Answer 1: The Nivea brand is one of the most leading and known skin and beauty care brands across the globe. The company was introduced in the year 1911 and is part of the German Beiersdorf conglomerate. The Nivea brand now extends to more than 14 product varieties across the globe ranging from facial moisturizers to sunscreen, shower products, visage, hair care, body and deodorant (Malhotra et-al, 2006). However, the company has been going through number of challenges all over the world and the biggest challenge was faced in the markets of USA where the brand is less popular in comparison of other skin and beauty care brands. The company wants to increase its market share in the USA. The management-decision problem faced by the company is to assess the profitability of new markets and determine the level of competition between skin and beauty care brands. The management of the company needs to make a decision about this issue to enhance their share in the markets of USA.
Answer 2: Market research problem is based on the information obtained through management-decision problem. The marketing research problem demands what information is required and how it can be achieved. Market research problem offers the necessary information to researchers to make an appropriate decision (Jackson, 2010). The research problem initiates with the identification of a marketing problem. The Nivea Company uses survey design method to research markets in order to discover about thinking and choices of customers or competitors. This market research assists Nivea brand to manage the risks linked with offering innovative products and services by the company. The survey design method is a direct method of gathering numerical, quantitative, qualitative and descriptive information. Marketing research problems can surface at the time of flaws or errors in the survey design. For instance, when Nivea utilize a method that is made to gather a random sample out of the target consumer population, the method is not actually random. Thus, the Nivea cannot simplify its survey results to signify the target population.
Answer 3: Research design is an approach that implements various elements of the research study in an organized way while considering the research problem. Thus, research design is a useful tool of research methodology that ensures collection of helpful and constant source of information with regard to the research problem. The most common types of research designs are exploratory, descriptive and casual. All these research designs have their own significance and importance (Axinn and Pearce, 2006).
In order to undertake research to understand the preferences of American consumers for skin care products, the Nivea Company should adopt exploratory research design as it will be helpful in achieving an insight of the research problem and creating new assumptions, ideas, themes and patterns. In context to this, the Nivea Company will use exploratory research design as it will help in evaluating the level of profitability and determine the level of competition between skin and beauty care brands in markets of USA. Along with this, this research design will also suggest various ways through which innovative practices and techniques can be implemented by the company to make its products popular in the USA.
Answer 4: Qualitative research will help the company to understand the thinking process of customers. It assists the company in getting customers opinion and view about their products and services. This research is designed in understanding or revealing a target population’s variety of perceptions and the behavior with reference to particular topic or issue. In the era of high competition, qualitative research method assists the Nevia Company to test the reactions of American costumers at the time of launching some new product. Face to face interviews, group discussions etc are considered as the best possible way to obtain the in-depth information of customers regarding company’s products and services which in turn helps to maximize profit and sustain in the competitive world (Merriam, 2009).
Qualitative research can help Nevia in developing products and services of customer’s choice and ensure they fulfill the demands and requirements of target audience. For instance, Nivea at the time of launching new product or service can invite a small group of local people of America to join and use the product and offer feedback on service and proposed pricing. This kind of activity might only consume a few hours and would not cost much but it helps company in offering significant feedback and enhances company’s revenue and sales.
Answer 5: The Company has implemented the concept of clear benefit to enhance growth in Latin America, Asia and Eastern European Market. If a survey is to be conducted to understand the preferences of American consumer for skin care products, the best survey method would be the interview survey method. There are various survey methods that use interviews. These are the face-to-face interview, the phone interview and the latest, the online interview. The Nivea Company should use all these interview methods to understand views and ideas of customers on their products and services (Fowler, 2013).
The main advantage of this survey method is its adaptability and helps the company in finding out as much as about American consumers as possible, together with how they might react to company’s products or services. Interview survey method allows high flexibility in speech, wording, direction and sequence of customers which enables the company to know about their preferences and choices. Various styles and techniques used in this method enable the company to extract significant information from the American population that could influence the results of the interview.
Answer 6: Likert scale has been used widely to measure attitudes of the target audience. In this, the company evaluates the attitude of American consumers by taking their views to a number of statements about products and services, in terms of the scope to which they agree with them. In the semantic differential scale, there involves a numbering system and the target American audiences are asked to choose the number on the scale between the two statements about company’s products or services. Staple rating scale is used specifically by company to study the responses of consumers while identifying various categories of company products or services.
These scales can be implemented on social networking sites to get online responses of consumers which will help the company in meeting customer demands and maximizing profit (Fellows & Liu, 2009). Implementation of these scales on social media can assist Nivea in attracting large number of customers on a local level, which can help in ensuring the success of a business in America. The company can take advantage of all the opportunities that social media can provide to Nivea to attract local customers easily and to increase the sales in the short and long term.
References
Axinn, W.G, & Pearce, L.D. (2006). Mixed method data collection strategies. 1st ed. USA: Cambridge University Press
Fellows, R.F. & Liu, A.M. (2009). Research Methods for Construction. John Wiley & Sons
Fowler, J.F. (2013). Survey Research Methods. SAGE Publications
Jackson, S.L (2010). Research Methods: A Modular Approach. Cengage Learning.
Merriam, S.B. (2009). Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation. John Wiley & Sons
Malhotra,N., Hall, J., Shaw,M., & Oppenheim,P. (2007). Essentials of Marketing Research, An Applied Orientation. Pearson Higher Education AU.
