netrashetty
Netra Shetty
Blockbuster Inc. is an American-based chain of VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, and video game rental stores currently under Chapter 11 bankruptcy. At its peak in 2009, Blockbuster had up to 60,000 employees.[1] As of January 3, 2010, there were over 5,000 Blockbuster stores in the U.S. and 17 countries worldwide. It is headquartered in the Renaissance Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas.[2] Because of competition from other video rental companies like Netflix, Blockbuster has seen significant revenue losses. The company filed for bankruptcy on September 23, 2010
While in the not too distant past, drinking cider may have been associated with images of rural pastures, old fashioned drinking and unsophisticated palates, latest research from Mintel reveals that a combined push from the industry, coupled with consumer demand has seen cider beat the economic squeeze to become a favourite with the British consumer.
Indeed, at a time when alcohol consumption in the UK is declining, cider has gone from strength to strength, experiencing value sales growth of 60% between 2005 and 2010 to stand at £2.2 billion.
While penetration of alcohol drinkers in the UK has declined from 88% to 83% over this period*, conversely, cider has managed to grow its user base from 18% to 27% of UK adults - a phenomenal achievement and an outlier in an otherwise declining UK alcohol market. It has grown its volume sales from 574 million litres in 2005 to 840 million litres in 2010, a rise of 46% - in spite of rising alcohol taxation, the worst recession since the 1930s and pubs (for whom it relies on for 45% of its value sales) closing at record rates.
Furthermore, Mintel forecasts that cider will grow by an impressive 23% in volume sales and 45% in value sales between 2010 and 2015 and the sector also has rich potential to further grow its user base, with 10.4 million UK adults prepared to consider drinking it in the future.
And it seems continued innovation has also helped bolster the sector. Indeed, some 70% of UK consumers say they like the variety of different flavoured ciders available, compared to 45% of consumers who say they prefer traditional Apple cider.
Pear and fruit cider is also attracting a new type of cider drinker who eschews traditional apple cider, as Mintel estimates there are around 2.3million cider drinkers – primarily 18-24-year-old women – who are being attracted to the newer pear or other fruit ciders while showing no interest in drinking traditional variants.
This group of ‘solus’ pear or fruit cider drinkers are 90% more likely to be aged 18-24 according to Mintel’s research and around a third more likely to be female, switching from categories such as wine and alcopops.
Jonny Forsyth, Senior Drinks Analyst at Mintel, said:
“Cider’s success has been in constantly innovating to attract a new audience of drinkers - particularly a younger and more female crowd. While ‘on ice’ serves initially led to consumers re-appraising what was once a somewhat tired category, the market has not rested on its laurels and continued innovation, particularly around flavours, has kept the momentum going. This is a particularly impressive performance in the context of falling alcohol sales and sharp duty increases across the whole of the alcohol sector.”
“With consumers currently more interested in pear or fruit cider than traditional apple, Mintel forecasts that the cider sector will continue to see impressive growth - of 23% in volume sales - over the next five years. Its major challenge is to stay ahead of the curve on innovation, so as to keep its young audience interested, but this is something it has thus far excelled at.” Jonny continues.
When it comes to consumption, despite the difficulties facing the pub industry, cider has continued to perform well in this channel and pubs account for close to half (45%) of its overall revenue, with the on/off trade market share standing at 61% versus 39%. Nightclubs account for almost a tenth of revenue, a reflection that cider’s core users are 18-24-year-olds.
However, while cider is recruiting many new and primarily younger drinkers into the category, Mintel’s research shows that the majority (65%) of cider drinkers only have it when they feel like a change from their usual drinks.
Indeed, its lack of USP (Unique Selling Point) is also putting off those outside of the category.
For example, 67% of male drinkers would rather have beer if they are going to have a pint, while almost half (47%) of women are put off by the volume of cider, preferring not to drink cider in pints or large 568ml bottles.
While twice as many cider drinkers now see it as a year-round rather than as a summer-only drink, there are still 4.4 million drinkers who only drink cider in warm weather.
Return to Archive Search Results
The road to success
Tags: Business-To-BusinessTransportationQuantitative ResearchQualitative Research
Article ID:
19920404
Published:
April 1992
Author:
Quirk's Staff
Article Abstract
Transportation firms use a wide range of formal and informal market research techniques to determine customer needs and to analyze the competition. This article discusses strategies including mail-in surveys, telephone interviews, informal face-to-face information exchange and computer database mining.
Prior to deregulation in 1980, marketing was considered the stepchild of the transportation industry. You bought your rights to deliver goods from Point A to Point B. Rates were immaterial. Reliable transportation--that's all customers looked for. Today, people still want the basics. But they want faster service, lower rates, and statistical data to hack up transit time. They want electronic data interchange of real-time information. The sophistication needed to market transportation services is probably tenfold over what it was ten years ago."
Those words, from Guy Denniston, senior vice president of sales and marketing with Daylight Transport, a Los Angeles-based motor carrier, neatly sum up the predicament faced by transportation companies. Twelve years ago, marketing--and especially marketing research--was virtually unnecessary and commonly nonexistent. Today, with profit margins shrinking and competition expanding, marketing research is a necessary weapon in the fight for survival.
So how are transportation companies coping with this need for marketing research? Surprisingly well. Transportation firms use a wide range of formal and informal market research techniques, from face-to-face information exchange to the most sophisticated uses of computer databases.
Actively engaged
While the larger firms now have a wealth of market research tools at their disposal, their smaller counterparts are making do with smaller budgets and less sophisticated market research activities. Still, even these middle-market and smaller firms are actively engaged in research activities.
Right-O-Way Transportation, Inc. is a $75 million dollar global freight forwarder based in Tustin, California. Right-O-Way offers everything from same-day domestic delivery to five- to seven-day service around the globe, by air and surface.
"Since deregulation, we are free to go after any opportunity that exists to move shipments from Point A to Point B," says Rick Rowland, director of quality. "Second, third and fourth day delivery is our domestic niche, but we can get as creative with our services as we want to be."
And developing new and innovative transportation services is a primary goal of Right-O-Way's marketing research effort.
When the firm sought to explore customer surveys, a relatively new marketing research technique for the firm, Right-O-Way hired Just Marketing, a Scotts Valley, California-based firm that specializes in serving the transportation industry. They developed a written questionnaire, which was mailed to all current Right-O-Way customers.
The questionnaire asked Right-O-Way customers to list the types and quantities of products they had shipped in the past and the types and quantities of products they had shipped in the past and the types and quantities of goods they planned to move in the future. The questionnaire also asked customers to comment on the quality of service they received from Right-O-Way.
The name and address of the customer was printed on each questionnaire. This way, Right-O-Way makes sure that a sales rep follows up with each respondent.
"From a quality standpoint, we meet with customers to find out how we can improve our service," says Rowland. "And if the survey shows that a customer's transportation needs are expanding or changing, our sales rep will try to gain that new business."
In addition, Right-O-Way uses a compilation of the survey information to develop its overall marketing plans. It analyzes overall trends in its customer base and identifies customer needs by geographic region and city. Right-O-Way then develops packages of transportation services to meet those needs.
Marketing research is the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information. This information is used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; to generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; to monitor marketing performance; and to improve understanding of the marketing process. Marketing research specifies the information, manages and implements the data-collection process, analyzes the results, and communicates the findings and their implications. Marketing research is concerned with the application of theories, problem-solving methods, and techniques to identify and solve problems in marketing. In order to offset unpredictable consumer behavior, companies invest in market research.
Increased customer focus, demands for resource productivity, and increased domestic and international competition has prompted an increased emphasis on marketing research. Managers cannot always wait for information to arrive in bits and pieces from marketing departments. They often require formal studies of specific situations. For example, Dell Computer might want to know a demographic breakdown of how many and what kinds of people or companies will purchase a new model in its personal computer line. In such situations, the marketing department may not be able to provide from existing knowledge the detailed information needed, and managers normally do not have the skill or time to obtain the information on their own. This formal study, whether performed internally or externally, is called marketing research.
The marketing research process consists of four steps: defining the problem and research objectives, developing the research plan, implementing the research plan, and interpreting and reporting the findings.
DEFINING THE OBJECTIVES
The marketing manager and the researcher must work closely together to define the problem carefully and agree on the research objectives. The manager best understands the decision for which information is needed; the researcher best understands marketing research and how to obtain the information.
Managers must know enough about marketing research to help in the planning and to interpret research results. Managers who know little about the importance of research may obtain irrelevant information or accept inaccurate conclusions. Experienced marketing researchers who understand the manager's problem should also be involved at this stage. The researcher must be able to help the manager define the problem and to suggest ways that research can help the manager make better decisions.
Defining the problem and research objectives is often the hardest step in the research process. The manager may know that something is wrong without knowing the specific causes. For example, managers of a retail clothing store chain decided that falling sales were caused by poor floor set-up and incorrect product positioning. However, research concluded that neither problem was the cause. It turned out that the store had hired sales persons who weren't properly trained in providing good customer service. Careful problem definition would have avoided the cost and delay of research and would have suggested research on the real problem.
When the problem has been defined, the manager and researcher must set the research objectives. A marketing research project might have one of three types of objectives. Sometimes the objective is exploratory—to gather preliminary information that will help define the problem and suggest hypotheses. Sometimes the objective is descriptive—to describe things such as the market potential for a product or the demographics and attitudes of consumers who buy the product. Sometimes the objective is casual—to test hypotheses about cause-and-effect relationships.
While in the not too distant past, drinking cider may have been associated with images of rural pastures, old fashioned drinking and unsophisticated palates, latest research from Mintel reveals that a combined push from the industry, coupled with consumer demand has seen cider beat the economic squeeze to become a favourite with the British consumer.
Indeed, at a time when alcohol consumption in the UK is declining, cider has gone from strength to strength, experiencing value sales growth of 60% between 2005 and 2010 to stand at £2.2 billion.
While penetration of alcohol drinkers in the UK has declined from 88% to 83% over this period*, conversely, cider has managed to grow its user base from 18% to 27% of UK adults - a phenomenal achievement and an outlier in an otherwise declining UK alcohol market. It has grown its volume sales from 574 million litres in 2005 to 840 million litres in 2010, a rise of 46% - in spite of rising alcohol taxation, the worst recession since the 1930s and pubs (for whom it relies on for 45% of its value sales) closing at record rates.
Furthermore, Mintel forecasts that cider will grow by an impressive 23% in volume sales and 45% in value sales between 2010 and 2015 and the sector also has rich potential to further grow its user base, with 10.4 million UK adults prepared to consider drinking it in the future.
And it seems continued innovation has also helped bolster the sector. Indeed, some 70% of UK consumers say they like the variety of different flavoured ciders available, compared to 45% of consumers who say they prefer traditional Apple cider.
Pear and fruit cider is also attracting a new type of cider drinker who eschews traditional apple cider, as Mintel estimates there are around 2.3million cider drinkers – primarily 18-24-year-old women – who are being attracted to the newer pear or other fruit ciders while showing no interest in drinking traditional variants.
This group of ‘solus’ pear or fruit cider drinkers are 90% more likely to be aged 18-24 according to Mintel’s research and around a third more likely to be female, switching from categories such as wine and alcopops.
Jonny Forsyth, Senior Drinks Analyst at Mintel, said:
“Cider’s success has been in constantly innovating to attract a new audience of drinkers - particularly a younger and more female crowd. While ‘on ice’ serves initially led to consumers re-appraising what was once a somewhat tired category, the market has not rested on its laurels and continued innovation, particularly around flavours, has kept the momentum going. This is a particularly impressive performance in the context of falling alcohol sales and sharp duty increases across the whole of the alcohol sector.”
“With consumers currently more interested in pear or fruit cider than traditional apple, Mintel forecasts that the cider sector will continue to see impressive growth - of 23% in volume sales - over the next five years. Its major challenge is to stay ahead of the curve on innovation, so as to keep its young audience interested, but this is something it has thus far excelled at.” Jonny continues.
When it comes to consumption, despite the difficulties facing the pub industry, cider has continued to perform well in this channel and pubs account for close to half (45%) of its overall revenue, with the on/off trade market share standing at 61% versus 39%. Nightclubs account for almost a tenth of revenue, a reflection that cider’s core users are 18-24-year-olds.
However, while cider is recruiting many new and primarily younger drinkers into the category, Mintel’s research shows that the majority (65%) of cider drinkers only have it when they feel like a change from their usual drinks.
Indeed, its lack of USP (Unique Selling Point) is also putting off those outside of the category.
For example, 67% of male drinkers would rather have beer if they are going to have a pint, while almost half (47%) of women are put off by the volume of cider, preferring not to drink cider in pints or large 568ml bottles.
While twice as many cider drinkers now see it as a year-round rather than as a summer-only drink, there are still 4.4 million drinkers who only drink cider in warm weather.
Return to Archive Search Results
The road to success
Tags: Business-To-BusinessTransportationQuantitative ResearchQualitative Research
Article ID:
19920404
Published:
April 1992
Author:
Quirk's Staff
Article Abstract
Transportation firms use a wide range of formal and informal market research techniques to determine customer needs and to analyze the competition. This article discusses strategies including mail-in surveys, telephone interviews, informal face-to-face information exchange and computer database mining.
Prior to deregulation in 1980, marketing was considered the stepchild of the transportation industry. You bought your rights to deliver goods from Point A to Point B. Rates were immaterial. Reliable transportation--that's all customers looked for. Today, people still want the basics. But they want faster service, lower rates, and statistical data to hack up transit time. They want electronic data interchange of real-time information. The sophistication needed to market transportation services is probably tenfold over what it was ten years ago."
Those words, from Guy Denniston, senior vice president of sales and marketing with Daylight Transport, a Los Angeles-based motor carrier, neatly sum up the predicament faced by transportation companies. Twelve years ago, marketing--and especially marketing research--was virtually unnecessary and commonly nonexistent. Today, with profit margins shrinking and competition expanding, marketing research is a necessary weapon in the fight for survival.
So how are transportation companies coping with this need for marketing research? Surprisingly well. Transportation firms use a wide range of formal and informal market research techniques, from face-to-face information exchange to the most sophisticated uses of computer databases.
Actively engaged
While the larger firms now have a wealth of market research tools at their disposal, their smaller counterparts are making do with smaller budgets and less sophisticated market research activities. Still, even these middle-market and smaller firms are actively engaged in research activities.
Right-O-Way Transportation, Inc. is a $75 million dollar global freight forwarder based in Tustin, California. Right-O-Way offers everything from same-day domestic delivery to five- to seven-day service around the globe, by air and surface.
"Since deregulation, we are free to go after any opportunity that exists to move shipments from Point A to Point B," says Rick Rowland, director of quality. "Second, third and fourth day delivery is our domestic niche, but we can get as creative with our services as we want to be."
And developing new and innovative transportation services is a primary goal of Right-O-Way's marketing research effort.
When the firm sought to explore customer surveys, a relatively new marketing research technique for the firm, Right-O-Way hired Just Marketing, a Scotts Valley, California-based firm that specializes in serving the transportation industry. They developed a written questionnaire, which was mailed to all current Right-O-Way customers.
The questionnaire asked Right-O-Way customers to list the types and quantities of products they had shipped in the past and the types and quantities of products they had shipped in the past and the types and quantities of goods they planned to move in the future. The questionnaire also asked customers to comment on the quality of service they received from Right-O-Way.
The name and address of the customer was printed on each questionnaire. This way, Right-O-Way makes sure that a sales rep follows up with each respondent.
"From a quality standpoint, we meet with customers to find out how we can improve our service," says Rowland. "And if the survey shows that a customer's transportation needs are expanding or changing, our sales rep will try to gain that new business."
In addition, Right-O-Way uses a compilation of the survey information to develop its overall marketing plans. It analyzes overall trends in its customer base and identifies customer needs by geographic region and city. Right-O-Way then develops packages of transportation services to meet those needs.
Marketing research is the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information. This information is used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; to generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; to monitor marketing performance; and to improve understanding of the marketing process. Marketing research specifies the information, manages and implements the data-collection process, analyzes the results, and communicates the findings and their implications. Marketing research is concerned with the application of theories, problem-solving methods, and techniques to identify and solve problems in marketing. In order to offset unpredictable consumer behavior, companies invest in market research.
Increased customer focus, demands for resource productivity, and increased domestic and international competition has prompted an increased emphasis on marketing research. Managers cannot always wait for information to arrive in bits and pieces from marketing departments. They often require formal studies of specific situations. For example, Dell Computer might want to know a demographic breakdown of how many and what kinds of people or companies will purchase a new model in its personal computer line. In such situations, the marketing department may not be able to provide from existing knowledge the detailed information needed, and managers normally do not have the skill or time to obtain the information on their own. This formal study, whether performed internally or externally, is called marketing research.
The marketing research process consists of four steps: defining the problem and research objectives, developing the research plan, implementing the research plan, and interpreting and reporting the findings.
DEFINING THE OBJECTIVES
The marketing manager and the researcher must work closely together to define the problem carefully and agree on the research objectives. The manager best understands the decision for which information is needed; the researcher best understands marketing research and how to obtain the information.
Managers must know enough about marketing research to help in the planning and to interpret research results. Managers who know little about the importance of research may obtain irrelevant information or accept inaccurate conclusions. Experienced marketing researchers who understand the manager's problem should also be involved at this stage. The researcher must be able to help the manager define the problem and to suggest ways that research can help the manager make better decisions.
Defining the problem and research objectives is often the hardest step in the research process. The manager may know that something is wrong without knowing the specific causes. For example, managers of a retail clothing store chain decided that falling sales were caused by poor floor set-up and incorrect product positioning. However, research concluded that neither problem was the cause. It turned out that the store had hired sales persons who weren't properly trained in providing good customer service. Careful problem definition would have avoided the cost and delay of research and would have suggested research on the real problem.
When the problem has been defined, the manager and researcher must set the research objectives. A marketing research project might have one of three types of objectives. Sometimes the objective is exploratory—to gather preliminary information that will help define the problem and suggest hypotheses. Sometimes the objective is descriptive—to describe things such as the market potential for a product or the demographics and attitudes of consumers who buy the product. Sometimes the objective is casual—to test hypotheses about cause-and-effect relationships.
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