Marketing research

Marketing research is something that I have never thought about before. In chapter 3 which talks about how firms conduct marketing research. It is quite interesting to me. If a company wants to promote a product, it must go through marketing research. They can survey, phone , face to face interview, online questionnaires or mail questionnaires. Company can also employ third party to market research company to conduct survey on their behalf, like Microsoft. It shows that marketing research plays an important role in every industry. It is a way to forecast future trends before introducing a new product to customer. It also is a way to make of keeping customers while satisfying their new needs.

Product Development

This week in class we talked about different markets in the term of a matrix with the axes being dominant vs. miss product and high vs. low growth market. Then we also mentioned how companies develop products in order to stay in the market. As this was being discussed in class, it reminds me of Starbuck. Recently I visited the Starbuck store, it introduces a new product development in order to compete with other companies aiming to offer consumers more healthy drink option. The new products are named Skinny Vanilla Latte, Skinny Cinnamon Dolce Latte, with only 90 calories (tall size) each, and New Tazo Vanilla Rooibos Full Leave Tea with 0 calories. Amazing!

McDonald's

Almost everyone knows what McDonald's is. I love McDonald's. Until recently I found this image, it gives me a wake up call. Even though, McDonald's cheap and yummy but consumers also should aware the food nutrition information. Definitely, health benefit would outweight the cost. To me, it is kind of ironic. I asked, are they trying to drive away their consumers? Who will go to McDonald's if they see this ad?