ABSTRACT
Market Survey is any organized effort to gather information about markets or customers. It is a very important component of business strategy. The term is commonly interchanged with marketing research. Market survey reporting includes social and opinion research, which is the systematic gathering and interpretation of information about individuals or organizations using statistical and analytical methods and techniques to gain insight or support decision making.The project is designed to focus the field as a key factor to get advantage over competitors and provides important information to identify and analyze the market size, customers/consumers behaviour and periodic sales evaluation. The package will be developed in a .net (dot net) integrated development environment (.net IDE). The package IDE is chosenbecause extracted information needs to be presented in an enhanced graphical reporting format and easy communication with the database for program flexibility in windows platform.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Certification
Dedication
Acknowledgement
Abstract
Table of content
CHAPTER ONE: GENERAL INTRODUCTION
- Introduction
- Statement of the problem
- Aims and Objectives
- Significance of the study
- Research Methodology
- Scope and Limitation
- Organization of the report
- Definition of terms
CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW
- Review of past works
- Benefits and weaknesses of survey research
- How to carry out a market survey
- Conducting online market research
- Online market research tools
- Research tools and techniques
- Writing online questionnaires
CHAPTER THREE: PROJECT METHODOLOGY
- Method of data collection
- Analysis of existing system
- Problems of existing system
- Proposed of system specification
- Advantages of the proposed system
- Design and implementation methodologies
CHAPTER FOUR: DESIGN, IMPLEMENTATION AND DOCUMENTATION OF THE SYSTEM
- Design of the system
- Output Design
- Input Design
- File Design
- Procedure Design
- Implementation of the Systems
- Hardware support
- Software support
- Documentation of the System
- program documentation
- Operating the system
- Maintaining the System
CHAPTER FIVE: SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
- Summary
- Experience gained
- Conclusion
- Recommendation
References
Appendix
- System flowchart
- Program flowchart
- Source Listing
- Computer output
CHAPTER ONE
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
1.1 INTRODUCTION
Marketing concentrates primarily on the buyers, or consumers. After determining the customers’ needs and desires, marketers develop strategies that are designed to educate customers about a product’s most important features, persuade them to buy it, and then to enhance their satisfaction with the purchase. Where marketing once stopped with the sale, today businesses believe that it is more profitable to sell to existing customers than to new ones. As a result, marketing now also involves finding ways to turn one-time purchasers into lifelong customers. Marketing includes planning, organizing, directing, and controlling the decision-making regarding product lines, pricing, promotion, and servicing. In most of these areas marketing has overall authority; in others, as in product-line development, its function is primarily advisory. In addition, the marketing department of a business firm is responsible for the physical distribution of the products, determining the channels of distribution that will be used, and supervising the profitable flow of goods from the factory or warehouse.
Market survey reporting helps businesses identify consumer needs and wants so a company can develop and promote products more successfully. Such research also provides the information upon which important advertising and marketing decisions are based.Market survey is a pivotal part of the marketing process. By referring to studies of prospective buyers’ needs, wants, and tastes, providers of goods and services can tailor their marketing programs. The results of marketing studies suggest to sellers not only what they should sell or provide but also where to offer particular goods and services, how to advertise them, and how to set prices.
There are two types of research: qualitative and quantitative. To gain a general impression of the market, consumers, or the product, companies generally start with qualitative research. This approach asks open-ended rather than yes or no questions in order to enable people to explain their thoughts, feelings, or beliefs in detail. One of the most common qualitative research techniques is the focus group in which a moderator leads a discussion among a small group of consumers who are typical of the target market. The discussion usually involves a particular product, service, or marketing situation. Focus groups can yield insights into consumer perceptions and attitudes, but the findings cannot be applied to the whole market, because the sample size is too small. Focus group results, then, are suggestive rather than definitive.
The insights generated by a focus group are often explored further through quantitative research, which provides reliable, hard statistics. This type of research uses closed-ended questions, enabling the researcher to determine the exact percentage of people who answered yes or no to a question or who selected answer a, b, c, or d on a questionnaire. One of the most common quantitative research techniques is the survey in which researchers sample the opinions of a large group of people. If the sample group is large enough and is representative of a particular group, such as executives who use cell phones, statisticians consider the findings statistically valid, which means that if all consumers in that particular category could be surveyed, the findings would still be the same. This means that quantitative findings are conclusive in a way that qualitative findings cannot be.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The project target on solving the problem of inefficiency and lack of effectiveness in focus group and individual market research or survey methods by developing a windows based application that uses qualitative (also called subjective or judgmental) survey techniques to report consumers behavior or reaction towards particular product(s) and/or service(s) of company over a reasonable period of time.
1.3 AIM AND OBJECTIVES
The project is aimed at developing an application package for reporting and evaluating market survey to enhance company status in a competitive marketing and provides important information to identify and analyze the market size, consumersbehaviour and periodic sales evaluation. The objectives of the study are:
- To deliver quality goods required by the customer the target of achieving maximum customer satisfaction at minimum possible cost.
- To ensure maximum utilization of any available resources in a production process to meet-up with consumers’ needs and specifications.
- To remove bottleneck at all stages of production and to solve problems related to market research deficiency.
1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY
The project reports consumers’ reactions and how their responses will affect production and sales of the company’s products. Basically, it is helpful for the organization to improve the quality of its relationship management with their customers. This software can organize a comprehensive survey profile of respective products and can use customer information collected into database for effective decision-making.
Other benefits of the application include:
- Quality and efficiency in service delivery
- Decision support for effective managerial functions
- Enterprise agility
- Customer attention
1.5 SCOPE AND LIMITATION
What is required is a system that supports ‘judgmental’ survey, which takes the drudge out of retrieving and analysing data, and which allows sales and marketing managers, finance managers and general managers to work cooperatively on their components of the forecasting, planning and review process, within a common, shared but secure systems environment.
1.6 DEFINITION OF TERMS
Stock: Supply of goods available for sale: a supply of goods for sale, kept on the premises by a store or business. (Microsoft® Encarta® 2009.)
Stock-taking: A simple approach to checking the level of stock in a business is to count it on the shelves – this is called stock-taking. For many businesses, such as a small shop, this is a thoroughly practical approach. Most businesses conduct an ‘annual stock take’ when stocks are checked in considerable detail to find any discrepancies between physical stock and the stock records.
Overstock: This means keeping goods longer than expectation or stock growing beyond the capacity of the company’s warehouse. This, in most cases, results from too much buffer stock.
Stock-out: The opposite of an overstock is a stock-out. This means running out of stock or on the other hand unavailability of stock to satisfy customers at the point of need.
Buffer stock: This refers to stock purposefully held in reserve for particular period of time.
1.7 ORGANISATION OF THE REPORT
Chapter one contains the general introduction which is the chapter that sheds a clear light on what the project is all about. It also contains statement of the problems, significance of the study, objectives of the project as well as the scope and limitations to this project.
Chapter two deals with the literature review, an overview of sales forecasting, direct exploration of sales and casual approaches to sales forecasting.
Chapter three covers about analysis of the existing system and project methodology. It also contains methods of data collection, analysis of the existing system and its problems, analysis and advantages of the proposed system and the design and implementation methodology.
Chapter four is the chapter that enumerates the design, implementation and documentation of the system is stated here also, the output design, input design, database design and procedure design is considered here. So also is the hardware and software supported by this project is explained as well.
Chapter five is concluding part which also has the summary of the whole chapters and recommendation is also made.
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