MBA404 Consumer Behavior: Survey Sample and Analysis of Dove Soap

This report presents a survey sample and analysis conducted to understand consumer behavior and purchasing decisions related to Dove soap. The survey instrument was developed to assess factors influencing purchase patterns, including perception, attitudes, motivation, and cultural influences. Data was collected using SurveyMonkey and analyzed to determine consumer satisfaction, likelihood of recommending the product, and reasons for choosing Dove soap over alternatives. Key findings indicate a high level of satisfaction with Dove soap, with most respondents reporting no side effects and expressing a preference for its moisturizing properties. The analysis highlights opportunities for Dove to strengthen customer loyalty and expand its market share by targeting specific consumer segments and emphasizing the product's benefits. This document is available on Desklib, a platform offering a range of study tools and solved assignments for students.

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SURVEY SAMPLE AND ANALYSIS
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Contents
Purpose...........................................................................................................................3
Development of Survey Instrument.............................................................................4
Administration Processes..............................................................................................4
Data Analysis..................................................................................................................5
Key Findings...................................................................................................................6
Reference List.....................................................................................................................7
Appendices..........................................................................................................................9

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Data Analysis and Discussion
Purpose
Feedback from consumers play a significant role in determining purchase decisions. For
this reason, it is significant for companies to conduct studies on their consumers in order to
evaluate and assess factors that contribute to their purchase patterns (Bagozzi, Gurhan-canli &
Priester 2002). Information collected from questionnaires play a crucial role in helping
businesses improve their products, have competitive advantage and increase their market share.
Therefore, understanding various purchase decisions is significant in helping products such as
Dove soap to become successful in the industry (Jansson-boyd 2010).
Besides, feedback from consumers is important in helping companies develop customer
profile so as to retarget the campaigns among specific consumer segments to increase sales for
the business (Yarrow 2014). Purchase decisions often depend on rational and emotional reasons.
As a result, emotional attachment can help a company to create loyal customers as well as
encouraging recommendations and referrals (Hoyer, Macinnis & Pieters 2018). Moreover,
understanding consumer’s choice and preference patterns helps a business to develop marketing
strategies that are specifically targeted to the consumers as a means of reducing marketing costs.
Therefore, the purpose of this analysis is to determine elements that help Dove soap to
perform better in the market through assessing the perception of consumers, attitudes towards the
product, elements that motivate the consumers, culture and influence from family and lifestyle
among other issues that are integrated in the survey questions (Yarrow 2014). The information
collected will help Dove soap to determine the reasons why consumers purchase and use the
product, how often the consumers are likely to purchase the product and whether the consumers
are likely to purchase for others among other aspects such as social norms that weigh into
individual and group purchase patterns.

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Development of Survey Instrument
The development of Dove soap survey instrument was achieved through different
development stages. The first stage of the development process aimed at achieving a desired
outcome. The outcome in this case was to create a survey question which would help Dove soap
understand how consumers are influenced to make purchase decisions (Brace 2008). As a result,
the survey instrument was centered on various aspects that contribute to influencing purchase
patters such as perception, attitudes, motivation, group and individual differences, culture as well
as family and lifestyle.
Consequently, the survey instrument considered various types of questions in order to get
the information that is required for purposes of making informed conclusions. Among the types
of questions that the survey used include open-ended questions, close-ended questions, likert
scale questions, multiple choice question and rank order questions (Emde 2014). In order to
measure perception among the consumer’s, questions regarding side effects and usage of Dove
soap were used in the collection of data.
Consequently, the survey instrument determined consumers influence with respect to
group and individual differences by seeking to understand whether users are likely to
recommend the soap to other people as well as whether most families use the soap (Heeringa,
West and Berglund 2017).
Administration Processes
Administering the survey questions to relevant respondents was the most crucial part for
this study. The process involved various key aspects such as developing the questions in a
manner that is easy for consumers to understand and provide appropriate answers. This was
achieved through coming up with a number of questions which were then listed in order of
priority and easy understanding. The questions that seemed difficult for the respondents were
cancelled from the main list and only those that were relevant to the goal of survey and easy to
answer were used. The questions were then submitted to surveymonkey.com which is a free
online tool that is used to conduct surveys (Ness, Tandberg and McLendon 2015).
The links to the questions were shared through different social media channels and the
results were collected and analyzed on question by question basis along with graphical

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representation. The reliability of this process can be accessed through the steps taken to ensure
that the survey is not only effective but reliable (Dehghani and Tumer 2015). The target
audience of the survey included people who have purchased and used Dove soap over a period of
time (Fang et al 2014).
Data Analysis
The first question of the survey aimed at determining whether the consumers had
experienced any side effects from using Dove soap. 73% of the respondents answered that there
were no side effects associated to the products. 13% indicated that there were side effects only
when Dove soap was mixed with other soaps while 6% of the responded indicated that there
were side effects which could be attributed by difference in the types of skin (Survey Monkey
2018). 40 % of the respondent indicated that they used Dove soap for bathing and washing the
face while 33.33% suggested that they used the soap for washing the face only while 26%
indicated that they used the soap for bathing only. 80% of the total respondents were indicated
that they used the soap for bathing as well as washing the face while 20% of the respondents
indicated that they do not use the soap for bathing and washing the face.
Based on the question regarding satisfaction, 86% of the respondents indicated that they
were satisfied with the soap while 13% indicated that they were not satisfied (Survey Monkey
2018). 46% of the respondents were likely to recommend the soap to other people. 40% were
undecided while only 6 % were very likely or unlikely to recommend the soap to other people.
53% of the respondents admitted that they were undecided whether most families use Dove soap
while 26% disagreed that most families use the soap. Only 20% of the respondents admitted that
most families use Dove soap. 46 % of the respondents suggested that they use the soap because it
prevents the skin from drying and keeps the skin oiled the whole day (Survey Monkey 2018).
33.33% indicated that the soap helped them to keep the body fresh and has a nice
fragrance while 20% of the respondents indicated that they used the soap to keep fresh, has a
nice fragrance and keeps the skin from drying. 20% of the respondents indicated that they feel
active, fresh and clean while 40% said they felt active and 33.33% felt fresh while only 6.67 %
suggested they felt clean. When the respondents were asked which soap they preferred among
alternatives, 46.67% preferred Dove soap, 26.67 preferred Dettol, 20% preferred Axe and 6.67%
preferred Lux. Surprisingly, only 20% of the respondents indicated that Dove soap was close to

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being the best while 40% indicated that it was close to worse. Only 6.67 indicated that the soap
was worse while 33.33% indicated that the soap was average (Survey Monkey 2018).
Based in the results provided by the survey, the statistics indicate that Dove soap works
well with consumers and the business can increase market share by targeting the specific client.
For instance, there are over 70% of the consumers that agree Dove soap has no effect. This
people can become loyal customers for the company if the company re-targets them. Besides,
since the respondents agreed that they use the soap for bathing and washing, dove soap can target
people who use multi-purpose soap like families. Since most respondents agree that the soap is
their most preferred soap, this means that most consumers are likely to purchase the product and
Dove soap can increase its marketing efforts in order to increase more customers who are also
likely to be loyal. Close to 90% are satisfied with the products which implies that most
consumers are loyal customers and the company can use this report to target other customers and
which are also likely to convert well for the company. The report that relates to people
recommending the product to other people can assist the company to market the product by
promoting the soap as the most used soap in the market. Dove soap can also prevent the skin
from drying which most consumers agree with and this is a positive aspect for the company to
promote the product in order to attract most customers.
Key Findings
From the results provided, a significant number of respondents agree that Dove soap has
no side effects while some consider the soap to have side effects when mixed with other soaps.
The analysis also indicates that there are minor cases that relates to type of skin as well as those
considering side effects. Further, the ratio among those who use the soap for bathing and
washing the face is relatively similar with the ratio of those who use the soap for both purposes.
The survey conclusively determined that most users prefer Dove soap as their body and face
soap.
Consequently, most of the respondents attested to get satisfaction form the soap. Most
respondents were torn between likely and maybe when it came to recommending the soap to
other users. On the other hand, those who were very likely and those that were unlikely were
represented by small proportions. A significantly smaller number of respondents admitted that
most families use the soap for face and body while a higher proportion were undecided which

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can be attested to lack of information pertaining which soaps people use in their homes
(Srinivasan, Rutz and Pauwels 2016). No conclusive responses were received with respect to
Dove soap being the best soap which could be attributed to the fact that there are other soaps in
the market that consumers prefer over Dove soap (Antonetti and Maklan 2014).
Reference List
Antonetti, P. and Maklan, S., (2014). Feelings that make a difference: How guilt and pride
convince consumers of the effectiveness of sustainable consumption choices. Journal of
Business Ethics, 124(1), pp.117-134.
Bagozzi, R. P., Gurhan-canli, Z., and Priester, J. R. (2002). The social psychology of consumer
behaviour. Philadelphia, Pa, Open University.
Brace, I. (2008). Questionnaire design: how to plan, structure and write survey material for
effective market research. London, Kogan Page.
Dehghani, M. and Tumer, M., (2015). A research on effectiveness of Facebook advertising on
enhancing purchase intention of consumers. Computers in Human Behavior, 49, pp.597-600.
Emde, M. (2014). Open-ended questions in Web surveys using visual and adaptive questionnaire
design to improve narrative responses. Darmstadt, Techn. Univ.
Fang, Y., Qureshi, I., Sun, H., McCole, P., Ramsey, E. and Lim, K.H., (2014). Trust, satisfaction,
and online repurchase intention: The moderating role of perceived effectiveness of e-commerce
institutional mechanisms. Mis Quarterly, 38(2).
Heeringa, S.G., West, B.T. and Berglund, P.A., (2017). Applied survey data analysis. Chapman
and Hall/CRC.
Hoyer, W. D., Macinnis, D. J., and Pieters, R. (2018). Consumer behavior. Australia: Cengage
Learning.
Jansson-boyd, C. V. (2010). Consumer psychology. Maidenhead, Open University Press.

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Ness, E.C., Tandberg, D.A. and McLendon, M.K., (2015). Interest groups and state policy for
higher education: New conceptual understandings and future research directions. In Higher
education: Handbook of theory and research (pp. 151-186). Springer, Cham.
Srinivasan, S., Rutz, O.J. and Pauwels, K., (2016). Paths to and off purchase: quantifying the
impact of traditional marketing and online consumer activity. Journal of the Academy of
Marketing Science, 44(4), pp.440-453.
Survey Monkey (2018). Dove Soap Survey. [online] Available at:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/stories/SM-WCXKK8L/ [Accessed 12 Sep. 2018].
Yarrow, K. (2014). Decoding the New Consumer Mind: How and Why We Shop and Buy.
Hoboken, Wiley.

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Appendices
Graphical representation link http://www.surveymonkey.com/stories/SM-WCXKK8L/

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