Market Research Plan
Executive Summary
The following market research plan creates the basis for the new innovative drinks and exploration of new markets as well as improving the already existing drinks and markets for the drinks. This research analyses the plan to be followed in ensuring that the mission of Coca Cola Company is accomplished. It will define the marketing problem to be investigated during the actually data collection period. It will state the objective of the market research and form a rationale for research design and the design itself. The research plan will explain the data collection methods to be used and how the data will be analyzed and the recommendations made. It will then present the estimated budget for the research period. The consumer needs keep on changing from time to time despite the Coca Cola worldwide reputation of manufacturing drinks. The consumers continually want new products and they also need refreshment of their drinks hence the need for improvement of the product already in the market. This will be achieved after a successful market research is conducted. This market research plan explains how the research will be conducted pointing out the important aspects.
Introduction
The Coca Cola Corporation is the first and best known beverages producer as well as supplier. Fundamentally, the consumers of its drinks relate to the favorite and most excellent known beverages corporation. In fact the company’s mission statement states, ‘'The Coca-Cola Company exists to benefit and refresh everyone who is touched by our business.' Despite the company’s world wide well known reputation, it has to continuously come up with products and also develop drinks to congregate every consumer’s needs. The company therefore has a wide range of drinks that are at different levels of their product life cycle. While some of the beverages will be freshly introduced into the market, others will undergo growth in the market as the others also struggle to maintain their hold in established markets. Coca Cola aims at ensuring that each of their customers gets a range of drinks at any time, and hence a market research plan plays an important role in ensuring their mission.
The consumer needs keep on changing from time to time despite the Coca Cola worldwide reputation of manufacturing drinks. The consumers continually want new products and they also need refreshment of their drinks hence improvement of the product already in the market. The needs of the consumers vary from occasion to occasion at different times calling for segmentation of the various categories of the customer wants. This market research paper intends to collect data from the market that will help the company to continuously develop products that meet the needs of that market. Sometimes it gets difficult to identify the special needs for different groups of the population in the market. Without market research the Coca Cola Company will not be able to identify various needs and consumers of their products. This research paper presents market needs that would be identified and forwarded for ensuring the mission statement.
Marketing Research Objective
This market research focuses on ensuring that the needs of the company’s customers are in formation with the mission statement of benefiting and refreshing their customers. The market research will therefore seek to find out what the consumers need so as to help in designing the desired products. The research will gather information that will guide the corporation in developing a wide range of drinks and improving the existing ones. The research will also identify different categories of the consumer needs for the purpose of category segmentation. Different consumers of the Coca Cola beverages in the population will also be identified.
Category segmentation will be used to expand the purchasing power of the existing consumers as well as explore the new ones. The market research is set to identify unique needs of the different groups of the population in the existing market. The research will also collect the different views of different consumers regarding the Coca Cola drinks. This will be used to make any changes that are aimed at satisfying the consumers of their products.
Research Design Rational
The research is aimed at development of new products internally and the acquisition of related producers. This will increase the number of products sold within a given period and therefore improving productivity. Higher productivity with well conducted market research will identify new markets where the products will be sold for profit maximization. Taking this into consideration the research design will be based on the factors that contribute to the overall improvement of profitability. The factors include enhancing the existing product, creating new ones, identifying new markets, and category segmentation of consumer needs to expand the purchasing capacity of the existing consumers. The research design will constitute the impact of the identified factors of expanding the market on the profitability of Coca Cola if the market research data analysis is implemented.
Proposed Research Design
The research design will constitute the increasing of profitability by expanding both the market and drinks manufactured. New markets and products will be introduced while the existing markets and products are improved. To increase profitability given the existing market and drinks, Category segmentation and exploring into new population groups will be pursued. . To increase profitability given the new market and drinks, new drinks will be launched as markets that are yet to be reached are diversified. The overall impact of the above actions resulting from market research data causes the increase in profit by the Coca Cola Corporation.
Field Work/ Data Collection
This market research will make use of both primary and secondary data when gathering information. Primary data will be collected by self-administered questionnaires at selected retailers' tills, conducting online surveys and personal interviews through telephones and internet. Secondary data will be obtained from various already existing published or unpublished data. Sufficient data will be collected over a period of one month before the data is gathered for analysis.
Data Analysis and Reporting Timing Schedule
The data obtained from the market research findings will be highly subjective. This is because the expected feedback by the various respondents will depend on how individual consumers view the Coca Cola products based on personal feeling and observation. In other words, the Coca Cola products give different utility upon different consumers. The data obtained from the three research methods of collecting data will be analyzed by use of descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentages) and inferential statistics. The data will be analyzed and recommendations made considering the period over which the data was collected.
At the time of completing this report on the market research plan, the actual market research will take place over a period of one month. When the market research has been analyzed, recommendations will be implemented immediately. A description of a detailed time scheduling of the market research implementation will be drawn after the data from the field has been tabled.
Budget
In conducting of the market research, minimization of costs will be applied. This will limit wastage of money, time and resources in mailing the questionnaires, administering telephone calls as well as using the internet. A total of 3 million people are targeted during the research. The following costs are estimated for the planned market research:
Questionnaires - $20 million
Online surveys - $10 million
Personal interviews - $50 million
TOTAL - $80 million
It is expected that a successful market research will attract a profit increment of up to $200 million. The minimum expected increment in the profit will be $190 million. An efficient and effective market research will increase the profit by the Coca Cola Corporation by even greater margin.
