a research program about the on-line
1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1.1 The Research Objective - To Support Web Site Development
As one of the leading manufacturers and suppliers of professional grooming tools and hair care products, senior management desired to grow the business and improve our margins by doing business online. Yet our company's firmly embedded sales process - exclusively through local franchise distributors - made Internet sales a tricky proposition. The online portion of our company's business needed to cooperate with the distributors and find innovative way to satisfy customers' currently unmet needs.
Our company is also unique in that we have three distinct customer segments to consider: salon owners; stylists; and cut-it-yourselfers (CIY) not currently served by distributors. Adding one more element of complexity to the situation, management term is considering online partnerships with several companies that would enable us to sell complementary products such as freestanding hair dryers, styling chairs, and salon management software.
1.2 The Requested Information
In order to achieve the objective, we need to process a marketing research to collect the information that the senior management team will require to decide upon whether or not launch the Web Site. Those informational needs were:
1) To understand what product and pricing options would be most successful on the Web Site,
2) To determine which site features would drive preference and which would have marginal and negative effects,
3) To determine the type of customer service necessary to support our Web Site, and
4) To decide if the site should target only existing customer segments or include the previously underserved CIY market as well.
1.3 The Tools
After taking into consideration of our complex informational needs, our budget and timeframes etc., we recommended a conjoint study. And in order to conduct a conjoint analysis, information must be...
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