Market Research

 Here is my market research conducted on waffles in the school cafeteria. I am posting this on my blog because Mr said :)

Product and Research Purposes -

The product our market research is being conducted on is waffles sold within Hornby High Schools cafeteria. The research purposes are to see if the student population eats waffles (particularly the ones sold by the school currently), if they would like new flavours to be developed, what flavours they would like to see, how much they would be willing to pay for waffles and if additional features (such as heating waffles up and adding toppings) will increase the demand for waffles. This is an effort to see if there is any point in selling waffles at the school cafe and if developing the current waffles more would increase its demand. 

Secondary Research -

We carried out secondary research in order to gather more information about our target market and the competition our product may have. From this we have gathered there are approximately 790 students at this school. We have also been able to identify the competitors of our product, those being other products sold at the school cafe. These include cookie times (sold at $1), popcorn ($1), hash browns ($2), slices ($1.50).  https://hornby.school.nz/

Primary Research - 

We are conducting this primary research to evaluate if people at Hornby High School would be willing to purchase new additional flavours of waffles at the school cafe. We sent out the survey to the whole school (self-selected sample) and from this 170 students replied. This is a good representation of the population as it is 21.5% of it, the equates to just over ⅕ of the school population. 

Survey Results 

Pricing - 

To start our survey we wanted to ask about their opinions on pricing. Here are the results:

Graph 1 depicts how much people are willing to spend on waffles. The graph shows that approximately 80 of those surveyed were only willing to spend $1 on a waffle, this is 50cents lower than the current prices of waffles sold in the current cafe. Selling waffles at this current pricing of $1.50 was what 20 of the surveyed population were willing to pay. At the higher prices of $2 and $2.50 less than 10 people were willing to pay for waffles, this was expected due to it costing more than what waffles currently cost. 

Graphs 2 and 3 show the sampled populations' opinions on prices and whether they currently buy waffles from the school cafeteria. 67.3% of those surveyed said they did not buy waffles from the school cafe. 22% did current;y purchase waffles from the school cafeteria but believed that the pricing was too high and should be lowered. 8.9% thought that the pricing of waffles was reasonable and should not be lowered or higher and a mere 1.8% of the surveyed believed that the price of waffles was too cheap and should be changed to a higher cost. 

Additional Features-

Secondly, we aimed to find if the probability of someone buying waffles would increase if additional features such as toppings were included when waffles were bought: 

Graph 4 shows that 83.3% of the population surveyed would be more willing to buy a waffle if they were to be heated prior to purchase. This tells us that people would prefer their waffles hot rather than cold/at room temperature and that heating them could cause an increase in demand. 

Graph 5 illustrates that 88.1% would be more willing to buy a waffle if toppings (sprinkles, whipped cream, maple syrup, eg) were offered along with the waffles. This indicates that demand would increase significantly if a complimentary item was offered alongside the waffle. 

Rating of Flavours -

Graph 6 informs us that the majority of those surveyed believe that a plain flavoured waffle is mediocre with the average ranking being a 3. This is the lowest ranking of all suggested flavours and indicates that if we were to sell plain flavoured waffles alongside the other options it would not sell as high.

Graph 7 shows the ranking of chocolate chip waffles. The mode (average) of this ranking is a 5. This was the highest rank offered to those surveyed and shows that this is a flavour of high demand that would sell well in the school cafe.

Graph 8 shows the opinions of those surveyed of strawberry flavoured waffles. This flavour shows scattered results and many clusters. However, the average ranking seems to be 3.

Graph 9 shows the white chocolate chip ranking. The population surveyed gave this flavour of waffle a medium ranking of 5. Again, this ranking is the highest rank given in our survey and indicate that it would be a good flavour to sell.

Graph 10 informs us of the surveyed views on cinnamon sugar flavoured waffles. This flavour is not one commonly seen but however got quite a good ranking with over 70% ranking this flavour a 3 or higher.

Finally, Graph 11 shows up the opinions of those surveyed on sprinkle flavoured waffles. The medium ranking of this flavour was a 3, which although isn't bad, is lower than many other of the flavours above and probably wouldn't be worth selling compared to them.

Conclusion-

At the beginning of this research, we had the aims of discovering if the student population of Hornby High School, eats waffles if they would like new flavours to be developed, what flavours they would like to see, how much they would be willing to pay for waffles and if additional features will increase the demand for waffles. This research was done in an effort to see if the waffles currently sold by the school cafe could be developed more to gain a higher increase of demand and if there was even a point in continuing to sell waffles at school. To conclude, from this research we were able to find valuable information. Firstly, it was found that 67.3% of those surveyed did not buy waffles from the cafeteria currently, however, this could be due to pricing as 22% of those who did buy waffles believed that the pricing was too high and should be lowered. Adding to this 80+ surveyed thought that the price of waffles should be 1 dollar and not 1.50. Lowering this price could increase the demand for waffles at Hornby High School. Another aim was to find if additional features will increase the demand for waffles at HHS. We were able to easily conclude that adding additional features like toppings and heating it up would cause 88% to be more willing to purchase a waffle. From this, we can conclude that if waffles were to be sold adding these additional features along with the waffles would be beneficial to both the consumer and the cafe. Lastly, we aimed to find out if the student body would like new flavours to be developed and sold in the school cafe and if so what flavours. From the suggested flavours we offered in the survey both chocolate chip and the white chocolate chip was by far the most popular with getting an average ranking of 5. This suggests that these would be the best waffles to sell at the school cafe. Again, from this market research, we were able to come to conclusions on each of our aims and discover what developments would be most essential in increasing the demand for waffles in this school.

Evaluation - 

Strengths -

Sample size - a strength of our marketing research was the sample size. We had a sample size of 170 from a student body of approximately 790. This is 21% or ⅕ of our school’s population and was able to give an accurate representation of the opinions of the school. If there was to be a smaller sample size the results would not be as accurate as a lower amount of opinions would be voiced. 

Survey method - as we sent out an online survey we were able to get our results easily, as well as it is simple for the student population to send out. Choosing to use an online survey, by the means of google forms, we were able to send it out to the whole school, reaching more people than if we were to use another method such as paper sampling. 

Weaknesses - 

Secondary research methods - Our secondary research method was a weakness as we were not able to get much information on how well waffles are currently doing in comparison to its competitors and the demand for waffles at Hornby High School currently. This is considered a weakness as it meant we had to include these questions into our primary research and taking away from possibly finding out unknown information about waffles at our school, this is as if more questions were to be added our survey would become more lengthy and the response rate would go down due to people being less bothered to do it. 

Sampling method - We chose to do a self-select survey as it was easiest seeing we doing an online survey. This meant that we only had to send out the survey to the school and not put much thought into it. However, this could be seen as a weakness as it meant that people who didn't have a strong opinion were less likely to complete the survey. This also meant that we couldn't ensure that we had a range of different people from different groups filling out the survey (for example we may have only got responses from those in years 7 and 8 and not those in years 12 and 13) 

Improvements

sampling method -  Doing a self-select survey meant that only people who have strong opinions filled out the survey. Next time an improvement would be using another method such as stratified random sampling may have produced more accurate results. This would be as it would be able to be disrupted amongst a group of people who belong to different groups but also still be random and unbiased. This way we would be able to gather a mixture of opinions and be sure that it’s coming from people with a range of different backgrounds. 

Asking open-ended questions - although asking open-ended questions and allowing many responses is a good use of qualitative information, the way we went around it in our survey meant that it was difficult to graph and read. This is due to the hundreds of responses we had, with most answering the open-ended questions with the same answers.  An improvement of this struggle would be to give multiple options and then add an “other” option as one of the possible answers. This would improve our market research as it would be easier to analyse and graph, as well as still being able to gather the information we were looking for.