Research in Marketing

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Introduction

Marketing research is an essential concept for any company, and actually, each company must have a department exclusively for market research purposes. Through marketing research, JC PENNY Company will be able to know what customers want, how successful the company is, and identify problems and opportunities in the market so that they can refine their marketing strategies. In this research paper, we are going to analyze and interpret the primary and secondary data collected. We will also look at the research findings and provide a summary, and lastly, we will make recommendations for JC PENNY Company and other companies in the same industry.

Data Analysis and Interpretation

Data analysis and interpretation are meant to give meaning to the collected raw data. Data collected was both primary and secondary data through qualitative and quantitative research. There are several ways in which primary data can be analyzed, including interviews, surveys, observational and generalizing results. Secondary data is analyzed by trying to use the information provided by someone else to answer the research question. I also used qualitative and quantitative analysis. In qualitative analysis, I used subjective judgment to analyze the company’s value based on information such as experts in management, how strong the department of research and development is, and labor relations. In quantitative analysis, I used financial instruments to analyze financial statements to try and predict events such as inflation and changes in Gross Domestic Product (Malhotra, Nunan & Birks, 2017).

Data interpretation helped to bring some sense into numerical data collected, analyzed, and presented. I interpreted qualitative data by giving codes to all the results and reviewing the themes to make sure they fit the data collected and getting familiar with primary and secondary data collected. For quantitative data, I used pie charts and bar graphs.

Regarding the question of what other challenges could Jc Penny be facing, 40% of the respondents said their biggest challenge is competition from other companies producing quality goods and selling them at an affordable price. 25% said that finance is another issue that has hindered the company from situating their stores in almost every state. 30% of the respondents stated that the company has unqualified personnel and has not had enough convincing power to ensure that consumers are more attracted towards buying the company’s product. Especially during this era of covid-19, raw materials is also another problem, as 5% of the respondents said.

(Goulding, 2015).

If you look critically into the sales margin, it is clear that it has been decreasing from the year 2018 up to now. The reason could be because of the challenges interpreted in the pie chart above. In 2018 they made a lot of sales, but they could not sustain that positive curve due to competition and other factors such as the emergence of COVD-19 that made so many people lose their jobs; hence they have no money budgeted for luxury purposes.

Research Findings

From this marketing research, I have realized that it is not that JC PENNY Company is not producing quality products; the issue is competition and challenge in meeting the needs of a specific target market. Since the company produces several products, they should be sold in different market segments. For example, I found out that the sales teams have been advertising and jewelry to those living in low-income areas, and their main concern is basic needs. Products such as furniture should be the ones to be sold in such areas. Therefore we have not identified our market segment and target and what they want. I have also noted that our products are high both in terms of quality and prices allocated for each of them due to the high cost of raw materials. We can also partner with upcoming companies that have established their foundations and convince them to become part of us to avoid the element of competition (Zikmund et al., 2017)

Conclusions and Recommendations

In conclusion, companies and other marketers should never forget that research is a going process, and they should make it part of their daily activities. Without research, companies would not know what their competitors are doing and what can make them gain a competitive advantage after identifying their weaknesses. Opportunity costs should not be ignored as they are part of production costs. Before marketers engage in any research, they must outline their objectives and conduct market research. Companies should continuously study their customers to produce goods that will satisfy their wants and needs. Marketing research results should be shared with employees to ensure that their activities are geared towards accomplishing the objectives as to why the research was done. I would recommend that JC PENNY go online as it is a cheaper and easier way of doing business since they do not need ample space for more stores in different states; they will only be making deliveries to their customers at a small fee (Laudon & Traver, 2019). The company should also conduct a study to identify what their competitors are doing best to make them successful. To succeed, they need to ensure they meet their customer’s needs in various markets to ensure an increase in customer satisfaction, making the company’s image in the marketplace more optimistic than before. The management should ensure that the team in charge of sales and marketing of the company’s product receives enough training on handling different types of customers and how to convince them to make a purchase.

References

Goulding, C. (2015). Grounded theory, ethnography and phenomenology: A comparative analysis of three qualitative strategies for marketing research. European Journal of Marketing.

Laudon, K. C., & Traver, C. G. (2019). E-commerce. Boston, MA: Pearson.

Malhotra, N., Nunan, D., & Birks, D. (2017). Marketing research: An applied approach. Pearson.

Zikmund, W. G., D’Alessandro, S., Winzar, H., Lowe, B., & Babin, B. (2017). Marketing research. Sydney: Cengage Learning.

Sales competition finance sales personnel lnadequate raw materials 0.4 0.25 0.3 0.05 sales Year 2018 Year 2019 Year 2020 Year 2021 60 45 28 4.5 Year 2018 Year 2019 Year 2020 Year 2021 Series 3 Year 2018 Year 2019 Year 2020 Year 2021