respond to the ever-changing needs of their customers and increase the value of their buyers. This leads to strengthening of the customers’ loyalty and relationship with the business (Pride, Hughes, & Kapoor, 2012, p. 305). Domino’s Pizza value its online customers and the online delivery of the pizzas have improved over the years to suit the demands (ARBOR, 2012). Environmental scanning helps businesses to identify changes in marketing environment because it acts as source of both business threats as well as opportunities (The Global Marketing Environment, n.d, p. 66). Businesses use this process to continually acquire information on the activities that take place outside the organizations. This information is consequently used to identify and construe the potential trends within the market segment (Scanning the Marketing Environment, n.d, p. 66). Ignoring the marketing trends within the business environment may give potential rivals and competitors the opportunity to transform the industry (Ofek & Wathieu, 2010, p. 126). Marketers should monitor the actions of main industry competitors to determine the particular strategies the competitors use and their effect on Domino’s Pizza (The Global Marketing Environment: Session 3, 2012, p. 9). Businesses operate in marketing environments in which the essential marketing forces are dynamic. The information obtained from environmental scanning help businesses identify the trends associated with each of the marketing forces affecting its operations. Subsequently, these businesses would be in a position of developing and maintaining successful marketing programs that benefit the organization (Scanning the Marketing Environment, n.d, p. 86). Most organizations and businesses use strategic environmental scanning to assess the external environmental forces in business operations. This practice is recommended in business operations because in assists such businesses and organizations to seize the available opportunities and avoid the trending threats within the market (Brownlie, 1994, p. 703). This practice when appropriately accomplished helps organizations to realize improved profit margins. Moreover, organizations should strategically and continually engage in environmental scanning, avoiding the threats and seizing the opportunities within the business environment (Babatunde & Adebisi, 2012, p. 24). The current business environment involves competition, which affects business operations of environments. Market research and environmental scanning help businesses to cope with the complexity of the operating environment. The marketing activities as well as the strategies of any business or organization must seek to operate within the structure of forces that make up the environment because the internal managers in organizations cannot easily control the external forces (Babatunde & Adebisi, 2012, p. 25). Market research ensures a proper planning for a successful business environment as this puts the organization at a favorable position in the marketplace. Businesses without a proper knowledge of their business environments are definitely bound to encounter certain crises, which would arise from the ever-increasing complexity in business environments the organizations operate in (Babatunde & Adebisi, 2012, p. 25). Most important, marketing research and environmental analysis help organizations to respond quickly and effectively to changes in business environment before the organizational operations encounter damages. Subsequently, these processes assist businesses to survive and sustain the dynamic environments with hardships. Management of organization strategies depend on the information from the business environment as they aid in realizing the organizational objective and goals (Babatunde & Adebisi, 2012, p. 25). Types of Market Research and Environmental Scanning Domino’s Pizza Should Use Domino’s Pizza is an international company that operates franchise and fast food stores. It has an international standing as a leading pizza delivery company. The company continually carries out environmental scanning to identify the new innovative methods that would be more helpful for it in conducting organizational research. The company uses combination of various market research types, including exploratory research and descriptive research. It uses exploratory research when the company wants to gain insights into market demands and abolishing unrealistic concepts prior to their introduction into the market. The method involves surveying the customers on various experiences with the services and products of the company. Additionally, descriptive research is used in determining the proportion of customers using a particular product or predicting the future demand for certain products within the market (QuickMBA, n.d). The research department intends to find new innovative research ways, which are cost and time effective, but still deliver actionable information to aid the business in developing new products and services to meet its consumer demands. Domino’s Pizza values the information from its customers and has sought a more appropriate method to collect such information. The organization targets the customers in web communities and acknowledges that these customers add value to the company. As a result, the company has established online web platforms to connect, such as online chats and dialogues with its clients. This method of collecting information from the customers has been embraced because it is cost saving, has quick turnaround time and because the web community is a valuable asset that the company has not targeted previously (Lozon & Walters, n.d, p. 1). The customers are for instance free to give their opinions on the choice of pizza toppings they require (Arbor, 2012). The use of online software platforms to collect information from the customers provides an avenue of collecting insights and assisting the company to communicate effectively. This is an innovative research method that the company has established. In a separate example, consumers were also requested to help in designing new pizza mechanisms. The customers’ information was invaluable to the company on the delivery needs and expectations (Arbor, 2012). Domino’s Pizza practices community research in collecting information about the external factors affecting its business environment because the research communities have quick information turnaround time (Lozon & Walters, n.d, p. 1). The traditional ad hoc research methods that the company relied on were time-consuming such that plans had to be developed and executed. Unlike the ad hoc research methods that took weeks, the community research requires hours or days to accomplish. Web community research is practiced by the company because it provides unlimited access to consumer targets. In addition, this method of collecting information is suitable as it offers the target consumers with time and place flexibility. The consumers have the advantage of responding to the information that the company seeks at their own time, place as well as speed. This also offers a more expressive environment for the customers to express their opinions openly to the company (Lozon & Walters, n.d, p. 2). Web software research platforms enable the company to research effectively on the trending topics and areas as soon as they emerge. Online community research offers convenient sample to collect information from. The method provides the business with an opportunity to obtain important information that may be used to support certain decisions within the organization. This demonstrates the invaluable insights that the company get from consumers courtesy of web community research method (Lozon & Walters, n.d, p. 2). Community research has also helped the business to establish and develop customer loyalty around some of its brands. The company has established an online community where the customers freely exchange ideas and opinions about the products and services offered by Domino’s Pizza. Consequently, the company observes the information exchanged among the customers and extract important information (Lozon & Walters, n.d, p. 2). The company also collects data through survey questions presented to the target customers. Quantitative surveys carried out over a set period on various research topics and questions are used rarely because of their high costs. The effectiveness of the community research initiative is measured through report feedbacks from the community members and the organizational employees. The interest of the community members is demonstrated in his or her responses, which constitute answers to the questions and additional questions he or she asks to seek response from the company. The company also used Post-It notes containing the community’s name, which was assigned to the organizational members to use in collecting information from the consumers. These notes were exhausted and more requested from the research department. This was an indication that people were interested in the research and utilized the opportunity of obtaining valuable information from the customers (Lozon & Walters, n.d, p. 3). Online discussion threads provide Domino’s Pizza with a valuable access to the evolving interaction of discursive resources in distribution among the online communities. These research methods have implications on conducting environmental scanning (Hewer & BrownlJe, 2010, p. 428). The company also uses data from secondary sources like private and public financial companies evaluating performance of companies. Business companies, such as Datamonitor, offer data for environmental scanning using techniques like SWOT analysis and PESTEL analysis (Datamonitor Plc, 2007, p. 5). These data exist and may have been used for other functions (Marketing Research and Information Systems: Session 4, 2012, p. 5). Other secondary sources of data include the American Satisfaction Index, which researches on the national economic satisfaction indicator of products and services’ quality to consumers. Domino’s Pizza is among the companies whose findings are presented (Richard K. Miller & Associates, 2011, p. 179). The company can use such platforms to obtain the market research and environmental scanning data it may require. These companies may either use primary or secondary data source, or both sources in their reports (iCD Research, 2012). Conclusion Marketing research and environmental scanning are the foundations of success for other related marketing activities because they provide the company or the business with the relevant market and environment information necessary for establishing the strategies that would make the business operations successful. Domino’s Pizza uses both exploratory and descriptive marketing research, depending on the information required from the environment. Reference List Arbor, A 2012, ‘Dominos Pizza Hits Unprecedented $1 Billion in U.S. Digital Sales in One Year, Thanking Customers with Weeklong 50% Off Pizza Online Offer’, PR Newswire US. Arbor, A 2012, ‘Dominos Pizza Reinventing Itself on the Road, Asking Consumers to Help Design the Ultimate Delivery Vehicle’, PRNewswire. Arbor, A 2012, ‘Dominos Pizza Thanks Digital Customers with Weeklong 50% Off Deal on All Pizzas Ordered Online’, PR Newswire. Babatunde, BO & Adebisi, AO 2012, ‘Strategic Environmental Scanning and Organization Performance in a Competitive Business Environment’, Word & Text: A Journal of Literary Studies & Linguistics, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 24-34. Brownlie, D 1994, ‘Organizing for Environmental Scanning: Orthodoxies and Reformation’, Journal of Marketing Management, vol. 10, no. 8, pp. 703-723. Datamonitor Plc. 2007, Dominos Pizza, Inc. SWOT Analysis, Datamonitor USA, New York. Hewer, P & BrownlJe, D 2010, ‘On market forces and adjustments: acknowledging consumer creativity through the aesthetics of debadging’, Journal of Marketing Management, vol. 26, no. 5-6, pp. 428-440. Houghton Mifflin Company 2007, Pride-Ferrell Foundations of Marketing, Cengage Learning, Boston, MA. iCD Research 2012, Research and Markets: Dominos Pizza, Inc: Leisure and Arts Company Profile, SWOT & Financial Report, Business Wire, Dublin. Lozon, K & Walters, C n.d., More for Less: Leveraging Research Communities to Maximize Your Budget Web 2.0 & Community Research Conference Symposium. Available from: . [3 September 2012]. Marketing Research and Information Systems: Session 4 2012, Class and Lecture Notes. Ofek, E & Wathieu, L 2010, ‘Are You Ignoring Trends That Could Shake Up Your Business?’, Harvard Business Review, vol. 88, no. 7/8, pp. 124-131. Pride, WM, Hughes, RJ & Kapoor, JR 2012, Foundations of Business, South-Western Cengage Learning, Mason, OH. 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