Nestle Special T Market Research Background Marketing Essay

Nestle Special T Market Research Background Marketing Essay Nestlà © is the worlds leading nutrition, health and wellness company. Good Food, Good Life is the promise Nestlà © commits to everyday, everywhere to enhance lives, throughout life, with good food and beverages. Recently, Nestlà © has been launching a new product-Special.T which is a machine that offers consumers to make a cup of the highest-quality tea at the touch of a button. However, Nestlà © has been expanding the Special.T to five new countries in Europe such as Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany. Consumers receive information from different media sources and make good use of it to collect information of their preferred product (Leon G. Schiffman, 2005). Nowadays, consumers are able to know various products through different media sources conveniently such as television, radio, the Internet and magazine. They provide the fully information to consumers before consumers make the decision of purchase. The market for selling the machine of making tea is becoming increasingly competitive. Nowadays, tea making machine is quite common in the market. Some companies have been selling such machine for many years before Nestlà © first launched Special.T. Therefore, Special.T is quite a new product in the market. As a researcher, we have been commissioned by the brand manager to conduct market research in Singapore. We will measure all aspect of the marketing mix and provide valuable information to support the management at decision to reinvigorate, change or renovate the Special.T. Well, there are several questions we are going to look at: What are the difficulties in using the product? What are the deficiencies of the product? Whether the information and the communication support consumers efficiently? Whether the marketing plans carry out successfully? How the product meets consumers requirement? Objective Research is the systematic collection and analysis of information which helps to improve the quality of planning and decision making (Naresh K. Malhotra, 2007). Every work must have objectives. With the objectives, we can clearly understand what we are going to do and which direction we are going through. According to Bill Gillham (2000), the purpose of market research is to obtain information so that the development and marketing of a product or service can be improved. The research helps researchers to fully understand what consumers need and can be used to explain and predict attitude and behavior of the population (Naresh K. Malhotra, 2007). However, without the objectives, we can only do nothing. Well, the statements below show our objectives of the research: To find out what the requirements of the consumers are. To intensify the competitive strength in the market place. To understand the current market situation. To assess the perception of consumers towards the brand. Epistemological approach: Interpretivism Research Methodology What is research methodology? According to Jamie Hale (2011), research methodology is a scientific technique used to collect and evaluate data. Here we will use the methodology of interview for the research. Well, what is interview? Why we will choose interview as the research methodology other than the other methods? First, generally interview is where a person (the interviewer) asks another person (the interviewee) questions about their life, ideas or opinions, especially on the radio or television or for a newspaper or magazine. Well, interview is a routine method. It is quite common around us. Interview understands across cultures. Since interview is a very common method, it has been commonly used in every country for many years. It can be used in all areas such as politicians, business people and celebrities. However, qualitative interviewing is an adventure in learning about teaching in different countries, their cultural views, their problems and solutions, and how their pract ices are similar and different than our own. The way we interview depends on what we want to know. It is a process of finding out what others feel and think about their worlds. The result is to understand the major points of their message and how it compares (similar different) to our own situation. Not only do we need to be a good conversationalist, but also a good listener (Rubin, Herbert Rubin, Irene, 1995). Face-to-face interview Telephone intervie E-interviews Focus group Group interview Focus group E-group interview Interviewer administered questionaires One to many One to one Standardised Non-standardised Interviews Figure 1.0 Form of interview (Saunders et al 2012:374) Interview: Advantages and Disadvantages ADVANTAGES DISADVANTAGES Unique applicability. No interaction with others. Control over respondent selection-more depth, context and flexibility. May be more difficult to interpret. Close rapport. Time-consuming. Can express non-conformity. Cost. Check the views. Not an observable research technique. Comprehensive outcome: The respondent can analyse their motivations. Empowers the respondent. Secondly, why we will choose interview as the research methodology other than the other methods? A commonsensical justification is that the best way to find out what the people think about something is to ask them (Bower 1973: vi). Qualitative researchers agree that the interview is a powerful way to try to understand people. Whether face-to-face or in groups, the interview is among the oldest and most common methods of data collection and has been used extensively in this type of research (Guba and Lincoln 1981, Donalek 2005, Holloway 2008). We are selling a product, but it is quite difficult to determine whether the product corresponds with the requirement of consumer and to find out what the deficiencies of the product are. However, if we want to improve the product, we have to ask and understand the opinion of consumers or users about the product. The feedbacks and comments from consumers about the product are considered as important assets to the company because consumers are th e ultimate users of the product, they clearly know what they really want, what the deficiencies of the product are and which part of product need to be improved. Therefore, we have to carry out the action according the feedbacks and comments from consumers in order to make an ideal product and therefore it can strengthen the confidence of consumers towards the product or brand and the result will be the increase in sales volume. The underlying assumption is that interviewing results in accurate information about respondents and their lives, despite the many factors that have been identified that can affect how the interview is conducted and the quality of data obtained (Guba and Lincoln 1981, Fontana and Frey 2003). The data collected from interview is very accurate and adequate. Either face to face, telephone, group, formal or informal interview, the method of collecting data is to ask people. Rather than observing or studying on people and finally the researcher acquires the data itself. However, data collected via observing or studying may be biased because the researcher is not the consumers, he/she is unable to fully understand what the consumers want and the requirement of consumers may not respond on their action and therefore, the best way to understand consumers is to ask them. Inductive Approach Develop theory Observation Looking for pattern Tentative hypothesis In an inductive approach to research, a researcher begins by collecting data that is relevant to his or her topic of interest. Once a substantial amount of data have been collected, the researcher will then take a breather from data collection, stepping back to get a birds eye view of her data (Amy Blackstone, 1994). At this stage, we can collect the data via the method of interviewing consumer. Once we get the data we should look for the pattern of data and analyse the data. For example, from Q1 to Q10 are the questions about interviewers personal detail and Q11 to Q20 are about the opinions about the product. After that, we can formulate some tentative hypothesis that we can explore, and finally end up developing some general conclusions and theories. Formulate a plan After deciding on the methodology, we have to propose an indicative plan to carry out the research. In order to make the plan smoothly and meticulously, there are several questions need to be considered: What to ask? Because we use interview as our research methodology, we have to decide on the questions to ask the interviewee. For example, we are selling Special.T, we can ask the users about their opinions about Special.T or which part of the product need to be improved. When to ask? Before and after the product is launched officially. Who to ask? We can ask the people who use the product and the people who sell the product. We can also ask the others who do not use the product. Where to ask? We should carry out the interview in the places of selling Special.T. Well, the places of selling Special.T can be supermarket or hypermarket such as Tesco, Carrefour and Walmart. And usually there are a lot of consumers visit these places, so these places are the suitable venue to carry out the interview.