Marketing Strategy for Castle Bingo - Research Proposal Example

? Castle Bingo   Marketing Research According to the definition by American Marketing Association ,"marketing research is the function that links a customer, consumer, and the public to the marketer through information where information is used to identify and define the marketing strengths (opportunities) and weaknesses (problems). The information here is used to generate, and evaluate marketing actions, monitor marketing performance, and improve the understanding of marketing process. Marketing research must therefore specify the information necessary to address these issues” (American Marketing Association, 2011). Marketing research is the process where a company gathers information effectively from the market in order to introduce their products and services to the market. The amount of time required for marketing research largely depends on the company's line of business and the size of the target market. However, a defined standard process has used to implement the company's products or services in the market. The process includes 1) assessing the information needs, 2) develop needed information from internal and external databases, 3) implement the marketing research, 4) organization of ideas, and 5) distributing and use of the information (American Marketing Association, 2011). Therefore, marketing research is essential in developing a marketing strategy for any company. This is because as described above, it assesses the steps a company needs to take to reach their target market. The Internet has been useful in collecting marketing data through online focus groups, experiments, and Internet surveys. The marketing research process also involves collecting and use of the secondary data. Secondary data involves re-checking internal and external marketing and secretarial procedures of the company. These procedures include things like sales invoices, warranty cards, and published material. This means that an efficient data collection process will assist this process (McDaniel and Gates 2006). The concept of marketing research basically states that a company should perform marketing research in order to get in touch more with their customer’s needs. The marketing research helps the company know what are the customer’s wants and needs. It does not only target the current customers, but potential customers as well. The overall basis of the marketing research is to create loyalty of the consumers by making them to keep coming back and bring new customers in to ensure profitability and the longevity of the company. Research Proposal The current marketing strategy for Castle Leisure seems to suggest that the online website will bring in customers on its own. There website indeed explains what Castle Bingo is all about and provides a step by step guidelines for the first time the consumers. However, success story for Castle Leisure in the context of Castle Bingo has to be about how well the company combines leveraging synergies, thereby building on consumer insights. They also have to come up with a high decibel advertising that can win many consumers in the game. This therefore calls for a through marketing research that will be able to investigate differences in customer requirements between off-line and on-line bingo games. The marketing strategy must be well thought out and implemented so as to create a superb response from its target customers (Wiig and Digginess 2009). The Castle Bingo online brand has been in the market for long Castle launched an online Bingo presence in 2006, in collaborating with the Bingo network St Minver. At its launch, the company aimed to capture at least 25 percent market share of the branded Bingo online market within the first five years. Castle Bingo is a popular name in the world of bingo halls in the lands with eight, modern bingo clubs situated in the main population centres across the South Wales; Merthyr Tydfil; Nantgarw; Swansea; Uskway, Neath; Morriston, Newport; and also Canton and Newport Road in Cardiff. This has made Castle leisure to be a market leader in the Welsh bingo market. Castle Leisure have terminated their marketing research campaign with an advertising agency that worked on their behalf for five years conducting market research. The company has now approached me; the Marketing Assistant in the Cardiff HQ of Castle Leisure so that I can undertake a Marketing Research for the company and present a report to the marketing manager of the findings (Euromonitor International, 2011). The research is aimed at investigating the differences in customer requirements between off-line and on-line bingo games. The market research will be useful in providing the company’s management with information that will help them to understand their consumer’s needs and thereby have the ability to plan, have a market control and make important decisions. Market situation The online target market set by Castle Leisure is an extremely ambitious target market. Castle competitors are companies like the Frito Lay group (owned by Pepsi Co) with a slew of brands like 75-ball version of bingo on a 5x5 card, 90 ball bingo, 30 balls Bingo and the 80 ball bingo, a hybrid of the 75 ball bingo and the 90 ball bingo rules. The UK online Bingo market has already seen an influx with big brand names such as Jackpotjoy, Wink Bingo, 888 Ladies, with Mecca & Gala have who joined the market recently having done a great job to build up their online bingo business (Wiig and Digginess 2009). These companies have launched bingo games on their already established websites. This is the reason that Castle Leisure need to have research done in order to be able to determine the consumer’s needs. The reliability and validity of the investigation by Castle leisure will be determined in each specific sample size pointed out of from the survey. My research has identified three methods that will help castle research team to conduct the investigations. 1. Assess the Representativeness In order to assess the representativeness of Offline clients respondent, various types of sampling will need to be made to get the accurate respondent feedbacks. There are a many ways to approach the respondents to their response on Bingo offline. For method 1, the company should target the right respondent by following them through an entire Bingo Game. The company should then conduct an interview with the respondent. The interview will be face-to-face but the company’s research will have a questionnaire that they will use to ask questions and receive the answers. The questionnaire therefore contains relevant questions that are a representation of the investigation on the differences in customer requirements between off-line and on-line bingo games (Oppenheim, 2000). Therefore, it will be relevant to the research where, they can react in various aspects of communication with the consumers. Using systematic sampling, the investigators will get specific and reliable feedback from the respondents. The interviewers can observe the body language and attitude of their respondents when conducting the interview. The sampling for method 2 is also recommended in this research proposal to direct the Marketing Research agency working on behalf of help Castle Leisure in their research. The method that will be used is the stratified sampling (Malhotra, N., Hall, J., Shaw, M., Oppenheim, P., pp. 153, 2004) Here, all the registered members of the bingo club are placed into groups. This grouping is done through the company’s website. This is more towards the selection of the Bingo Online Members (who have registered with the website) who go for the Offline Bingo games. However, the method is complicated and need careful analysis to present the right population. This is because there might be members who have no internet access at home but they are frequent online bingo players. In other words, some online members are also offline game regulars or unregistered members are Castle Bingo Online players. Based on method 3a, all respondents at the Castle Bingo interview will fill the questionnaire for themselves. Their ages and bingo playing habits will be analyzed (Malhotra, et al. 2004). This is a convenient sampling whereby, unregistered members that are Castle Bingo Online players or the respondent fills in a self administered questionnaire as they pass by from the Bingo outlets. A similar representation of the questionnaire will be filled online by the respondents. This is the method 3b. The Castle Leisure’s Marketing Research agency investigating the differences in customer requirements will therefore analyze the questionnaires and come up with a report that addresses the mission of the research. 2. Response and non – response rate The response rate for method 1 will most likely be high because the researchers assess the expected response level because the respondents will not know that the interviewers are observing them. It is likely that they will be honest and act almost naturally through the interview (Oppenheim, 2000). For method 2, there may low response rate may also be possible as a result due to the time laps. In other case for method 3, low relatively low response will be expected, as the non-response rate is high because the respondents are not interviewed face to face. A lower response rate will also be gained for method 3 because the Bingo room can be hectic and the respondents may not have time to fill the questionnaires (Aaker et al. 2007). Furthermore, they might just ignore the interviewer and walk out from the Bingo room. Here the company can introduce a reward so as to attract people’s attention and increase the number of those that are interested to participate. It will be difficult for respondents in Method 3b who do not have an internet access to go online. Conclusion This paper recommends for a marketing communication campaign for Castle Bingo that will center on 2 key areas:- To research on the brand awareness among the different categories of consumers. This can be accomplished through hosting an awareness campaign that should be advertised by combining social media including Facebook, TV advertising PR, social outreach and a sponsorship package to reach more viewers (McDaniel and Gates 2006). The online site can also be advertised with banners on websites such as Yahoo. In this campaign the company will aim at establishing whether an offline consumers would are the same online customers with different requirements because a face to face interviews would be conducted in the promotional campaign. The interview will involve asking if the consumers know about the online version of Castle Bingo and if they have ever played the game online and the frequency. This will help to get the playing habits of the consumers interviewed. The marketing research team should also consider travelling to all the cities where the company has bingo halls and speaking to the consumers who are members of the clubs American Marketing Association, 2011). This research will help to identify whether the online consumers are different from the offline consumers. For example, the research has established youngsters in the age group between 16 and 30 are the most experimental online bingo players because they prefer modern computer games. The mature adults prefer the traditional forms of Bingo and they can be the major consumers for the offline Bingo. Research has also identified that youngsters in this age group prefer modern forms of media particularly through the social media. This is the reason why the company should also consider incorporating a Facebook feature in their online website so as to receive feedback from those people group. By evaluating the data, they will be able to verify whether these facts are true and come up with the appropriate marketing strategy that addresses the needs of each category of consumers (Aaker et al. 2007). With the marketing research information gathered from the market, the company can therefore come up with a market communication plan that will seek to address the consumer needs and look at the demographic market target. Through the aid of the research, Castle can focus on achieving more market share above its competitors by advertisements that will aim at changing the consumer perceptions, raise awareness of Castle Bingo as the exclusive offline bingo providers, and come with strategies to make Castle Bingo online the most popular online bingo site (Mugo 2009). Bibliography Aaker A, D, Kumar, V, Day, S, G, (2007). Marketing Research, Ninth Edition. Retrieved May 8, 2013, from University of Phoenix e-book collection. American Marketing Association. (2011). Marketing Power. Retrieved from http://www.marketingpower.com/AboutAMA/Pages/DefinitionofMarketing.aspx Apollo Group, Inc. (2010). Kudler Fine Foods. 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