Question: MARKETING RESEARCH

This week you are the owner/developer of a chain of fitness spas called C'est Si Bon, targeted at adult women. You are interested in the possibility of opening four new stores in Scadona, a city of 600,000 people that is located 1,000 miles from your current concentration of fourteen stores. You know nothing about Scadona except that it seems to be a good place for expansion. You contact a market research firm in Scadona to get information about the city, about the competition, and so on. The firm gives you the information in Table 1, which includes both primary and secondary research and their prices.

1) Identify what type of research you feel each of the 10 items would be (P = primary; S = secondary). Be able to justify your decisions.

2) Next rank the ten types of information listed in the order you think they should be handled when making decisions about the new market area. Rank them in descending order from 1 to 10, with 1 being most important. In your discussion justify your ranking.

Table 1: 1. A list of the gross sales figures of all existing women's fitness spas in Scadona for the last two years (Cost = $400)

2. Map of the Scadona area showing major traffic routes, current shopping centers and types of stores, and locations
of current fitness spas. (Cost = $1,500)

3. Color-coded map of the area showing home and commercial property values (Cost = $1,000)

4. Telephone survey of 500 randomly selected households in the area designed to determine consumers' familiarity with your company name, interest in spas like this, and awareness of other spas and their advertising (Cost = $5,000)

5. Demographic breakdown of Scadona's population by sex, age, gross income, education, disposable income, family size, and occupation (Cost = $2,000)

6. Mail survey of 300 subscribers to women's magazines, questioning their fitness awareness, need for complete fitness services¬, amount of money spent on fitness activities annually, frequency of patronage of fitness spas (Cost = $5,000)

7. Report of fifteen-year summary of economic trends in the area, shopping centers, occupations, disposable income, clothing sales, and specialty shops (Cost = $1,800)

8. Focus group report of twelve people concerning at¬titudes toward prices of fitness services, services expected of a spa, appropriate atmosphere, type of ¬personnel, and seasonal changes (Cost = $2,800)

9. List of all organizations, clubs, and restaurants that cater to the in-crowd and their manager's names (Cost = $800)

10. List of all current useable retail space openings in the area with rental rate per square foot, turnover rate for that spot and shopping center, population within one square mile with income ranges, housing values, occu¬pations, ages and family sizes (Cost = $2,400)