Marketing Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Marketing - Research Paper Example The customer oriented approach has won her many laurels and once the customer enters her store, they keep coming every 7-10 days to purchase more products. Her success lies in offering what customer needs. Growth is a way of life and Kudler too wants to expand suitably selecting right product mix and targeting potential customers. Currently, markets and the demographics of the region are rapidly changing due to movement of the people across the states and nations. Though Kudler offers a great promise as a discerning gourmet store in the California region; nevertheless, it becomes essential for the firm to conduct some essential market research before putting its scarce and valuable resources on the business expansion. Identifying and Defining Marketing Issues In order to expand, Kudler needs to identify places where it can open new gourmet stores. After a setback from Del Mar location, the company is quite conscious of finding the most lucrative locations in California. Del Mar was a small town with not enough population to support its store. Through the market intelligence, the company has already identified some of the promising locations such as San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Palm Springs but before starting its store at any of these locations, the company must ensure through a proper market research that its decision to expand will not backfire. Carlsbad is one such site that shows enormous potential and once store at Carlsbad gets steam, Del Mar store may be gradually phased out. Marketing Research for Finding Potential Locations The company is well aware of the fact that the most specialty gourmet stores are located in the eastern half of the US and they do a roaring business there. In the last few years or so a sizeable population has moved from Philadelphia, New York, and New Jersey to the west coast due to job prospects in technology sector and these populations are well aware about the concept of gourmet stores. In view of the various al ternatives, the major issue is to find the most promising locations where residents of the area are aware about the concept and would always be eager to patronize such stores if they find one in their area. Before taking a final plunge, the company needs to conduct a survey in the towns of Palm Springs, Santa Barbara, San Diego, and San Francisco. The survey will involve asking a set of questions through a skillfully prepared questionnaire to the randomly selected but representative target customers to explore the real potential in the area. The questionnaire needs to be designed skillfully so that the real objective of the survey to find the most potential location is fulfilled. This is crucial because once the store is opened making huge investments on infrastructures there is no way out to go back. Marketing Research for Choosing Appropriate Product-Mix Moreover, the company has been thinking to open Asian Specialty Produce Department at San Francisco area to meet the needs of As ian population – especially the fresh herbs, and spices. The idea is to serve a special group of Asian customers who can not only afford the special product offerings but always eager to patronize the store quite often. That simply means that before opening a shop at this area, it would be advisable to do some market research that will decide about the core Asian community group such as Japanese, Chinese, Korean or Indian subcontinent region that the company wants to target at. These Asian groups differ in their taste and