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19ON THE ISSUE OF MARKETING RESEARCH
Kravets O.
PhD
Rostov Sate University of Economics Taganrog, Petrovskaya street, 68
Abstract
The importance of Marketing Research, in a department of Marketing in each company is of great importance. Research, as a general concept, is the process of gathering information and data both quantitative qualitative, analyze them and learn or try as better to predict about something that is not fully known. Nearly everyone engages in some form of research.
Marketers are using research so they can get informed about the market, competitors, suppliers, customers etc. Market research is like a tool providing information so they can make profitable decisions. With research you can have not only a picture of what happens or is likely to happen but also, when is done well, you can have alternative choices you can take.
For example, a good research could suggest many options for introducing new services/products or entering in new markets. No decision can be risk free but with a proper market research and when the marketer can chose from a number of options marketing decisions can be less risky. Marketing decisions need the support of research in order to be viewed favorably by customers and to stand up to competition and other external pressures.
Keywords: market research, brand new product, customer, demand, statistics, external environment, internal environment, SWOT analysis, PEST or SLEPT analysis, target market.
Decisions that will have a fundamental effect on the running of one organization - as a brand new product launch - have to receive more attention. Market Research must be of value to the organization. In a free market economy, management has to make decisions in a situation fraught with many variables, uncertainties and incomplete information. The task of marketing research is to provide information for decision making purposes. Management's task is to use the marketing research information when making policy. Marketing research and decision making are interdependent. Marketing research plays an important role, contributing to decision making. [9]
About ninety percent of research in general for new products is based on new modifications and additions on products that already exist. Obviously that method is much easier than to create a brand new product from zero. Both methods can be a success. In general, is more difficult for consumers to accept a brand new product than an updated one. Having that in mind a lot of market research is being made by companies so they can reduce the risk and reinsure as much as possible the entrance of a new product into the market. DuPont and FedEx lost one hundred and three hundred fifty million dollars respectively, on two of their new products and services due to bad market research. [2]
In their article, Kleinschmidt and Cooper studied about two hundred new products. Those products were commercial successes and failures, unlike with previous studies which have concentrated on either successes or failures. Using the data taken they did ten hypothesis tests. The conclusion of the research was that "Product superiority is the number one factor influencing commercial success and that project definition and early, predevelopment activities are the most critical steps in the new products development process". "Suc-
cess is earned and is not a result of situational or environmental influences." Both marketing procedures and quality of the product are important. [1]
The performance of a new product is very significant depended from the following factors: market potential, predevelopment task proficiencies, meeting the needs of customer, product advantage and dedicated resources. [3]
Naming one product or a brand is also one factor that organizations and businesses should consider it very carefully. A market research is needed to be done before to choose a name and also after. A successful name or also logo can be chosen with no market research but is more risky. Making a market research in order to find the right name and logo can save you time and money and also ensure you that the chosen ones have potential for success. A lot of naming problems can identify through the process of market research. The only thing that matters is that consumers relate and like your name and logo so they can buy into it. If the people work in a company like the brand's name and logo is irrelevant. Consumers are the ones that will purchase the branded products and services, so during the naming process their visceral responses, opinions and emotional reactions are of great importance. Market research helps you determine the chance of name acceptance by costumers and consumers. There are a lot of companies that invest in advertising, packaging, image rights, naming rights, signage, stationery, business cards with their new brand or logo or product name on and afterwards consumers and customers didn't believe, understand or like it.
One other aspect of Marketing Research is the current position of the Company and the Market. The possible costumers / consumers of the market a company set as a target should be categorized from their demographic characteristics, their needs and preferences.
Also external and internal environment should be analyzed. PEST or SLEPT analysis for the external environment shows all the current and possible economic, political, law, technological and social factors that could interfere with our product success. SWOT analysis can show our advantages, disadvantages, opportunities and threats. Those analyses are done not only from marketing department.
Global consumers spent on snack foods annually almost four hundred billion dollars from 2013 until 2014, an increase of 2% year over year, according to a global report released by Nielsen. That competitive space in the industry of Snacks is tremendous. People often are using snacks as a meal substitutes, and therefore successful confectionery type snack products tend to be more food substitutes than one might expect. Ingredients like cereal, peanuts, biscuits, and fruit which help break up the overall chocolate are very well received by customers. We can see from the above that marketing research can reveal counter intuitive facts about a market even if you think you are already well acquainted with it. Before to launch a product a company has to be in a position to understand the competition and other competitive or substitute products and services. Try to think as a potential customer and consider what they could buy instead of your products and services even if you might believe there is no competition for your new product or service currently. [7]
«Tune in hook up» was the original name of YouTube and was a dating webpage with videos. Founders of «Tune in hook up» were disappointed from the traffic of their site. So S. Chen, J. Karim and C. Hurley came with a new idea after they found out with a search that finding online different kind of videos was something really hard and also if you were lucky to find one after a search, the sites where slow and not reliable. Also the difficulty of sharing one video was something they had in mind. For example emails couldn't afford this big amount of data. S. Chen, J. Karim and C. Hurley tried to find a solution for those problems and not to stay in the online dating market that was already full. They did a market research, and found out that they had a great opportunity to solve online video problems better than any other online platform. [5]
The story of Twitter's creation is one example of how market research is important. Biz Stone and Evan Williams, in 2005, were design one web platform for podcast creation, browse and sharing. They believed a lot in web podcasting. When iTunes launched by Apple before of their platform was a step back. Then they both did a market research, having now some feedback from the new born market. They checked the technology, costs of customer acquisition, user rates etc. They realized that they didn't have a chance to compete against the platform of Apple but from the other hand their platform had great potential and scalability. They wouldn't give up so easy. So they make their platform too simple, removing all complicate features. At the end they left with one platform that was a portal for people that want to share to others just what they are doing or were up to. They check out also other social networks (Face-book existed at that time) researching customer satisfaction. Cluttered and overwhelming News Feed was
factor that they found. People that used social networks like sharing photos and small texts. So the creation of Twitter was a fact. It is a simple web platform of social networking with just basic feed of information, letting people to share small texts and photos. That was one of the biggest web accomplishments of the recent history and a great success. [6]
Burbn was a not so successful location based application for check-ins made by Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom. After the launch of that application the team decides to check again the market and make a revaluation of it. The try to have a more close and better view of the market and the other competitive applications so they could understand their advantages, disadvantages, opportunities and threats (SWOT analy-sis).They realized that simplicity is what people needed. So they deleted most features of the application. They left only three options: upload photos, comment on them and like. They change also the name to Instagram. In 2012 Facebook bought whole Instagram (with its 13 employees) for about a billion dollars. [8]
Sometimes market research does not only focus on the success of a brand new product but even on the creation of that product. Market research can reveal new insights into what attracts customers. That is very difficult because industries have trained customers in what to expect. If you manage though to find or create un-contested market space with a brand new product you can make the competition irrelevant. That strategy is called "Blue Ocean strategy" a name given by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne. They stated that companies compete with each other for a better place in the market seeking larger market share to increase their profits. The markets have reached saturation point with so many businesses in many cases. That industrial fight for profit between competitors is like a bloody red ocean. But if you find or create a space or a gap between markets you can be successful. That new market is a blue ocean and you can be alone there with no competition at first at least. [4]
Below are some examples of brand new products that through market research may have found and/or created new market spaces:
Pitney Bowes: Introduce ACTG (Advanced Concept & Technology Group), which is a unit with responsibility to identify and also develope new products outside. People can have the opportunity from their desktops, to design and also print their own postage.
Home Depot: They are offering classes to the consumers, helping them with DIY products. Also the prices and range are those of a lumber yard.
Cirque du Soleil: They combined theatrical and gymnastic shows in a cirque environment, excluding animals. They attracted fans of ballet and opera in an extraordinary moveable environment.
TATA Motors: Nano Car was one of their new products, in which they manage to combine differentiation and at the same time low cost. It is the outcome of mixing innovative value and playing a different game.
Curves: It is gym for women only focusing especially to the everyday housewife with more home exercise programs.
Southwest Airlines: They use secondary airports offering pliability of a bus trip with the speed of an airplane.
Nintendo Wii: Instead of releasing a video game console with advance technology and more features than the previous ones, Nintendo released one console with innovative but easy to handle controls. They made it to attract populations such as the elderly, people with body disabilities that can't play real sport, small kids etc, that are typically excluded from the target demographic for video games.
An example of how a survey between consumers can reveal their thought and reactions about the name or the logo of your brand or product is that of Amazon. Sometimes companies are giving the short list of possible names and logos to random consumers so they can see if people accept, understand and like them. In a market full of competitor brands you have to fight other products that are familiar to people. Amazon's first name was Cadabra. One attorney that was working with Jeff Bezos, the founder of that time Cadabra, called him and mistakenly didn't heard the correct name of Cadabra. He heard Cadaver. Bezos thought that this may be a common mistake between clients. So Cadabra became Amazon (Gunelius, n.d.).
Conclusion
In conclusion, the importance of a proper market research before the launch of a brand new product or service is more than significant. Researching the market you can find out what the needs of the consumers are, who are potential customers, you can get knowledge about market opportunities, and generate ideas. Also you can learn about the right method to promote your new products and how to communicate with possible consumers. All of that for a single purpose, to create and introduce your new products effectively.
References
1. Cooper, R. and Kleinschmidt, E. (1987). New Products: What Separates Winners from Losers?. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 4(3), pp.169184.
2. Cupman, J. (2016). Using Market Research For Product Development. [online] B2B International. Available at: https://www.b2binternational.com/publi-cations/product-development-research/ [Accessed 14 July 2021].
3. Henard, D. and Szymanski, D. (2001). Why Some New Products Are More Successful Than Others. Journal of Marketing Research, 38(3), pp.362-375.
4. Kim, W. and Mauborgne, R. (2005). Blue ocean strategy. 1st ed. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press.
5. Knowthis.com. (2016). Importance of Marketing Research. [online] Available at: http://www.knowthis.com/marketing-research/im-portance-of-marketing-research [Accessed 16 July 2021].
6. Maddock, G., Uriarte, L., Flaim, J. and Miller, B. (2011). Brand new. 1st ed. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
7. Nielsen.com. (2014). Global Snack Food Sales Reach $374 Billion Annually. [online] Available at: http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/press-room/2014/global-snack-food-sales-reach-374-billion-annually.html [Accessed 30 July 2021].
8. Washington, R. (2013). How 3 Companies Used Market Research to Pivot their Businesses. [online] Blog.marketresearch.com. Available at: http://blog.marketresearch.com/blog-home-page/bid/334826/How-3-Companies-Used-Market-Research-to-Pivot-their-Businesses [Accessed 28 July 2021].
9. Wiid, J. and Diggines, C. (2009). Marketing research. 1st ed. Lansdowne, Cape Town: Juta.
ANALYSIS OF CAMEL BREEDING SECTOR OF AGRICULTURE IN KAZAKHSTAN
Makulbayev A.T.,
Candidate of economic sciences Shymkent University
Abdikerimova G.I.,
Candidate of economic sciences, Associate Professor M.Auezov South Kazakhstan University Yesbolova A.
PhD in Economics M.Auezov South Kazakhstan University
Abstract
The paper aims to contextualize the current state camel breeding in Kazakhstan. There were analyzed statistical data as well as policy documents and reports. The special attention was paid for examination of strengths and weaknesses of camel breeding sector of agriculture.
Camel farming is that branch of productive animal husbandry, which will involve more than 100 million ha in the turnover of economic activities of desert and semi-desert lands with the subsequent development of social infrastructure with all attributes of a competitive market economy. The gene pool of camel breeds of Kazakhstan is unique and diversity in Central Asia and the Eurasian continent as a whole.
Keywords: Camel breeding, economy, development, agriculture, strategy, Kazakhstan
