Question

1. Westpac City-Bay Fun Run is an annual fund-raising event that started in Adelaide in November of 1973. The main purpose of the event is to raise funds to support the athletic community of South Australia and to support local athletes and clubs while also engaging in a fun and friendly competitive activity. From its humble origins, the event grew each year and last year the run raised over 350,000 AUD for local athletes. It is a popular event with entry fees ranging from 25 to 60 dollars and it's supported by many local firms and individuals alike. Despite the event being organized for September 2020, the organizers are already thinking about 2021 and how to make the event even bigger in order to raise more funds.

There are three main types of marketing research that were discussed in the week 4 lecture (exploratory, descriptive, and causal). Imagine that you have joined the board of directors for the City-Bay Fun Run as a Market Research Advisor. Explain to the Board the three types of research they could do before the 2021 run, and give examples of how (e.g. methods), and when, each type of research would be appropriate to use.

2. Tesla Motors entered the market with their first electric vehicle called Roadster in 2008. As the company was still young, their development was based on existing technology of Lotus Elise, an existing car model made in UK. The Roadster was a two-seater sports car and was only manufactured for a few years until it was discontinued. During that time, the Roadster was sold for 100,000 USD as an innovative two-seat sports car for car enthusiasts. After discontinuing the Roadster, and rebranding into Tesla, the car manufacturer released their flagship Model S in 2012. The car was designed to be luxury, full sized car, and cost 90,000 USD for any perspective consumers. A few years later, building upon the Model S, Tesla introduced the Model X, a larger SUV model that was based upon their design of the Model S. The SUV was bigger, bolder, cost 132,000 USD and came with additional interior and cargo space, at the trade-off of distance travelled. Continuing their innovative trend, Tesla began production of Model 3 in 2017. The price of the model was 50,000 USD, and it was targeted at regular car enthusiasts. The model is meant to compete with other middle-range cars on the market such as petrol variants of some BMW's, or even the new KIA models. With continuing success and popularity of their cars, Tesla has redesigned their original Roadster, and are planning on releasing a completely Tesla built 2020 version setting customers back 300,000 USD. The Roadster is meant to be the fastest, sleekest, Tesla car yet and is aimed at sports car enthusiasts.

Explain the use of Ansoff matrix and the four strategies within it. How do you think Tesla's product development is reflected in the matrix?

3. Emma's cousin Jack is having a birthday party in a few weeks. Her whole family is planning on going and everyone has bought Jack a present apart from Emma. It is his 10^th birthday and the families want to make it memorable as they always do for milestone birthdays. Emma has been stressing for days thinking of a great present as she loves Jack and has been his babysitter for years. Emma's brother, Simon, doesn’t really want to go to the party and suggested that Emma should just buy him a gift card like he did and be done with it. Emma was thinking of buying him a cheap starter smartphone as she knows Jack would love it but is afraid that Jack's parents won't like her giving their young son a smartphone. Emma however decided against her worries and bought him a smartphone.

There are five stages in the consumer decision making process. Explain how Emma and her brother Simon would have progressed through these five stages in their decision towards purchasing their gifts for Jack. As part of your answer, you should discuss their level of involvement in this purchase, as well as the type of consumer buying decision that occurred. Finally, explain 1 cultural factor, 1 social factor, and 1 psychological factor that might have influenced Emma's and Simon's decision-making process.

Answer 1

Since, there are multiple questions, I am supposed to answer only the first question

Answer 1

There are 3 main types of marketing research to identify the needs, wants and demands of the target customer. Following are the 3 main types of marketing research

(i) Exploratory Research:

The Companies use this type of research method to uncover the facts and opinions regarding a particular subject. The Research seeks to highlight the main points of a situation, thus, enabling researchers to more clearly understand an issue or concern (i.e., gain insight). It seldom provides enough data to make any conclusive market decisions, but rather forms a foundation on which companies can start to build better research objectives for subsequent studies. Oftentimes, exploratory research makes use of qualitative measures like consumer and expert interviews and focus groups, as well as secondary research materials including books, syndicated reports and trade journals or magazines.

For example: Consider a scenario where a juice bar owner feels that increasing the variety of juices will enable increase in customers, however he is not sure and needs more information. The owner intends to carry out an exploratory research to find out and hence decides to do an exploratory research to find out if expanding their juices selection will enable him to get more customers of if there is a better idea

(ii) Descriptive Research:

It focuses on answering the how, what, when, and where questions If a research problem, rather than the why. The Research seeks to concretely describe a situation in ways that will allow companies to direct decisions and monitor progress. It is quantitative by nature, using a standardized format with close-ended questions to collect information that can be statistically measured and analyzed. Surveys, questionnaires and certain types of experiments are all types of descriptive research methodologies that can provide the necessary data to formulate conclusions and take action and/or measure changing attitudes and behaviors over time. Specifically, researchers might use this type of research techniques to gather demographic information on consumers, evaluate a product’s market potential or monitor a target group’s opinions and actions. Using the information collected, they are able to draw conclusions and/or make correlations concerning the market at large.

For example, an investor considering an investment in the ever-changing Amsterdam housing market needs to understand what the current state of the market is, how it changes (increasing or decreasing), and when it changes (time of the year) before asking for the why. This is where descriptive research comes in.

(ii) Casual Research:

When companies want to establish a cause and effect relationship among two or more variables, they use causal research methods. Similar to descriptive research, causal research is quantifiable. But instead of merely reporting on a situation, causal research methods use experiments to predict and test theories about a company’s products and marketing efforts. Researchers manipulate chosen variables with the hope that a certain effect will result. For instance, a business might devise an experiment to see what would happen to sales if their product’s packaging was changed or if their advertisements were altered in some way. Although this research can be informative, basing any action on its results should be tempered by conclusions drawn from other types of research, as it is very hard to isolate and verify any one variable’s ability to cause any given effect.

The following are examples of research objectives for causal research design:

• To assess the impacts of foreign direct investment on the levels of economic growth in Kuala Lumpur
• To analyse the effects of re-branding initiatives on the levels of customer loyalty
• To identify the nature of impact of work process re-engineering on the levels of employee motivation