Marketing research (s3, 2013)
 
Brids Eye’s Baby food
 
Group members:
Anqi Fan (Fanau1202)
Pianpian Huang (Huapu1202)
Yukun Shen (Shykd102)
The developing world burring some issue to our usually life, which that caused all the public people left few time to deal with their own daily routine. Quickly and simply goods comes to be the only solution to avoided those daily hassles.
In Australia, the market share of baby food growth up significantly and this research are provided reasonable supports to finding out results of baby food market and customers feedbacks. ……   
Along with the development of world, increased numbers of marketing problems are brought to our attention. In the fierce competitive global business environment, the competitor is increasing alarmingly, the products developing significantly, the customer demand was changed quickly and how to meet consumer demand has become a severe test. All of those real things cause a considerable number of problems and companies are looking for some idea to solve those specific problems.
Organizations and companies are seek to satisfaction and appealing consumers to use their products and service. Under this condition, marketing research becomes to useful and helpful way to highlight the marketing opportunities and problems. Simply to say, marketing research as a process to help marketer understanding markets more deeply and then, support valuable results and recommendations to making business decision more profitable and efficiently (Burns & Bush, 2010).
For all the reasons, it is not difficult to draw the conclusion that, doing the marketing research is sensible.
 

Background

In case, this research is looking to identify the problems and opportunities of the new product, which that frozen baby food may sell in supermarket.  As we know, Birds Eye is one of the most important brand names in the history of the frozen food industry. By other way, Clarence ‘Bob’ Birdseye was single-handedly responsible for a major early breakthrough in the development of the methods and technology that made freezing a viable way of preserving food and they also continues to develop nutritious and convenient products for Australian families.
As a new product go to entry local markets, Birdseye are researching reflects from consumers to help marketing decision-making as well as possible. And research has been approached and the following proposal has been prepared.
The overall objective is to examine the attitudes of householders to the use of baby food and factors, which influence to householders choose the frozen baby food. This has been broken into follow sub-objectives:
1.        To identify background of people who interested in buy the baby food.
2.        To get opinions about a particular new product (frozen baby food).
3.        To determine potential benefits which buyers most considered.
We have detailed further areas for each above objectives:
·         To identify background of people who interested to buy the frozen baby food:
This objective would seek to help us know their customers as well as possible, and depended on those provided information that could help marketer to segment target market more clearly.
 
·         To get opinions about a particular new product:
This objective would seek to collect opinions about the new product from their customers, this part should give indications of product’s improvement in the future period.
 
·         To determine potential benefits which buyers most considered.
This objective would seek to find potential reasons why the buyers chose this brand of product and also help marketer to find their business strength and weakness of their product (e.g. Frozen baby food).

Research question

In case, the research of collected sources (final questionnaire and SPSS data) will be carried out to refine the objectives and provide lines of enquiry for the next stages. Specifically, the previous research phase as data collection and questionnaire design are used for gathering valuable information, which that has been provided on dataset for frozen baby food group project. This trend data should give a useful indication about the status of the marketplace.
The provided research are attempt to establish research questions as follow:
·         How many households keep baby food in the home
·         What kind of baby food usually kept
·      When customers might serve the baby food
·         How often did customer used
·         How much did the product could be charged
·         Which sizes are acceptable
·         What should be potential target market
 

Purpose

With the exploratory nature of some aspects of the objectives, detailed qualitative information will be provided to you. Focused research will be used to explore and understand the attitudes of potential customers towards the Baby Food. Subsequently, quantitative research will be used to measure how widespread these attitudes are.
The qualitative phase will probe the following:
·         How and where baby food is stored in the home
·         The kinds of baby food that are usually kept
·         Baby food of which householders are aware
·         What kind of baby food is currently used for
·         Which groups of people are most likely to make use of this high-quality baby food
·         The quantities they are likely to buy
·         Whether they would be prepared to pay more for baby food
·         Whether the brand name of baby food is confused with others

Population and sampling

We propose some groups for the research. They are coming from random family, which have baby. They are Light users or heavy users, mix of males and females in local market.

Procedure

Researchers will need to present the product’s information, such as flavours, tastes, nutrition etc., we intend to describe it or give some free samples, make some comparison with competitors’ products.  For example, the frozen baby food products’ size and packaging might become a problem, which could be an important variable when the marketer decided to supply their product to target market. The skilled moderator will ensure that this does not become a distraction; we might use the packaging used in local markets (Australia).
 

Purpose

From the secondary data, we can knowwhat types of problems occur in regards to the frozen baby food product that cause the most comprehensive impact on local consumers in Australia. Which group of consumer are going to purchase frozen baby food and use this products, how much they are prepared to pay and the purchase frequency they could go for it. Overall, we could find out the markets’ reflect from those issues of that would have the same influences on the local householder within different age group, gender, job occupations and location etc.
 

Procedures

Because we are researching based on the given data and the research question are already given to us, therefore we can simply to find out the objectives and understanding the purpose of those questions gathered form the questionnaire research since it no need time consuming and there was collected data to use.
However, alternative answer to a close-ended question will also be appropriate for our research question as it would enable us to obtain a valuable answer from the householders more efficiently thus it would enable us to solve our marketing problem more quickly.
 

The choice of the statistical analysis method

According to the specific research question and given data, we can list several relevant research questions from our final questionnaire. Bases on the types of those research questions, we can choose 2 different statistical analysis methods, as the table illustrated below:
 

The variables need to be measured	Statistical analysis method
To measure whether there is a different attitude between female and male householder on baby food.   ---- Scale	Independent samples t-test should be used, because female and male are two independent samples in the same population and independent samples t-test can be used to test the difference between the two means.
To measure whether householders in distinct age groups differ in attitude price, size and marketplace of baby food.   ---- Ordinal	ANOVA is the most appropriate method to test the question, because we have to test more than 2 means. E.g. Product’s price, size, potential customer and current consumer.

 

Hypothesis

Hypothesis: Different prices and sizes of new baby food lead to different purchasing decisions towards baby food.
According to common sense, price seems always be the most important index of product that be cared by customers. Customers want to use less money to buy a good-quality good. But how are customers sensitive to the prices of baby food? One-dollar more will make customers to choose other products instead. It will lead suppliers to provide a proper price to attract more customers without great loss of potential customers.
On the other hand, the size of baby food influences customers as well. Some food is in a huge size, making it difficult for buyers carry so that they just buy few amounts. However, some tiny food is easy to carry. Under such situation, the sizes of products are extra factors affecting buyers. Maybe a bit larger will decorate the products and simultaneously not stop buyers from carrying them.
According to the answers from the questionnaire, the related attitude towards prices and sizes of products will be collected. If the significant level is at a rather low level, such as 5%, the hypothesis is considered to be certified in terms of probability. Otherwise, the hypothesis is not believed at all.

Limitations

Since it is a new product and people are unfamiliar with it, it is hard for them to finish the questionnaire without a better understanding of the product. Even some people answer the questions without scanning questions. Therefore, the precision of the survey will be affected
Another limitation is the biasness of questionnaire. Because the main respondents are around the university, it weakens the randomness of sampling, the accuracy of survey will be weakened as well.
The quality of questionnaire is also influenced with some unanswered questions. The missing value of collected dataset will lead to biasness of results as well.

Methodology

Research design
In this research, it is aiming at the influences of gender and age of customers, and the substitution effect of baby food. Therefore, such information will be collected from people.
To avoid biasness, not only those who have infants are asked, but people without a baby are also asked for achievement of randomness. Therefore, whether they have a child is asked. After the data collection, casual study is processed to seek appropriate independent variables and dependent variable. Further statistical tests will be used to deduce the information of population with the samples. Related recommendations based on statistical analysis are raised as well for a real profit.
Information sources
The source of information used in this project is made of primary and secondary data. The secondary data is from Internet and primary data is directly collected from first-hand research
Data accessed method
For a quantitative analysis, the data is collected with survey, asking questions from random respondents. The questionnaire is designed for collecting related information used in statistical tests. 204 respondentshave been selected from random peoplein the population for data collection.The advantage of this method is that more information will be collecteddirectly from customers.
Sample plan and size
During the sampling, 204 sample units are selected from the population for a questionnaire. They are in various ages, in various fields and in various locations. Their attitudes towards new baby food and sensitive of price etc. will be asked in the questionnaire.
Statistical analysis techniques
SPSS will be used to process statistical analysis.
Hypothesis testing
The methodology for the hypothesis is based on the gathering of the data. Relative information of respondents is collected from questionnaire. However, it is difficult to quantify the attitude. The ordinal variable are used to measure the attitude with five levels-strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, strongly disagree. Ignoring the sensibility and accuracy of the measurement, the significant level can be detected under such circumstance.
For the hypothesis, several factors are tested at the same time, one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) is the best choice for such tests with ratio of Mean of Standard Error Between groups (MSB) to Mean of Standard Error Within groups MSW. The corresponding F-statistics will give the significant level of age.
Descriptive analysis
Descriptive analysis is used to get a direct view of the data. The variables are age, gender, price and respondents’ care of healthy ingredients baby food rather than price
Different analysis
Chi-square is to test the way that we used to findrelationship of hypothesize, if significance level is less than 0.05, no relationship exists. Otherwise, there is a relationship.
Associative analysis
The method is used to test the association between variables, Pearson’s correlation will used to identify the relationship between the variable.If the significance level is less than 0.05, this means there is a strong relationship. Otherwise,no relationship indicates.

Results

Hypothesis: Different prices and sizes of new baby food lead to different purchasing decisions towards baby food.
H₀: Different prices have no effect on purchasing decisions towards baby food.
H_a: Different prices have effect on purchasing decisions towards baby food.
Price are classified into five intervals: 1 = $5 - $10, 2 = $10-$15, 3 = $15 -$20, 4 = $20 - $25, 5 = $25 -$30. And the attitudes of purchasers are 1 = ‘Strongly Not Buy’, 2 = ‘Not buy’, 3 = ‘Hard to decide’, 4 = ‘Buy’, 5 = ‘Strongly Buy’
Facing more than two groups, ANOVA method is appropriate to analyze the price effect.

According to ANOVA table, the significant effect of price is obvious with a significant level approximation to 0. Hence null hypothesis is rejected and alternative hypothesis is accepted, regarding different prices have effect on purchasing decisions towards baby food.
On the other hand, the size of food is also classified into five intervals: 1 = Tiny, 2 = Small, 3 = Normal, 4 = Big, 5 = Huge.

Like the price, the effect of size of products affects the purchasing decision as well.
Conclusions
The price and size of products both significantly influence the purchasing decisions of buyers.
Recommendation
Since the price and size of the products greatly affect the purchasing decision, suppliers are recommended to product different levels of products with various prize and different designs to attract customers with different preference. At this level, price ranging from $5 - $35 is acceptable, and size ranging from tiny to huge is recommended to make the products diversification.
After the exploratory research, we find out the segments of Australian householder appealing to buy frozen baby food and what reasons of others does not like buy it. The main factors, which result to this problem, are due to product price, complication in route, and inconveniency in purchasing natural food or the rise of other alternative of products being introduced.
Hence, in the quantitative research stage, we are going to analyse which one of those factors influence more on the use of frozen baby food, and does the consumers in different gender groups and age groups etc. on the other hand, we can easily to know there have the same opinion on those factors or not.
 
Finally, after the data analysis, we can found the frequency of baby food being used by the different groups of Australian householders, and there are two way for analysis data. On the one hand, we can use SPSS to draw charts and graphs etc. to show up the group of consumers who will use frozen baby food from given data. For example, for those potential customers, what is the important and considerable factors of frozen baby food, the alternative products should be considered or not, does the location (where to using baby food) could be influence on the usage of products and what price level will be acceptable.
On the other hand, we can use ANOVA to finding out that is there are statistical differences between the householders in different group (e.g. age, occupation groups etc.).