Marketing Essentials

Unit 9: Marketing Information Management

WebQuests

The Value of Knowing What Your Customers Want

Businesses are more likely to successfully design and promote products if they have an accurate understanding of what consumers look for in the goods or services they buy. For this reason, businesses spend large amounts each year to survey potential customers about their wants and needs. They also track products people buy and try to determine why they buy them. A clothing manufacturer, for example, would have benefited from knowing that low-rise jeans would be popular. It could have designed, produced, and promoted such jeans at that time. As a general rule, businesses that are able to bring products to market that are exactly what consumers want are in an excellent position to earn a profit.

1. Investigate Begin the activity by thinking of five questions to ask your friends about why they buy a certain brand of jeans. Next find three advertisements for jeans that appear in different media. Do these advertisements include answer to the questions that your friends might ask? How could the manufacturers find out what is important to your friends when they choose jeans?
2. Summarize Write a summary of how each advertisement does or does not address the concerns of your friends. Are there other concerns that they do address and that are also important to consumers? Are the advertisements quite similar or are they different? Are there different types of ads in different media?
3. Assess Explain why you think each advertisement you identified will or will not attract customers to purchase the product. Choose the one that you think will be most effective. What information about potential customers is the firm likely to have used to develop this particular advertisement? Does the ad contain mostly factual information or does it concentrate more on creating a positive image of the product? Would any of the ads influence your choice next time you decide to purchase jeans? Explain the logic behind your assessment.