Question

Al Shams tiles manufactures marbles, tiles and sanitary appliances. They manufacture the goods on a large scale and supply it to different cities of the country. The industry is located close to a residential area. People living close to the area had a complaint with higher authorities to shift the industry to other suitable area. They had a complaint because industry makes a lot of noise during the production process, makes dust and creates mobility issues for the people. The higher authorities after enquiry, ordered for an immediate shutdown of industry.

Al Shams tiles management have already filed an appeal in a court to give enough time so they can move the industry elsewhere. The decision of the court may take few weeks. Due to the expected shut down, Al Shams management is worried about their production and future demand. Meanwhile, Al Shams have to meet their day to day expenses.

They have less resources available to pay its liabilities and wages to their employees for the coming months. If they have to change the location of their industry to another place, they have to bear a lot of cost for shifting. All the machines and equipment’s will be relocated and fixed again. Before shifting to another location, the management has to consider many factors.   

1. In your opinion, how will Al Shams tiles make a research and a survey for the selection of best possible location and resources for their business? What advice would you like to give to the

management of Al Shams tiles, to consider CSR?                                                           

                                                           

2. If you are the accountant of Al Shams tiles, how would you analyze the financial cost of shifting the business. What changes will you expect in your annual returns?   

Your answer should be around 400 words for each question.

Answer 1

(a). 1. Define your buyer persona.

Before you dive into how customers in your industry make buying decisions, you must first understand who they are. This is the beginning of your primary market research — where buyer personas come in handy.

Buyer personas — sometimes referred to as marketing personas — are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers. They help you visualize your audience, streamline your communications, and inform your strategy. Some key characteristics you should be keen on including in your buyer persona are:   

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Job title(s)
• Job titles
• Family size
• Income
• Major challenges

To get started with creating your personas, check out these free templates, as well as this helpful tool.These resources are designed to help you organize your audience segments, collect the right information, select the right format, and so on.

You may find that your business lends itself to more than one persona — that's fine! You just need to be sure that you're being thoughtful about the specific persona you are optimizing for when planning content and campaigns.

2. Identify a portion of that persona to engage.

Now that you know who your buyer personas are, you'll need to find a representative sample of your target customers to understand their actual characteristics, challenges, and buying habits.

These should be folks who recently made a purchase (or purposefully decided not to make one), and you can meet with them in a number of ways:

• In-person via a focus group
• Administering an online survey
• Individual phone interviews

We've developed a few guidelines and tips that'll help you get the right participants for your research. Let's walk through them.

Choosing Which Buyers to Survey

When choosing whom you want to engage to conduct market research, start with the characteristics that apply to your buyer persona. This will vary for every organization, but here are some additional guidelines that will apply to just about any scenario:

• Shoot for 10 participants per buyer persona. We recommend focusing on one persona, but if you feel it's necessary to research multiple personas, be sure to recruit a separate sample group for each one.
• Select people who have recently interacted with you. You may want to focus on folks that have completed an evaluation within the past six months — or up to a year if you have a longer sales cycle or niche market. You'll be asking very detailed questions so it's important that their experience is fresh.
• Aim for a mix of participants. You want to recruit people who have purchased your product, folks who purchased a competitor's product, and a few who decided not to purchase anything at all. While your own customers will be the easiest to find and recruit, sourcing information from others will help you develop a balanced view.

3. Engage your market research participants.

Market research firms have panels of people they can pull from when they want to conduct a study. The trouble is, most individual marketers don't have that luxury — and that's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, the time you'll spend recruiting exclusively for your study will often lead to better participants.of deals that closed within the past six months and filter it for the characteristics you're looking for. Otherwise, you can work with your sales team to get a list of appropriate accounts from them.

4. Prepare your research questions.

The best way to make sure you get the most out of your conversations is to be prepared. You should always create a discussion guide — whether it's for a focus group, online survey, or a phone interview — to make sure you cover all of the top-of-mind questions and use your time wisely.

(Note: This is not intended to be a script. The discussions should be natural and conversational, so we encourage you to go out of order or probe into certain areas as you see fit.)

Your discussion guide should be in an outline format, with a time allotment and open-ended questions allotted for each section.

Background Information (5 Minutes)

Ask the buyer to give you a little background information (their title, how long they've been with the company, and so on). Then, ask a fun/easy question to warm things up (first concert attended, favorite restaurant in town, last vacation, etc.).

Remember, you want to get to know your buyers in pretty specific ways. You might be able to capture basic information such as age, location, and job title from your contact list, there are some personal and professional challenges you can really only learn by asking. Here are some other key background questions to ask your target audience:

• Describe to me how your work team is structured.
• Tell me about your personal job responsibilities.
• What are the team's goals and how do you measure them?
• What has been your biggest challenge in the past year?

Now, make a transition to acknowledge the specific purchase or interaction they made that led to you including them in the study. The next three stages of the buyer's journey will focus specifically on that purchase.

Awareness (5 Minutes)

Here, you want to understand how they first realized they had a problem that needed to be solved without getting into whether or not they knew about your brand yet.

• Think back to when you first realized you needed a [name the product/service category, but not yours specifically]. What challenges were you facing at the time?
• How did you know that something in this category could help you?
• How familiar were you with different options on the market?

Consideration (10 Minutes)

Now you want to get very specific about how and where the buyer researched potential solutions. Plan to interject to ask for more details.

• What was the first thing you did to research potential solutions? How helpful was this source?
• Where did you go to find more information?

If they don't come up organically, ask about search engines, websites visited, people consulted, and so on. Probe, as appropriate, with some of the following questions:

• How did you find that source?
• How did you use vendor websites?
• What words specifically did you search on Google?
• How helpful was it? How could it be better?
• Who provided the most (and least) helpful information? What did that look like?
• Tell me about your experiences with the sales people from each vendor.

Decision (10 Minutes)

• Which of the sources you described above was the most influential in driving your decision?
• What, if any, criteria did you establish to compare the alternatives?
• What vendors made it to the short list and what were the pros/cons of each?
• Who else was involved in the final decision? What role did each of these people play?
• What factors ultimately influenced your final purchasing decision?

Closing

Here, you want to wrap up and understand what could have been better for the buyer.

• Ask them what their ideal buying process would look like. How would it differ from what they experienced?
• Allow time for further questions on their end.
• Don't forget to thank them for their time and confirm their address to send a thank-you note or incentive.

5. List your primary competitors.

Understanding your competitors begins your secondary market research. But keep in mind competition isn't always as simple as Company X versus Company Y.

Identifying Industry Competitors

To identify competitors whose products or services overlap with yours, determine which industry or industries you're pursuing. Start high-level, using terms like education, construction, media & entertainment, food service, healthcare, retail, financial services, telecommunications, and agriculture.contenders, leaders, niche, and high performers in their respective industries. G2 Crowd specializes in digital content, IT services, HR, ecommerce, and related business services.

Identifying Content Competitors

Search engines are your best friends in this area of secondary market research. To find the online publications with which you compete, take the overarching industry term you identified in the section above, and come up with a handful of more specific industry terms your company identifies with.A

6. Summarize your findings.

Feeling overwhelmed by the notes you took? We suggest looking for common themes that will help you tell a story and create a list of action items.

To make the process easier, try using your favorite presentation software to make a report, as it will make it easy to add in quotes, diagrams, or call clips. Feel free to add your own flair, but the following outline should help you craft a clear summary:

• Background. Your goals and why you conducted this study.
• Participants. Who you talked to. A table works well so you can break groups down by persona and customer/prospect.
• Executive Summary. What were the most interesting things you learned? What do you plan to do about it?
• Awareness. Describe the common triggers that lead someone to enter into an evaluation. Note: Quotes can be very powerful.
• Consideration. Provide the main themes you uncovered, as well as the detailed sources buyers use when conducting their evaluation.
• Decision. Paint the picture of how a decision is really made by including the people at the center of influence and any product features or information that can make or break a deal.
• Action Plan. Your analysis probably uncovered a few campaigns you can run to get your brand in front of buyers earlier and/or more effectively. Provide your list of priorities, a timeline, and the impact it will have on your business.

It’s incredibly important that your company operates in a way that demonstrates social responsibility. Although it’s not a legal requirement, it’s seen as good practice for you to take into account social and environmental issues.consumers are increasingly aware of the importance of social responsibility, and actively seek products from businesses that operate ethically. CSR demonstrates that you’re a business that takes an interest in wider social issues, rather than just those that impact your profit margins, which will attract customers who share the same values. Therefore, it makes good business sense to operate sustainably.

The benefits of CSR speak volumes about how important it is and why you should make an effort to adopt it in your business.

Some clear benefits of corporate social responsibility are:

• Improved public image. This is crucial, as consumers assess your public image when deciding whether to buy from you. Something simple, like staff members volunteering an hour a week at a charity, shows that you’re a brand committed to helping others. As a result, you’ll appear much more favourable to consumers.
• Increased brand awareness and recognition. If you’re committed to ethical practices, this news will spread. More people will therefore hear about your brand, which creates an increased brand awareness.
• Cost savings. Many simple changes in favour of sustainability, such as using less packaging, will help to decrease your production costs.
• An advantage over competitors. By embracing CSR, you stand out from competitors in your industry. You establish yourself as a company committed to going one step further by considering social and environmental factors.
• Increased customer engagement. If you’re using sustainable systems, you should shout it from the rooftops. Post it on your social media channels and create a story out of your efforts. Furthermore, you should show your efforts to local media outlets in the hope they’ll give it some coverage. Customers will follow this and engage with your brand and operations.
• Greater employee engagement.Similar to customer engagement, you also need to ensure that your employees know your CSR strategies. It’s proven that employees enjoy working more for a company that has a good public image than one that doesn’t. Furthermore, by showing that you’re committed to things like human rights, you’re much more likely to attract and retain the top candidates.
• More benefits for employees. There are also a range of benefits for your employees when you embrace CSR. Your workplace will be a more positive and productive place to work, and by promoting things like volunteering, you encourage personal and professional growth. (b) financial cost analysis:

  First, you must consider the cost of moving from one location to another. The bigger the distance, the higher the potential cost for the move. For example, relocating a 3000 person office across country will be a lot more expensive than moving a 20 person office across town.

  However, in both scenarios you would want to assess if the cost benefit outweighs the actual cost of making the move.

  Next, you’ll want to consider how the overhead costs of your new location will impact your everyday operations. Things like your lease or mortgage payments, utilities, shipping, and wages could all be impacted.

  Next, you’ll want to think about the “hidden” costs of moving. These hidden costs could be different for every organization, so it is important for the people involved in the relocation decision to thoroughly assess any financial surprises that could show up as a result of the moving

  Taxes

  When moving counties, states, or even countries it is important to assess the tax situation of your new location. Depending on where you are moving to, and your original location, taxes could have a huge impact on the profitability of your organization.

  Some businesses also receive tax creditsfor having an office in different locations, so make sure to weigh those when thinking through the tax impacts of your relocation.Depending on the skill sets needed by your workers, and the pool of qualified candidates in New York, your company might also have to increase their spend on training over the long term as well. For example, there are ton of workers with farm science knowledge in Kansas, but probably fewer in New York.

  Exit charges
  As part of any restructuring, the exit charges in moving a function or asset out of a jurisdiction need to be included in relocation costs. For most countries, there will be a tax charge on exit. However, with planning it is often possible to minimise the charge arising on exit or defer such a charge.
  If moving within the EU there is also the argument that such charges are discriminatory and contrary to EU law and in particular the Freedom of Establishment and Free Movement of Capital.
  Indirect taxes
  Thought needs to be given where any restructuring alters the flow of goods, services or other payments. For example royalty, interest and dividend flows need to be modelled
  to ensure that the resultant structure would not lead to additional taxes. Where there is a physical movement of goods or services, indirect tax cost leakage (particularly sales taxes and duties) will need to be built into the cost of the restructuring.