Rory Ball-Reeder

Assignment 2 – Marketing Research

Introduction:

During this assignment I will be explaining the market researching techniques that John Lewis uses to help towards their market plan.

Quantitative: Quantitative research is where you collect data in the forms of facts e.g. 8 out of 10 men liked using Lynx out of a survey of 200.

Insert screen shot evidence from ‘John Lewis Marketing Info booklet’

Qualitative: Qualitative research is where you collect data in the form of what people like, their options and motivations.

Insert screen shot evidence from ‘John Lewis Marketing Info booklet’

Primary Research: Primary research is where you go out and collect the data yourself one of the problems with this is that it takes time and money to do so. However some of the good points are that it provides you with more accurate data and it allows you to make sure that the data is showing what you want it to show. Another good point about this is that you can pick how big the range of data is, and the bigger the range of data the more accurate it is.

Insert screen shot evidence from ‘John Lewis Marketing Info booklet’

Secondary Research: Secondary research is where you get your data/research from someone else. This could mean that your data is not as reliable and might not be showing everything that you want it to another problem with this is that you have to make sure you say where you got the data from and that you don’t pass it off as your own otherwise it is copyrighting. One of the good points is that it doesn’t cost anything and it is easy to get hold of.

Insert screen shot evidence from ‘John Lewis Marketing Info booklet’

Marketing Plans:

P.E.S.T.L.E.:

- Political Factors – Political factors are the factors which the business is not able to control. This means the business will have to make sure that they look out for these kinds of changes so they can make their own changes to the business so that the political changes don’t affect them. If a recession hit then John Lewis would have to make changes in order for them to still cope through the recession. One of the ways they could do that is by lowering their spending, or they could not buy as many products as they might have done because not as many people will be able to afford them. Another change they could make is by lowering their prices in stores and online.

- Economic Factors – Economic factors are factors which will affect how a business performs. This could be caused by the national and international economy doing well or badly. Some of the causes of the economy doing well or badly could be a rise in employed and employees demanding more money, there is a bigger demand for the product, recession (caused by the products are no longer being demanded or lack of demands and it could lead to a rise in the unemployed) or when businesses are trying to recover from the recession which would mean there is a rise in demand and employment etc. John Lewis would have dealt with this when they were at a low point in sales before and during January 2009 as you can see in the print screen below. This meant that John Lewis had to think of ways of attracting their business and increasing the amount of money they will make

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how they did this was by making TV adverts which worked really well this can be seen from one of the print screens below.

These print screens came from the following website: https://www.marketingsociety.com/sites/default/files/thelibrary/John%20Lewis.pdf

- Social Factors – Social factors are the factors which are caused by people’s beliefs and values. For example age, size, gender, ethnicity, how much money they make (income), education, and what job they might have etc. this helps businesses to create products which people will like because this will help them to come up with products which suit everyone’s needs or what they want. For example they could create a dress which is for all sizes of women and all ages of women which also doesn’t cost too much to put people off. Another example could be they would create a variety of different but the same products e.g. they could offer a variety of different types of laptop at lots of different prices and all different designs (looks) and they would also offer a variety of different things on the laptop (storage, internet, HD, touch screen, whether or not it comes with Microsoft 2015 etc). The reason they would do this is to make sure that there is a product available to everyone and what they might want/use it for. John Lewis does this by making sure that they offer as big as variety of product/s as possible and also a variety of different brands which people can buy. This is because they like to think about their customers and what they might want so in order to keep their customers happy they offer a massive variety. They also offer a variety of different brands because some people like to buy only from certain brands because this way they know they will get a good product/s they also do this because this helps people find out what they are looking for (certain products e.g. Lego Star Wars Republic Gunship) a lot easier.

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http://www.johnlewis.com/browse/toys/lego/lego-star-wars/_/N-f96 this is the website address for the Lego Star Wars Republic Gunship which I talk about briefly in my work.

The print screen above shows a small amount of some of the variety of BBQ’s on offer to their customers which came from the following website: http://www.johnlewis.com/browse/home-garden/garden-conservatory/bbqs-outdoor-cooking/_/N-5upb?intcmp=bbqs%c2%ad_-outdoor_cooking_bbqsc700002292_Block1_bbqs_16022015 this print screen contains 6 out of 46 BBQ’s from this page.

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The print screen above shows you some of the brands which they have on offer to customers just for the letter A. This print screen came from the following website: http://www.johnlewis.com/brands

- Technological Development – Technological development is a way that businesses can advertise their products or a way of selling their products e.g. on a website or over the phone etc. This could also cause businesses to lose business the reason for this is because businesses who develop a website for customers to buy their products from first normally tend to gain extra customers and sometimes even the competitor’s customers. The reason for this is because it is a more efficient way of buying products rather than having to go to the stores which some people might not be able to do. For example Waterstones would have lost some of their customers when the business Amazon came to be because Amazon where able to offer the same product just online and for much cheaper. The reason Amazon gained some of Waterstones customers is because instead of having to go to the stores to buy a book (like in Waterstones) they could buy it on line. Also the reason Amazon could offer lower prices than Waterstones is because Waterstones had to charge more because they have stores/building they have to run as well as they will also have more employees to pay because they have employees who work in the stores. Whereas Amazon doesn’t have to worry about charging extra because they don’t have any stores/building they only have a warehouse where all the products come from and gets sent from by post. Meaning they will also have less employees to pay. Not only that, other businesses could also use Amazon to sell their product on. Whereas at the time Waterstones didn’t have a website therefore meaning they would of lost some business. John Lewis has a website to make it easier for their customers to buy their product from and also to make it so that they don’t have to go into stores to buy the products. Whereas some of its competitors might not have a website therefore John Lewis would have an upper hand in the running of their business and would also make more money this way.

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The print screen above is of John Lewis’s website which they use to sell their products. The print screen came from the following website: http://www.johnlewis.com/.

I used the following websites I used to help me with the information above about Technology Development: http://www.amazon.co.uk/, https://www.waterstones.com/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterstones.

- Legal Development – Legal development is laws which get put in place which will in some way affect a business and how it is run, or it could be laws which are already in place which affects businesses in what they can or can’t do and in how they run it, or it could be laws which are already in place which might just have some adjustments every now and then which the business will then have to adjust to. For example the Data Protection Act is a law which all businesses have to follow because otherwise they will be breaking the law. The Data Protection Act is an act which is set by government which means that businesses have to follow strict guide lines when it comes to taking customers details/information. John Lewis also has to make sure that they follow the Sales for Goods Act which is where they have to provide their customers with quality goods otherwise they will have to give them a replacement or money back or even store credit etc. otherwise they would not be following the quality goods act which means they could lose a lot of money from because they could be sued and could even be potentially closedown.

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The above print screens came from the following website: http://www.johnlewis.com/customer-services/information-about-ordering-and-returning-products#cq-or-return

I used the following websites I used to help me with the information above about Legal Development: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Act_1998, http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1979/54 and https://www.gov.uk/data-protection/the-data-protection-act.

- Environmental Factors – Environmental factors are factors which involve social, political and legal factors/aspects. For example a business may choose to package their products in recyclable packaging. This would then make people/customers feel better about buying from that business because there is a very quickly growing concern with left over waste in the world and by doing this, this would help lower the amount of waste from products. John Lewis uses boxes to package their products as you can see from the print screen below. The reason they use boxes is because they try to make sure that their packaging is able to be reused (recycled). However I couldn’t find enough information about John Lewis and it’s packaging to find out whether they only use boxes (forms of recyclable packaging) but I would think that they would try to do the best they can in making sure that as much as possible is recyclable. But this is just my option on what I think they might do and not what I know they do due to the lack of information.

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http://www.johnlewis.com/john-lewis-connoisseur-red-wine-glasses-0-6l-set-of-4/p231219279 this is where the print screen above came from.

S.W.O.T.:

- Strengths – They get people to fill out questionnaires which helps them to understand what they are doing well and what they are doing wrong. This would also help them to highlight where they are going right and where they are going wrong.

John Lewis uses its marketing research to work out what they strengths are. One of the ways the ways that they market their business is by creating TV adverts where they will then use information which they would gain over a period of time to see whether their TV adverts were successful or not. Some of the data they would use to see whether this is one of their strengths would be; the amount of people that have seen the TV advert, the amount of people who visited John Lewis before the advert and after, the amount of money they were making before and after. There is also a number of ways they could find out certain information about the TV advert/s (what people thought about the advert and whether or not they have seen it or even recommended it to someone to see) could be by questionnaires. From this data they could then highlight whether this was successful and therefore their strengths or unsuccessful meaning it was a one of their weaknesses. From the information I found you can see that John Lewis’s TV adverts was one of their strengths. Another strength with John Lewis is that they don’t spend as much as what some of their competitors do which is a good point because they will want to try and spend as little money as possible but also make it as effective as possible at the same time. So the money that they spent was very well spent in my eyes because at the end of the day this has helped them out do their rivals.

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All these print screens above came from the following website: https://www.marketingsociety.com/sites/default/files/thelibrary/John%20Lewis.pdf also further information about how successful John Lewis’s TV adverts really were can also be found on this website.

- Weaknesses – A weakness that John Lewis has is that it doesn’t look into enough areas for them to compete in. For example new products, new markets, new customers etc. Another could be that they are not carrying the best method of collecting their research instead they could post questionnaires on Facebook for people to fill out. On other words they could just try to get hold of a bigger range of research and data by advertising to people to fill out questionnaires about what they think of the company etc.

One of John Lewis’s weaknesses with their marketing is that it took them so long to realise that TV adverts are the best way for them to advertise their business and what to put into their adverts. This is because their adverts need to be attractive and affective towards customers because otherwise it would have just been a waste of money and they wouldn’t actually gain any more customers from it.

- Opportunities – John Lewis is the future have a great amount of opportunities available to them when it comes to making changes to their market research one of the opportunities are that it could look into other methods of conducting further research and even lot into finding better and even more successful data from this. They could also collect their data in a bigger range which would provide them with better research for them to take action on.

- Threats – John Lewis as any business has some potential threats to their market research these could be that they might not be thinking about everyone which could be a potential buyer but only people that can afford their products. Another threat to their market research is that they are not carrying out the most effective way of collect their data for example they could advertise on TV after the advert to people to give feedback on their website about what they thought about the advert and what they could do better. The reason they might want to do this is because this will help them to get a better result from their audience and even better research.

S.M.A.R.T.:

- Specific – What is meant by specific is that does the objective to do with what you are trying to do.

- Measureable – What is meant by measurable is are you able to see any improvement or not. You would use data to help you work out whether it have worked or not and if you are able to measure the effectiveness.

- Achievable – What is meant by achievable is are you able to reach your goal/objective.

- Realistic – What is meant by realistic is does it mean anything towards your business e.g. will it matter whether or not you complete that objective or not and will it have any effect to your business.

- Time/Time Bound – What is meant by time is are you able to complete the objective in the time period you have given yourself.

John Lewis should use this to help them marketing research because this will help them to set little goals to help you to reach your overall aim of what they are intending to find out with their market research.

Market Strategy and Tactics:

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John Lewis uses marketing strategy and tactics to help them to make an analysis on what their targets are and then helping them to complete their goal/s. How this helps them to do this is because this helps them to come up with some strategies and tactics which will help them to make their market research even more successful and to help them to use their resources better to get to these objectives.

One of their strategies that they have used is the christmas campaign which have had a massive effect to how well they are doing because this has generated a massive amount of customers which now go to John Lewis whereas before they didn’t have anywhere near as many customers or even very many regualr customers whereas now they tend to get customers all the time and people also tend to go there a lot more often than they used to. This has meant that they are now making more money than they used to be as well as they are also better off than they used to be because at one point they were really strugglling whereas now they don’t seem to be.

Another strategy/tatic they have used is by making their TV adverts more emotional to the viewers which has caused people to have a better relationship with them for it. It has also encouraged more people to spend their money at John Lewis instead of one of its competitors. They have also made it so that the adverts are more appelling to everyone by making it more acctractive and even more effective than what they used to be due to the emotional contection to the viewers.

Futhur more another strategy they had was building a better name for itself in the sence of creating a better reputation for its brand. So what they did is after the recession they tried a stategy which they were surposed to be doing but achually weren’t which was to get a good name for the brand by offering quality service and products at low prices. how they did this was through their advertising their business and how it has been there for all those years looking after their customers and always being there for them. This approach was very successful because it helped with getting people to get to know John Lewis all over again just like if it was a new start and it was a bran new business. This helped incourage people to visit John Lewis’s stores which is where then they started their main ploy of their plan which was to provide a very good service and products at low prices which is where everything started to fit into place. Which was very effective and very misdivious because they are basicly hooking someone by bate.

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https://www.marketingsociety.com/sites/default/files/6288%20MS%20case%20studies%20John%20Lewis_v6.pdf this is where the print screen above came from.

There was another strategy which John Lewis used which was very smart and worked efficently because it made people do/feel exacly how they wanted them to do/feel from the adverts. Which was to make the adverts emtional in order to make the viewers feel all emtional. The reason they did this was because this would help to build a better bond/relationship between them and the viewers which is what they wanted because this would make the chances that they would go to the John Lewis stores even greater and potecnhially even making them customers out of it.

The above print screens came from the following website: https://www.marketingsociety.com/sites/default/files/6288%20MS%20case%20studies%20John%20Lewis_v6.pdf

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The above print screens came from the following website: https://www.marketingsociety.com/sites/default/files/thelibrary/John%20Lewis.pdf

Limitations:

John Lewis’s market plan is to try to sell anything they can to customers at prices they can afford. Is to also understand how they customers shop look and live their lives. They also to try offer a massive range of products to their customers. They also try to offer the best service available to customers. They also don’t care about whether the customers is a big spender or a little spender because every purchase matters.

Reliability: The data they have collected is reliable because they have collect a load of data of how they were doing market wise over a couple of years so it should be very accurate. However in their graph they only have an average but I think to give themselves a better understanding of how well they did I think they should have a graph which has all the data on as well as a graph which has an average on the reason being is because this way they can see how they are really doing and then round it off to an average to make it easier to read but also just to highlight an overall outcome. Whereas having the other graph which shows how they are doing exactly this will show you how you got the average and also can be used to highlight any outliers which might have affected their data. On the graph they should also have their competitors data before it has been averaged this is because this will also give a greater understanding on how well they really are doing compared to their competitors because again there may be some outliers which could have altered the data. So in some ways it is reliable but in some ways it isn’t I think in the graph they should also list the business they are comparing John Lewis to the reason for this is because if they are putting a lot of businesses data together and then making an average then that means the data is not reliable what so ever not just that they don’t actually tell you how many businesses they are comparing John Lewis to which makes it even harder to work out how well they really are doing. What they could have done is compared themselves between a number of different businesses which offer the same products but each of them on different graphs this is because this will make it easier for you to read and understand. However will can also not know really how well this data is because we don’t know whether or not they have only done this for one store or all the stores which makes the data even more unreliable than I first thought. However there are certain parts of their data where it will be 100% accurate other than the fact that by know it might need up dating but at the time it would have been fully accurate. The part which I mean is the part where they put how many viewers they have had on YouTube for each of the different adverts because that is something that you can’t go wrong on and if I wanted to just check that data I could just look up the advert on

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YouTube and see how many views it has had however like I said before they will be different know because at the time that is what they would have been as since then there is bound to be more people that have seen them. Not only that they only took that data for the views on YouTube for the first 3 month only for each advert. What also might make the data seem even more unreliable is the fact that they don’t tell you how they collected the data or even the range of data they collected for example they could of included the amount of stores they took it from or the time period for some of the data or even the amount of data they collected (1000-3000 etc).

The above print screens came from the following website: https://www.marketingsociety.com/sites/default/files/thelibrary/John%20Lewis.pdf

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https://www.marketingsociety.com/sites/default/files/thelibrary/John%20Lewis.pdf this is where the print screen above came from.

Validity: The data might not be very accurate because they don’t talk about how they got the data or their range of data they took. They also don’t explain/talk about whether or not they collected the data or whether they had someone else do it for them. Although the data which they got from YouTube is accurate because they got it from a very accurate and reliable source. Not only that on the website they say underneath the YouTube video how many views that video has had and it also gets updated every hour. However the data is very valid to what they want it for because they use/get their data only for certain things and only if they need/ want it. They don’t just collect/get their data for no reason they use their data to show how well the company is doing and to compare it to their competitors to see whether or not they are doing well compared to someone else instead of just using their data. The reason comparing their data is better because this will help you to see even better how well your business is doing whether than just thinking you are doing good because you think you have good data results when actually you could be doing bad.

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/youtube/rzjMo9jcl8E this website has some information about how often YouTube updates its views.

You can see from this print screen that the John Lewis Christmas Advert 2014 #Monty The Penguin now has 23,259,139 views. This print screen came from the following website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iccscUFY860

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Costs versus benefits: I could not find any information about how much money John Lewis spends on their research. However whatever they are spending I think it is worth it because otherwise they wouldn’t have found out about how successful their TV adverts really were and still are. Another reason their research spending is good is because with their TV adverts they would have known how to make them better each year. If they didn’t have this data then they wouldn’t have known how much money they made from their adverts or how little they would have made without them. I also think their spending towards their research was good and worth it because they could of potentially went downhill and out of business if they didn’t have it to work out what they are doing well and bad with the company. This in some way would have also helped them to manage their finances a lot better.

This would all effect the market plans because these would help them to outline what to aim for and how to do it. It will also have helped them to see where their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats were with the company. These would of done this is because these would of help give them feedback to their company and show them whether their data is reliable or valid to what they are trying to achieve or even towards their data. I think without having the information which they would have got from their data and their limitations towards their market plan because these all show the effectiveness of their decisions and what they have achieved from these.

Recommendations:

The first recommendation I have towards John Lewis is that they need to show how they got their data or at least talk about their data so they can be completely sure that there results are completely accurate. The reason I say this is because if there is no record of them getting the results or anything like that then they shouldn’t be advertising the results which they got because this is breaking the law because it is classed as false advertising is a way. They should also show this information so people can look at it. The reason for this is because this in some way can help to improve the amount of customers they have because of how facts and figures influence peoples spending habits. For example someone is more likely to spend their money of a product/business who has better results in their data e.g. there is a TV advert which talks about one of Garnier’s products for hair which says on the advert that 86% of 137 women agree with that product but there could be another business/company which offer a similar product and came out with 90% pf people agreed out of 10 people yes technically the results are better in the 2nd businesses data but they have only done a range of 10 people which make the data reliable but not the most reliable because if you were to take a bigger range of data the results could be massively different e.g. they could only 21% of people agreed out of 200 people which they might of used etc. some people might not look at the data which is shown in the advert and just go by either their own experiences or even what they think is the better product. But there will still be some who will look at both sets of data and work out which one is best statically or they would try the product. However is there is someone who does dislike the product from the 2nd business then they might just think that they were that 10%. This is why John Lewis should advertise their data size, how they got the data, their results, they could even include their data compared to another and where they got that data from etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDSMowjdtKs TV advert about hair products by Garnier.

Another recommendation I have towards John Lewis and their validity is that they need to make sure that they use SMART goals and targets a lot more and a lot better. The reason for this is

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because this will help them to reach their goals a lot better and easier because this will help them to create a number of steps which will help you gradually get to their target instead of creating a target which will take a lot of money and time to get to or they might not know how to get to from where they are at the moment. This will also help give them an idea of what they are trying to achieve and how they might do it. As well as it is also very helpful to them with the understanding of how they will reach their targets. If we were to look at their aims and objectives we can see that; The aim of John Lewis is ‘We aim to attract customers, and retain and deepen the relationships with those we already have. We do this through better understanding and quickly responding to their changing needs, whether that means more competitive pricing, flexible shopping opportunities, or peace of mind about our product sourcing. Enhancing our sustainability programme will support our market position’. (All the information in red was copied from the John Lewis website: http://www.johnlewis.com/). By using SMART they can make it so much easier to get to them. For example if John Lewis wanted to use SMART to attract customer they could;

S – Create new TV advert which helps bring out the emotion in people eyes even more than the one the year before ad at the same time attract people to want to spend more money at John Lewis and to help make more people want to shop at John Lewis.

M – This is measurable because you will be able to see over the first 3 month whether it has been successful by comparing it to their TV advert from last year and the amount of views it got on YouTube and the comments about the TV advert. You will also want to compare the data about the amount of customers who visited John Lewis over that time period to see whether it was successful in that area.

A – This is definitely achievable for John Lewis because after the last couple of years doing these TV adverts they should be really good at it and also able to make one even better than the last.

R – This is realistic because at the end of the day this could cause more people to shop at John Lewis compared to other years and they want to improve the amount of customers they get because this is one of their aims.

T – In the time period they are giving it should be very easily achieved in the time period.

They can just do the same for every aim they have but with each aim they could have a number of different areas or ideas which they could use a bit like a spider diagram of SMART objectives which all come off each aim.

Third and finally a recommendation I think they could use would be to use screening to make sure that their sample represents what they want it to represent e.g. if the data is supposed to represent how well the company is doing then it should represent that and nothing else. The reason I am saying this is because some of their data has 2 sets of data in it whereas it should only have one set of data in it and the other set of data should be in another table/graph etc. The reason this is the case is because it might make it easier to read or another idea would be to put it all separate and also have one which has both parts of data in it. For example if John Lewis are comparing their data for with another business they would have a graph which has their information on separate to the graph with their own information on as well as having a graph which has both of their data on. This is so it is easier to see the different companies data separate data as well as showing where they stand compared to another business.

Bibliography:

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This is a website where I got the definition of the words which I then expanded further: http://www.wordhippo.com/

This is another website where I got the definition of the words from which I then expanded further: http://www.businessdictionary.com/terms-by-letter.php?letter=R

I also got some of the information from the Business Level 3 Book.

http://www.johnlewis.com/ I used this website to help me within my work.

https://www.marketingsociety.com/sites/default/files/thelibrary/John%20Lewis.pdf I used this website to help me within my work.

I used the following websites to help me within my work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Act_1998, http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1979/54 and https://www.gov.uk/data-protection/the-data-protection-act.

I used the following websites to help me within my work: http://www.amazon.co.uk/, https://www.waterstones.com/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterstones.

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