Proposal on Marketing Research- IKEA

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Assignment
Student Name
Student Number
Submission Date
Professor’s Name

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Table of Contents
1.1 Stages of purchase decision-making process...............................................3
1.2 Buyer behavior theories or model...................................................................3
1.3 Factors affecting buyer behavior.....................................................................4
1.4 Define brand loyalty, corporate image, and repeat purchasing and evaluate
relationship between them.................................................................................... 4
2.1 Market Research Techniques:..........................................................................4
2.2 Use of secondary data to achieve marketing research objectives...................5
2.3 Assess the validity and reliability of market research findings........................6
2.4 Propose a Marketing Research Plan for the IKEA Inc.......................................6
3.1 Market size trends within given market........................................................................8
3.2 Competitor’s Analysis for IKEA................................................................................9
3.3 SWOT Analysis of IKEA’s products...........................................................................9
4.1 Techniques of assessing customer response.................................................10
4.2 Customer satisfaction survey.........................................................................11
4.3 Review the success of completed survey......................................................14
References........................................................................................................... 15

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1.1 Stages of purchase decision-making process
To understand customers and how they react in the market, there is need to answer some
important questions like where, when, and how they make their purchase as well as their
choice criteria. The purchase decision-making process helps to understand that. First they
become aware that a product exists, then they gain interest to know how the product is, they
then evaluate to know if the product is worth trying or not. They then trial the product and
finally adopt if they feel it is worth. Consumers have to make difficult decision as to what to
buy as many products are available which makes decision process structured. Among the
types of buying decisions is complex buying behavior where customers are undecided which
brand to buy as price is high or it’s a high risk to settle for one product as it may disappoint.
There is also variety seeking buying behavior whereby a consumer buys one brand each time
and switches the next time. There are two dimensions of buyer behavior. Consumer buyers
who are final consumers of product and business buy who buy and use product as raw
material.
1.2 Buyer behavior theories or model
There are many factors that influence business buyer behavior. They include environmental
factors such as technology change, economic development, competition, culture and customs.
Organization factors include objectives, structure, policies, and procedures. Interpersonal
factors include, persuasiveness, empathy, and authority. Individual factors include age, risk
attitude, income and education.When customers are faced with a certain situations such as
promotion, technological change, often calcified as a stimulusthey respond by choosing a
specific product. This is what represent stimulus response model(Jisana, 2014).Model of
purchase behavior include learning model which suggests buyer behavior depends of drive
and stimuli to decide what to purchase. Economic man model also explains purchase
behavior through maximizing utility principle.Diffusion and innovation buyer behavior
processinvolves problem identification, information search, evaluation of alternatives,
purchase decision and post-purchase behavior.The choice criteria is determined by things like
perceived risk, life-cycle costs, quality, personal favourism, continuity, and even office
politics.

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1.3 Factors affecting buyer behavior
There are several factors that affect buyer motives and they include psychological, socio-
psychological, economic, cultural, and personal factors. Psychological are perception,
learning, beliefs, attitudes, and motivation usually covered under the Maslow’shierarchyof
needs. Socio-psychological factors mainly cover social status of buyer which influences their
buying motives. Economic factors include income, savings, consumer credit, business cycle,
and inflation. Cultural factors are the beliefs and attitudes of the buyer towards certain
products and they are mainly influenced by the community they belong to and family
members.Personal factors include lifestyle which is how buyers live and life-cycle which
indicate buyer motives changes as they progress in age (Udell, 2001).
1.4 Define brand loyalty, corporate image, and repeat
purchasing and evaluate relationship between them
Brand loyalty entails buyer buying the same brand of products as opposed to considering
other brand. Corporate image refers to the reputation a company has as most buyers tend to
buy from only those companies which have a good corporate image and change their
preference when the reputation of that company changes from good to bad.Repeat purchase
entails buyers buying a product and liking it thus buying the same product every timethe
previous product is fully consumed. Brand loyalty, corporate image, and repeat purchase are
interrelated since corporate image influences brand loyalty and it causes repeat purchase as
consumers prefer the same goods and services over and over again (Wood & Neal, 2009).
2.1 Market Research Techniques:
Market research is performed by an organization to analyze the position of their product in
the target market and determine the opportunities and threats for their products and services.
It also helps organization to evaluate the establishment of their competitors, present problems
and align effective strategies according to legislation to maximize profit.