Sales data: All organizations collect information in the course of their everyday operations. Orders are received and delivered, costs are recorded, sales personnel submit visit reports, invoices are sent out, and returned goods are recorded and so on. Much of this information is of potential use in marketing research but a surprising amount of it is actually used. Organizations frequently overlook this valuable resource by not beginning their search of secondary sources with an internal audit of sales invoices, orders, inquiries about products not stocked, returns from customers and sales force customer calling sheets. For example, consider how much information can be obtained from sales orders and invoices:
• Sales by territory
• Sales by customer type
• Prices and discounts
• Average size of order by customer, customer type, geographical area
• Average sales by sales person and
• Sales by pack size and pack type, etc.
This type of data is useful for identifying an organization’s most profitable product and customers. It can also serve to track trends within the enterprise's existing customer group.
Financial data: An organization has a great deal of data within its files on the cost of producing, storing, transporting and marketing each of its products and product lines. Such data has many uses in marketing research including allowing measurement of the efficiency of marketing operations. It can also be used to estimate the costs attached to new products under consideration, of particular utilisation (in production, storage and transportation) at which an organization’s unit costs begin to fall.
Transport data: Companies that keep good records relating to their transport operations are well placed to establish which are the most profitable routes, and loads, as well as the most cost effective routing patterns. Good data on transport operations enables the enterprise to perform trade-off analysis and thereby establish whether it makes economic sense to own or hire vehicles, or the point at which a balance of the two gives the best financial outcome.
Storage data: The rate of stockturn, stock handling costs, assessing the efficiency of certain marketing operations and the efficiency of the marketing system as a whole.
More sophisticated accounting systems assign costs to the cubic space occupied by individual products and the time period over which the product occupies the space. These systems can be further refined so that the profitability per unit, and rate of sale, are added. In this way, the direct product profitability can be calculated.
• Sales by territory
• Sales by customer type
• Prices and discounts
• Average size of order by customer, customer type, geographical area
• Average sales by sales person and
• Sales by pack size and pack type, etc.
This type of data is useful for identifying an organization’s most profitable product and customers. It can also serve to track trends within the enterprise's existing customer group.
Financial data: An organization has a great deal of data within its files on the cost of producing, storing, transporting and marketing each of its products and product lines. Such data has many uses in marketing research including allowing measurement of the efficiency of marketing operations. It can also be used to estimate the costs attached to new products under consideration, of particular utilisation (in production, storage and transportation) at which an organization’s unit costs begin to fall.
Transport data: Companies that keep good records relating to their transport operations are well placed to establish which are the most profitable routes, and loads, as well as the most cost effective routing patterns. Good data on transport operations enables the enterprise to perform trade-off analysis and thereby establish whether it makes economic sense to own or hire vehicles, or the point at which a balance of the two gives the best financial outcome.
Storage data: The rate of stockturn, stock handling costs, assessing the efficiency of certain marketing operations and the efficiency of the marketing system as a whole.
More sophisticated accounting systems assign costs to the cubic space occupied by individual products and the time period over which the product occupies the space. These systems can be further refined so that the profitability per unit, and rate of sale, are added. In this way, the direct product profitability can be calculated.