3.2 Market research

Question 1

What are the uses of market research information?

Answer 1

Identify customer needs
Discover current + future market size for product
Provide information about business’s existing products + markets
Identify strengths + weaknesses of competitor products
Decide how to price product + promote product
Predict how changes + trends in customers tastes may affect future demand

Question 2

What is ‘primary research’?

Answer 2

the collection of first-hand data for the specific needs of the firm

Question 3

benefits + limitations of primary research?

Answer 3

+ data is up to date
+ data collected for specific purpose that is relevant to business
+ not available to other businesses → competitive advantage
- costly
- time consuming
- risk of inaccurate data

Question 4

What is ‘secondary research’?

Answer 4

collection of data from second-hand sources

Question 5

benefits + limitations of secondary research?

Answer 5

+ fairly cheap to obtain
+ easier and quicker to obtain
- may not be up to date
- may not be directly relevant to the business

Question 6

Name methods of primary research

Answer 6

Focus groups
Observation
Test market
Consumer surveys
Interviews
Postal surveys
Online surveys
The need for sampling

Question 7

Name methods of secondary research

Answer 7

reports
internet documents
newspaper

Question 8

What are the factors that can influence the accuracy of market research data?

Answer 8

Sample chosen may be too small
Business may have chosen wrong type of method to collect data
People may not answer questions truthfully
Questions asked may be bias, which forces interviewee to not give true view
Language may be unclear
Secondary data may be out of date
Data may be recorded incorrectly

Question 9

Ways of analysing / presenting data?

Answer 9

Tables 
Bar charts
Pie charts 
Pictograms 
Line graphs