Business Math in Action

Chapter 16: Marketing

Making the Focus More Personal

Marketers try to discover what people need, how badly they need it, and how much they are willing to pay for it. Large companies spend thousands of dollars each year on market surveys and focus groups to learn how people really feel about products. Luckily, less expensive options exist for young entrepreneurs who may not have thousands of dollars to spend. The new trend in market research favors a more personal approach.

The information gathered through surveys and group interviews can be flawed. Sometimes people do not even realize that they are not being honest about the way they use or perceive a product. Some inventive researchers instead decided to take a look at how people use products in real-life situations. The four methods below can easily be adopted by businesses with limited budgets.

Watch shoppers. Walk the aisles of stores where your product will be sold and watch people's buying habits. If you are creating a new snack food, go to a convenience store and observe people buying snacks. How long do they spend making a selection? What kinds of snacks are most popular? What type of packaging is chosen most often? Do people appear to be reading the calorie count? Checking the price? Do men and women choose different types of snacks? Who buys more? You will need to spend enough time in stores to see patterns emerge.

Film the action in the store. By setting up a video camera in a store, market researchers can see how dozens of customers react to products throughout the course of a day, a week, or a month. It is the same as observing in person, only you can catch nuances you might miss or forget to write down, and you can replay the video to confirm your observations.

Watch how customers use your product in everyday life. With focus groups, people may hide negative reactions to a product out of shyness or fear of looking foolish. In some cases, market researchers have gotten permission to set up video cameras in the homes of consumers to observe how they really use the product. For instance, people testing a new video game would have a camera set up near the television or computer and turn it on when they are playing the game. As they play, they can comment on what they like and dislike about the game.

Have consumers keep a snapshot diary. In this method, people are given disposable cameras and asked to take photos that relate either to the product or to a need the product will address. For instance, people might be asked to take photos of the way their hair looks throughout the day. On each photo, they would jot down comments about their hair: when they like how it looks, how the humidity affects it, what products they routinely use, and the types of products they wish they had.

English Language Arts/Writing

Your Buying Habits

Think about the last time you bought something from a retail store, Write a short paragraph about how you decided what to purchase. Why did you need to buy a certain type of product? Did you have a specific brand in mind? Why? If you did not, what attracted you to the product you bought?