Marketing Research Report Essay

Marketing Research Report Essay

Executive Summary

The business idea suggested in this proposal is the establishment of a retail hair extension, hair care products and other skin and beauty products within the university. The university setting has been chosen owing to the readiness of the market. Secondly, university students; especially ladies often appreciate their appearances as they seek to transition from being students to professionals.  Despite the existing market potential, there lies the challenge of meeting the expectations of the ever-dynamic student population. This population is always fascinated by emerging fashion and trends in the market which calls on business players to always assess their needs and ensure timely response. Besides, meeting the market expectations can at times be challenging and hence for proper response mechanisms implemented through a research process. This task proposes the use of a mixed research approach which starts with exploring the consumer expectations and then a follow-up study using a survey questionnaire. The mixed method approach will be key in underscoring strategies that can be used to identify and respond to the consumer expectations. Some of the key findings outlined in this proposal include the need to maintain the quality of the data through standardization and data cleaning before the analysis process as that will help reduce duplication of the data and removing aspects that can outrightly be regarded as outliers.

Background

The business I would like to set up is retailing hair extension, hair care products and other skin and beauty products. The target setting for the business is within the university premises where there is a potential ready market. This idea has been occasioned by the fact that university students and especially ladies are cautious about their appearance as majority are preparing for the corporate world as well as building their social wellbeing (Mao, Su, Wang & Jarvenpaa, 2020). Despite the need for the beauty products to be within the reach of students, there are no retail operators within the university settings (Lee, Goh & Noor, 2019). Online platforms which are the most common ways the products are accessed by the students have proven to be expensive and at times the products don’t meet the client’s expectations. Having a hair extension and other beauty care products business is timely especially coming at a time when some of the online suppliers have become unreliable in terms of the time for delivery as well as compromised product quality that have increased cases of product reimbursements.

Problem Definition

Despite the potential that the business has already demonstrated as reflected in the growing number of students who may be interested in beauty care products, there is a notable marketing challenge that come with implementing this business. The likely marketing challenge is how to cope with the changing trends in the needs of the target market. The preference of the beauty products is set to change drastically from one customer to another. Besides, responding to the emerging trends in the youthful consumer population can at times be hard as this population is easily swayed by unforeseeable external factors. Consequently, copying up with these dynamic changes in the market will require significant levels of research. For instance, how will the business introduce a new product and ensure the sales are sustained? What if the business stocks a given brand of hairline products whose demand drops drastically due to a negative social media comment from an ‘influencer’? How will the business sustain its momentum of marketing products that may be trendy in the market? What if the customer loyalty is compromised by factors beyond the control of the business? All these are key questions that the business must be ready to respond to in marketing the new business. Additionally, since the university students are significantly influenced by social media, it is critical to assess how the business will respond to criticism and negative energy that may come probably from competitors who could be trying to use unfair competitive practices to have a share of the same market.

Research Objectives

An in-depth research will be key in responding to the research problem highlighted in the previous section. The information needed to respond to the identified problem will be both primary and secondary information. Primary information defines the first-hand information that will be obtained through direct interrogation of the target market. Using both formal and informal interviews, it will be possible to underscore the expectations of the target market especially in regards to the perceptions in the changes in trends and exploring some of the factors that may influence the consumer purchasing behavior. Secondary information on the other hand will help provide a detailed account of how other business players solved similar challenges when establishing a similar kind of business (Zhou, 2019). The secondary sources of information will include information from books, periodicals and other reference books that outline strategies that business players can use to address emerging challenges. Consumer data will also be key in evaluating consumer expectations and preferences. The data will be obtained through a survey which will be administered in form of a questionnaire.

Research Design

A mixed method research approach will be key in responding to the research question. Initially, an exploratory qualitative research design will be used to provide preliminary investigation that will help define the exact nature of the problem to deal with. Through unstructured interviews, it is possible to have a first-hand experience of the opinions and reasons and motivations and factors that influence the marketability of the hair and other beauty products.

Once the qualitative research is done, a more in-depth research will be implemented through the use of questionnaires. A defined number of participants will be selected randomly and be subjected to a questionnaire with specific questions underpinning the research problem under investigation. The results obtained from the survey questionnaire will be statistically analyzed to give more meaningful conclusions.

The research design will however need a relatively large sample size to help derive more meaningful data. The large sample size will mean ensure that the derived results can be regarded as a representation of the whole population. The unstructured interview on the other hand will need to be open-ended to allow the respondents to have an in-depth response to the survey questions. The use of a mixed method research design will however be time consuming and will also require mathematical skills for analysis and data interpretation.

Data Collection Techniques

As stated before, the data will be collected using both qualitative and quantitative techniques. Primary data will be collected through unstructured interviews with the respondents. The second data collection method will entail the use of a survey questionnaire which will have to be filled by the sampled target population. The field data requirements include getting a consent from all participants as well as the university before proceeding with the research. Th exploratory research will need a tape recorder for recording the interview which will later be retrieved and theme coded for interpretation. A team of student volunteers will be recruited to help in the data collection process to help reduce the cost that often accompanies a research process of similar nature.

To ensure the data collected will be of the required quality, data will be normalized after being collected. Since the data will be from different respondents, different emerging themes are set to arise. However, it will be prudent to scale down the number of themes to not only ease the analysis process but also improve the data accuracy. The second way to improve data quality is to clean the data by removing outliers before any analysis. This will ensure that the conclusions made reflects the clear picture obtained from the variables under consideration.

Findings, Recommendations and Limitations

Setting up a hair and beauty business in a university setting is a remarkable idea that is worth trying. However, the student population is diverse and set to be influenced easily by internal and external forces. A clear understanding of these forces and the likely response mechanisms is a key step towards establishing a successful business. This proposal recommends that:

A mixed method approach be used in responding to the marketing problem.

It would be prudent to use the student population to explore the market expectations and how to respond to them.

The findings also show that the student population is so diverse with varying interests. Consequently, a mixed research method will be necessary to critically underscore the expectations of the target market.

Marketing Research Report Essay