Marketing Research and Marketing Activities

Marketing Research and Marketing Activities

Of

Walkers

Introduction

The business that I have chosen to write about in this Assignment is Walkers potato chips. Walkers were first thought of in 1948 during the Second World War by a man called Henry Walker, who was a butcher and also owned a butcher shop. As meat was put on rations during that time Mr Walkers' shop was sold out of meat every day in the early morning, as the factory was only working a half-capacity Mr Walker pondered over a way to make better use of his shop and his workers. Then it came to his attention that potato chips were enormously popular with the public, so he thought he would give it a go. Today Walkers are Britain's favourite crisp and the biggest crisp manufacturer, employing over 4,000 people in 15 locations.

Walkers also operates in Europe and America but under the name Frito-Lays, which is an American company formed by the formation of two successful companies the Frito company foundered by Elmer Doolin of San Antonio, selling corn chips and the H.W Lay company foundered by Herman W. Lay of Nashville, who sold potato chips, the merger took place in September 1961. After the merger of these two companies it was said that Frito-Lay was the largest snack selling company in the United States.

Frito-Lay Inc. and Pepsi-Cola announced plans of a merger of the two companies, and just as they planned

a merger was formed on the 8th June 1965, and from that point on the parent company of these two businesses is PEPSICO International. Today, Frito-Lay has over 15 $100million brands.

Walkers Crisp packets when they Walkers Crisp packets now

first were being produced.

Marketing Research

Walkers undertake a lot of market research, using a verity of methods. Of-course Walkers do not do all of this market research themselves in some cases they might find the need to hire outside assistance from a market research company, Green Books is a search engine that is able to help the company to find what elements are shaping the market sector. The market research companies mentioned above have a number of techniques that they can use to carry out market research, such as:

* Telemarketing

* Advertisement Effectiveness

* Brand Loyalty/ Satisfaction

* Competitive Intelligence

* Sales Effectiveness/ The Marketing Mix

* Product Development/ Testing

* Questionnaires

* Primary

* Secondary etc.

Secondary research is research already undertaken by market intelligence companies such as MINTEL and Keynotes and also government reports and surveys. Research undertaken by companies such as MINTEL is usually very expensive but extremely useful, as it gives the company a good insight of the market as figures and facts are kept up to date.

A drawback of using secondary research can be found as the data is not tailor made to own needs, hence the information may not be enough for the company to produce an accurate marketing strategy.

Primary research is research that is gathered directly from people within the target market. Information can be gathered by carrying out surveys, questionnaire, telephone interviews etc...

Companies such as Walkers usually produce regular surveys of customer satisfaction as an important way of measuring the quality of customer service.

Walkers would use primary research extensively in new product development, to determine what segment is maximising the consumption of the product, as well as analysing the position of the company within the market sector, when benchmarked with the competitors.

Quantitative Research

Quantitative research asks pre-set questions on a large enough sample of people to provide statistically valid data. Questionnaires can answer factual questions such as 'How many 16 - 20- year- olds have heard of Walkers crisps?' There are three key aspects to quantitative research:

* Sampling, i.e. ensuring that the research results are typical of the whole population, thought only a sample of the population has been interviewed.

* Writing a questionnaire that is unbiased and meets the research objectives.

* Assessing the validity of the results.

SAMPLING

Random Sampling:

Selecting respondents to ensure that everyone in the population has an equal chance of being interviewed. This may sound easy, but its not, as you are asking those people who are not at work, not in a car, not in a rush or have time to respond, so if you undertake random sampling this was your results would be biased.

So achieving a truly random sample requires careful thought. Research companies use the following method:

* Pick names at random from the electronic register, e.g. every 50th name.

* Send an interviewer to the address given in the register.

* If the person is out, visit up to twice more before giving up (this is to maximise the chance of catching those who lead busy social lives, and are rarely at home).

This method is effective, but slow and expensive.

Quota Sampling:

Selecting interviewees in proportion to the consumer profile within your target market. This method allows interviewers to head for busy street corners, interviewing whoever comes along.

This is used most commonly by market research companies.

Stratified Sampling:

Only interview