Task 4 Market research in business

Types of market research
Primary Research - is research carried out first-hand by yourself, so the information is specific to what your trying to find out, some of your research may need funding which could make it more expensive than secondary research. You can take the research can go as deep as you feel you need to go until your comfortable with market knowledge.
Secondary Research - is research that has already been carried out which makes this type of research easily accessible as the information is there but it may not be accurate to what you are trying to find out so you may get a vague idea of what you were looking for.

How Market research is used to make marketing decisions
Marketing research methods are used to get increased market knowledge which would result in a solid and accurate marketing decision which would allow to penetrate the market with your product/service as you have a better understanding of where the demand may be going.

Surveys - surveys can be used to gain knowledge on the market you plan to penetrate, so in the surveys you would ask their personal opinions on subjects relating to your product/service. once you have a substantial amount of knowledge on the markets preferences you can then pinpoint where the demand is and you can adapt your product to fit in with what your market are looking for.
Focus groups - focus groups are meetings set up by market researchers where they ask the audience a series of scripted questions or are presented with a topic to lead up to a discussion amongst the group about a particular product/service to get fair and diverse responses to help them shape their final product/service.
Competitors analysis - competitor analysis can be very useful to a business as you get a good idea of how successful the competitors product/service and promotion did on the market, which may deter you from making similar mistakes, so you may end up with a more solid and suitable promotional campaign to penetrate your market.

Market research plan
I plan to construct a survey with different questions relating to my product to increase my market knowledge and get a better understanding of where the demand is going. We expect to get at least 20 survey responses from the diverse population of Westminster kingsway college in order to get the opinions from a wide range of people belonging to different target groups.
I have also been looking at what the market already has to offer to see how successful different marketing plans went for other organizations. I've looked on the website for Crussh Smoothies (www.crussh.com - Date accessed 25/04/2015), from looking at their website I have come to a greater understanding of what a smoothie consists of  and what sort of combinations are favoured and what type of promotion needed behind a smoothie.

How different market research methods are appropriate to assist different marketing situations
In this passage I will be talking about the different market research methods that are appropriate to assist in different marketing situation to get the information that you want. So before I finalize exactly what smoothies I'll go with, I need to find out from the market I'm targeting exactly what they are interested in and their preferences. 
Once I am able to attain this information I can them move forward and start tampering with the most favoured fruits or smoothie combinations stated in my questionnaire results. I can begin to use these ideas to create a menu and make some samples of my smoothies to bring to the attention of my focus group which I set up, I will ask the group to taste the product and to give me their honest feedback on the smoothie so I can recognise my strong points and put greater efforts into them to have a strong standing product.
I may decide to look at Smoothie business that are already on the market to see how well they have done with their product, pricing, promotion and the location. So in the final stages of my business preperation it would be good to take part in competitor analysis as it gives you that clear vision of what already on the market and how you can adapt to bring some innovation to the market and gain the attention of your target audience. You may realise after viewing the competitor you had your pricing wrong and too expensive so if you released your products you would loose out as the consumers would rather go to the competitor to get it cheaper, price is crucial when it comes to promoting your product because if its out of some ones price range then they will go elsewhere for the product or service where they can afford it.