IPod Research Progress - Essay Example

iPod research progress The current study is aimed at performing a market research on the growth of the iPod in sales, assess the future consumer preference, Apple’s marketing and technological strategies to overcome declining customer demand and growth prospects of the iPod across its various geographical concentrations.As mentioned in the research proposal, the study began with the collection of information from different literary resources in an effort to aggregate information from different sources.

The time during the past few weeks has been devoted to visiting several libraries and online journals in a bid to achieve this purpose and a lot of potential books and magazines have been earmarked for further use during the course of the study. To keep track of the required excerpts and information from these various books, an excel sheet has been prepared and is being constantly used to keep track of the specific pages and sections within these literary sources so that it may be possible to revert to a specific page within a particular book or magazine with minimal effort, thereby providing more time to invest qualitatively in performing the requisite analysis.

In a similar fashion, efforts are also underway to study and understand various market research theories and methodologies with the intention of selecting the appropriate ones that can be used for the research. Information pertaining to market research is available from a plethora of related books that contain vast discussions on areas such as product design, marketing, competitor analysis and branding.Although the study is being performed in a highly structured manner, it is true that certain difficulties were observed.

Although local libraries contain a plethora of information on Apple’s products, it was soon evident that a large part of this information was in fact a few years old and the best books available offered information up to a few years since the launch of the iPod. To counter this deficiency, it was soon decided to rely extensively on online digital libraries such as Questia and the ACM portal. These online sites provided access to the latest books and journals, thus helping provide up to date information and helping make the research outcome more productive and qualitative.

To obtain data on market perceptions and latest trends, it had been mentioned earlier that the study would utilize the inputs from various companies and professionals dealing in market research within the consumer electronics market with a specific focus on digital music players. To obtain this information from such primary sources of information, a requisite questionnaire is being prepared containing 15 simple questions that aim to identify every major attribute connected with the study. Moreover, several potential companies and market experts who have spent years researching this market domain and Apple in particular are being contacted and appointments with many of them for interviews and surveys are being worked out at the moment.

It is hoped to approach as many number of these information providers as possible within the next 2 weeks and going by current estimates, the process of obtaining primary information will be completed within a month.