Chapter 4: Marketing Research

 

Marketing research is essential for any company looking to sell any product, especially one for a long time.  I recently got a survey in my email box from Victoria's Secret.  This picture is of a different survey, but they are an example of a company that does a lot of marketing research.  The latest survey I took asked questions about my demographics as well as what other stores I shopped at, if I felt Victoria's Secret prices were fair and how much I shopped at Victoria's Secret compared to other lingerie stores.  The survey also asked other questions, but I really liked it because oftentimes if you take a survey from a company it's not very helpful.  For example, I was watching a tv show on hulu and if I took a survey I could watch the show commercial free.  I took the survey, but after I would answer they would writie on the bottom "hint: move the arrow to the right."  This is clearly skewed.  The Victoria's Secret survey was much more informative and made me think as a consumer as well as helped them out.

Week 2: Market Planning Process

I thought this link I got from my email from the Body Shop is an interesting example of the market planning process because they let their customers in on it.  Here, they're creating a new poster to put in stores and they asked their customers to vote on it instead of trying to pick one inside the company.  This appears to be the end of an operational planning step as they launch a new product inside the same market, hoping to expand to their customers that rely heavily on organic products, even in body care.

Introduction to Marketing

These ads are a good example of the evolution of marketing.  The first video was from the 50s when marketing was a brand new concept.  The second is a current Mr. Clean commercial.  Mr. Clean is still featured in the commercial, and in some of the newer ads the song is still there, but the ad has changed a lot.  The newer ad is much shorter suggesting that they understand that people have a short attention span for ads. Also, the old ad was animated and didn't show real people using the product.  The second relies strongly on testimonial with a woman that seems like a housewife demonstrating all the ways the Mr. Clean magic eraser cleans instead of just listing them out like the first one.