Marketing research
In organizations, marketing research serves to govern their marketing decisions. By providing information relevant to marketing, marketing research helps make decisions efficiently. In essence, marketing in organizations is grounded on choices made. Hence, marketing research is reliable since it consists of information applicable to exploring the possible solutions to marketing. Also, marketing research associates the customers, potential markets distributors through information (Quinlan, 2019). Marketing research is done through steps in evaluating the marketing, mix of an organization. Through refining decisions, management of marketing in an organization Additionally, with the continuous change in marketing tactics, research is essential in identifying relevant marketing strategies. While taking into account the background for J.C Penney’s, the query of the relevance of its “fair and square” pricing strategy arises. At the center of repositioning to gain more customers, this pricing strategy proved challenging in promoting the company (Eade et al., 2017). Thus, in order to have a clear understanding of what made the strategy fail, research questions posed through research methods are essential. So, the company can explore whether the fair and square pricing strategy was flawed or if the program was not communicated efficiently to the customers. Hence, through marketing research, the company will understand how marketing research questions could have helped gain marketing insight before implementing this pricing strategy.
Through the marketing research questions, multiple aspects of the hypothesis and problem of the pricing strategy is answered. Research methods should serve to answer research questions on the marketing strategy of the company. From secondary marketing research, the existing relevant data on J.C Penney’s “Fair and Square pricing strategy is sought. Since secondary data has already existing data on the marketing strategy of using the “fair and square”, the characteristics of the company’s target audience and consumers can be understood. In accordance with the customer portfolio composition, evaluation of the target audience and consumers can be evaluated. Under secondary data, the descriptive method of research explores how the J.C Penney’s customers correlate with the change in price and spend in their department stores (Curtis et bal., 2016). Moreover, from the customer response ads, it if evident that the implementation of the fairs and square” strategy was not effective as most of the consumers do not understand the difference between the company’s best and non-sale prices. Additionally, it is clear that through the implementation of a new pricing strategy and removal of coupons, J.C Penney’s has no trade incentives. Hence, the company can not promote its stock without trade incentives. Therefore, the unavailability of research questions to asses the pricing strategy affected the marketing aspect of J.C Penney.
The descriptive research method from secondary data helps identify how the customers correlate to the implemented pricing strategy, thus, allowing to analyze the company’s problems (White, 2017). The descriptive research method of marketing research explores the frequency by which both the peripheral and core shoppers purchase items at all the stores. Hence, this helps to understand whom the products are being sold to. The exploration of which customers to sell their products to give an understanding of how their core customers used to value the J.C Penney due the value of stock it provided. Also, this elaborates on how the customers were not interested in price change rather on the goods J.C Penney had to offer. Additionally, J.C Penney’s customers income of $65,000 to $76,000 is explored to help understand how the pricing strategy could be implemented (Ofek et al., 2016). By comparing how the peripheral customers visit the store infrequently and core shoppers visit frequently, the hypothesis of the problem can be answered to understand how J.C Penney’s pricing strategy perception by their consumers. Hence, the research methods answer how the pricing strategy was ineffectively communicated through the poor perception by its customers (Wilson et al., 2016). Thus, this illustrates how marketing research would have been effective from the feedback from consumers to a solution to the problem of poor communication of the pricing strategy.
The elaborate posing of marketing questions by management in a company helps to gain more insight in the decision-making processes. For instance, a study of the comparative performance of J.C Penney to its primary competitor illustrate how the implementation of the of the pricing strategy was unsuccessful. Hence, this elaborates how the company may not have used elaborative marketing research to understand how the pricing strategy could have impacted customers. Thus, adversely affecting the company’s overall performance. So, J.C Penney’s management could have utilized marketing research survey techniques to identify how the pricing strategy could have been pushed effectivel McCollough et al., 2017). By getting data on their new “Fair and Square” pricing strategies, primary data on the relevance of the prices to their consumers would have been understood. Even though the company efficiently advertised its pricing strategy, its implementation involved complex flow charts and prices that was difficult for the customers to understand. It is evident that the customers were unsatisfied by the miscommunication due to the difficulty in differentiating the new price changes. Thus, customer acquisition by J.C Penney became more challenging as the consumers did not fully understand the new implementations (Kuntner et al, 2016). Therefore, the exploratory research questions, one understands how the pricing strategy was ineffectively implemented as it led to losses in the company.
Through marketing research on the pricing strategy of J.C Penney’s, the decision-making elements of their marketing mix can be assessed. In accordance with the research questions, the customer perception, target audience, relationship with suppliers and company incentives are assessed effectively. From the research questions, it is evident that the customer perception of the “Fair and Square pricing strategy is worse hence, more customers cut back on spending at J.C PenneyKienzler et al., 2017). This is due to the poor communication of the company’s best prices makes it harder for the customers to understand. Hence, J.C Penny should focus on communicating how their best prices relate to the non-sale prices by placing an emphasis on clarity. Additionally, J.C Penney should survey and talk to their consumers consistently on the positioning of prices (Silva, 2016). Since the company, removed its coupons it could have introduced other types of trade incentives to help implement the new pricing strategy. For instance, the by implementing marketing plan J.C Penney could place contests and sweepstakes to encourage more customer engagement with the fair and square pricing strategy. Also, these trade incentives could help attract more customers to help push the response to pricing strategy to gain more potential markets (Weissten et al., 2016).
The marketing research based on the background and original data from the J.C Penney provides an argument on how the Fair and Square “pricing strategy was ineffectively implementing. By assessing this element of J.C Penney’s marketing mix, the qualities and characteristic of the strategy that made it unsuccessful are gaged. Hence, through research the hypothesis of the flaws in implementation of a new pricing strategy are addressed. Different methods of collecting information relevant to the company’s strategies Even though implementation and experimentation of new strategies is acceptable, the company could have used a different context in implementing their strategy for instance by ensuring effective consistent communication with customers. An insightful analysis of the customer perception of the new price change could have improved the J.C Penney’s strategic plan. The process of marketing decision making depends on the . Overall, marketing research aserves to give management of a company
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