Answer :

Market research plan on Feel Good Drinks 

Introduction

The current assignment is about the development of marketing research plan for Feel Good Drinks which has got sole distribution rights from Isklar regarding premium water brands.  In order to proceed with the assignment, specific objectives are developed. Based on the objectives, the methods for collecting data are taken into consideration. Both primary and secondary data is collected and analysed that fulfils the research objectives. Based on the findings, recommendations are drawn. 

Task 1

a) Research objective:

• To identify consumer preferences towards flavoured water compared to fruit juice and healthy soft drinks 
• To critically evaluate the current market demand of premium flavoured water and tasty soft drinks 
• To provide suitable recommendations to Tesco regarding buying o flavoured water from Feel Good Drinks

The current research problem is that of the market situation of flavoured premium water. Feel Good Drinks though has got the sole distribution right of flavoured water to Tesco, one of the largest retailers in UK, the company feels to go tasty and healthy soft drinks and fruit juice. The problem is therefore, to identify the current market demand regarding flavoured water in the market compared to fruit juice and soft drinks. This research therefore will seek for answering the below research questions: 

• What is consumer preference towards flavoured premium drinking water and tasty fruit and soft drinks? 
• What are the main factors that drive consumers to buy healthy drinks or flavoured water?
• What will be the possible strategies of Tesco regarding buying flavoured water from Feel Good drinks

b) Overview of the method used to collect the data:

Collection of data forms a major portion while conducting research. The purpose behind doing this are obtaining relevant data, record the same, take important decisions regards various issues and pass the information to others for their convenience. However, in order to make data collection decisions, consideration of research methodological tools is necessary. Coviello (2015) found out that research methodology is a systematic tool that helps a researcher to carry out tasks in proper direction. In this context, research onion gives proper direction to researchers.

 According to Hilmer, Ransom & Hilmer (2015), for conducting a research successfully, a researcher is required follow the elements of a research onion. As seen from the above figure, there are different research methodological tools like purpose, design and research philosophy, research strategies, time horizons and most importantly data collection methods. 

Research design can be of three types-descriptive, exploratory and explanatory (Hair et al. 2012). As the current research where consumer preferences and choices as well as the identification of market situation are required, descriptive research design will be used which is able to explore and explain the research objectives.  Further, as it is important to identify market demand and consumer preferences regarding flavoured water in UK, use of descriptive research design might be helpful in exploring and explaining all the possibilities. Therefore, irrespective of explanatory and exploratory research design, descriptive research design will be used. 

For conducting a market research, selection of a proper approach is necessary to achieve the intended outcome. There are two types of approaches-inductive and deductive approach. The researcher can choose deductive approach which allows the researcher to collect and analyse quantitative data for answering the WH of research questions.  Further, deductive approach focuses on research questions to achieve the objectives as consumer preferences and choices towards flavoured drinking water will be the main issue to identify from the current market research, deductive approach will be taken into consideration. On the other hand, Inductive research approach will be rejected due to its nature of forwarding from research questions to theory. On the other hand, the researcher will choose positivism philosophy which allows the researcher to make arguments for and against as well as to support the arguments with logical reasoning (Barnham, 2015). Further, as positivism philosophy allows the researcher to evaluate the current flavoured water and other soft drink market to gain proper insight which is helpful for answering the research questions, this method will be taken into consideration. As interpretivism only focuses on observation where realism seeks continuous research which is not required in this study, both the philosophies will not be selected for conducting the market research on flavoured water market in UK. 

Thus, based on the research methods chosen, both the sources like primary and secondary data will be collected for the current research report. The primary source of collection of data is considered as the most relevant source because the source under this are considered authentic and information is collected from those who have knowledge about the same in advance. The information seeker gets the opportunity to meet them in person (Kotler & Armstrong, 2013). The primary sources of collection of data include interview, observation, life histories, research, questionnaires, case studies, etc. Under Secondary source of collection of data information is collected from pre-existing records. The pre-existing records include journals, books, government reports, web information, official statistics, etc. from which the researcher can collect information. This saves time and cost on part of the researcher. In this case the researcher is likely to go with primary source of data collection since it will give more relevant information and can get bulk feedback within a short period of time compared to other sources of data collection.

The current research seeks answer for flavoured water market situation in UK compared to other drinks. In this context, both the primary and secondary data will be selected for collecting the required data. Whereas secondary data will be collected from recent press and research publications regarding consumer preferences and choices towards different types of drinks available in the market (Bryman & Bell, 2015).  On the other hand, primary data is collected from human participants. As it is not possible to collect data from huge number of participants, the researcher can make use of sampling method to choose sample with same characteristics and preferences. There are two types of sampling methods: probability and non-probability techniques.   Probability method is used to choose participants for surveys.  Here, participants are selected randomly. On the other hand, for non probability method, participants for interview are selected based on purposive sampling.  There are several methods of collecting data such as qualitative, quantitative and mixed method. The quantitative method of collecting data takes into consideration several facts and figures (numerical data).  The qualitative data is derived from interview of individuals which is descriptive in nature. The mixed method considers both quantitative and qualitative techniques. However, for the current research, primary data will be collected through quantitative data collection process. Therefore, for quantitative data collection, 50 customers will be selected with the help of simple random probability sampling method. The method that will be used for collecting the primary data is survey whereas the tool for collecting the data will be close ended questionnaires. 

c) The collection of data that fulfils the research objective

Secondary data: 

Current flavoured and fruit juice drinking market of UK and Ireland: 

It has been observed from the data collection method that the current flavoured premium drinking water of UK has many competitors due to the existence of several fruit juice organisation. It has been observed that the customers more preferably want the fruit juices. It is because the fruit juice organisation the feel good drinks provide excellent taste and choices for the customers to pick the fruit juices from the super market over the flavoured premium drinking water. It has been further seen that flavoured premium drinking water plays a very important role in the respected places such as UK and Ireland (Mirasgedis et al. 2013). 

It has been further observed that the fruit juices that are being sold in the market are mostly preferred by the customers due to the reasonable price. Moreover, it also contains 100% natural healthy and eco friendly products that would sooth the customers taste and preference (Bucher & Siegrist, 2015). 

Fruit juice is mainly nutritious and tasty. Consumers prefer to have this drink due to its flavour and taste as well as health benefits.  However, a downfall in the fruit juice market in UK is seen. According to the report from Telegraph.co.uk(2016), the fruit juice market in UK seems to down to only 2.5 billion litres from a hiked 100 million litres within 2020. However, even though fruit juice market seems to have a downfall, the carbonated soft drinks market seems to have high growth in the market. 

UK seems to the global leader in consuming soft drinks. As a matter of fact, in 2014,  UK consumers has consumed approx 14.8 billion litres of soft drinks which is more than double consumed in other European states. In fact, the current worth of the soft drinks industry has increased to £15.7 billion in UK (Britishsoftdrinks.com, 2016).  It means that consumers are preferring carbonated and no calorie soft drinks which are healthy and tasty. 

However, flavoured water market seems to have higher growth in UK. The flavoured premium water market has seen a growth of 9.3% and has increased to 2580 litres of consumption.  Thus, it can be said that this market has huge requirement for flavoured water.  

Consumer preferences and choices: 

It has been observed that the consumers prefer fruit juices over the flavoured premium drinking water. It is because the flavoured premium drinking water only helps the consumer to get rid of the thirst but the fruit juice provides a good taste to the consumer. Moreover, as the refreshment quality of the fruit juice is much more than that of flavoured premium drinking water therefore it is preferred more by the consumer (Madzharov, Block & Morrin, 2015). Together with this, it has been further observed that the fruit juices are of several varieties and provide different favours to the customers to diverse their taste. The prices of the fruit juices are also reasonable and are available to the consumers easily in the super market. 

The quest of the consumer for fruit juice is more could be explained with the help of the consumer preference theory that helps to understand the choice of the consumer. As most of the people are engaged in the tertiary activities therefore they would require the need for flavoured premium drinking water to overcome their quest (Zauberman & Urminsky, 2016).  It is a matter of fact that consumer preferences and choices are also impacted by brand image of a firm. Feel good drinks pose a good brand image in the market which may help in influencing consumer decision making process regarding flavoured water drinks (Britishsoftdrinks.com, 2016). The following table shows the consumer preference of the drinks that are served in the market that includes the flavoured premium drinking water, fruit juice and cold drinks in percentage.

It could be said from the above discussion that the consumer preference for the fruit juice percentage is more than in comparison to the cold drinks and water. It is because fruit juice provides nutritious value to the consumer as it is made of fresh fruits.  However, flavoured water has also been able to attract consumer preferences within a very short period of time in the market. 

The following section will focus on collecting primary data for achieving the research objectives. 

Primary data:  

In order to collect primary data, close ended questions are made.  Close ended questionnaires are used for quantitative data collection.

Above result shows that, most of the consumers are between 18-21 years of age consisting 32% whereas consumers between 22-25 consists 22%. On the other hand, only 12% consumers are above 33 years of age who used to drink flavoured premium water and fruit juice and soft drink. so Feel Good Drink Company should develop a good marketing strategy so it can attract those age group in highest extent.

The above graph shows that, 60% are male consumers whereas 40% are female consumers who used to buy and drink the products of Feel Good Drink Company.  From the result of the survey it can be easily determined that maximum customers of the Feel good food company are the male, so the taste of the brand must be developed in the way that can attract the male customers.

It is found out from the survey that more than 36% consumers are buying the fruit juice of company for the last 2 years whereas 22% are since 3 years. The result of the survey clearly describe that most of the customers of the Feel good food company are buying fruit juice from 2 year. However, a substantial amount of customers are buying food drinks for 5 year. Among those customers some of the customer’s also demonstrates that they are buying fruit juice from the Feel Good Company. Therefore, it can be estimated that the organisation already have an established market so they can utilise their existing market to aware customers regarding their new product.

In reply to the current question, 34% consumers replied that they are buying premium flavoured water from the company for the last 2 and 3 years consecutively. On the other hand, the buying frequency for the products for the last 4 and 5 years is 12%. Therefore, it is clear from the result of the survey that all of the customers are accepting the premium quality water from the other company. Therefore, it can be easily understood that there are an established market for the premium quality water brand, and it is important for the feel good company to provide substantial amount of effort to create an effective market for their premium water brand. 

The survey table reveals the fact that most of the customer describer that they are not fully satisfied with the present tastes and quality of the organisation. According to them, they think that the organisation needs to conduct more research on their present tastes and quality. Therefore, it can be easily evaluated that in order to make their existing customers more satisfied, it is important for them to facilitate product development. Along with that, in order to expand their reach to new customers it is important for them to have a promotional strategy

It is seen from the result of the survey that maximum customers considers the nutritious value before buying any soft drinks. In the recent times, customers became very much aware regarding the value of the food and review the nutrition value before buying that food. Therefore, in order to attract customers towards the product it is very much important for the feel good organisation to develop the soft drinks that will have more nutritional value and will be able to provide more calories to the customers but not cholesterol. After developing those products they need to effectively promote that product if they want to get the competitive advantage

In this question maximum customer stated yes, because they think that the value provided by different premium water brand is more or less same. If the premium water product does not have any flavour then before buying they consider the price of the products not the brand of the product. It is seen that the purification process of the unflavoured water is more or less same but they obviously like to see the accreditation of the organisation. On the other hand, in case of the flavoured water they always prefer the tastes of the product and they do not consider the price or brand of the product.

In order to question different customer selects different options. It is seen that, among different premium water brand that are existed in the market have almost same amount of customer base but due to the varied amount of switching rate the customer base may be varied. It is seen that, among different premium water brand, Strathmore have the huge amount of customer because of their utilization of the effective flavor in their product. Therefore, it is very much important for the Feel good company to develop their product in that way so they can compete with the organization because it can provide huge competitive advantage to the organization.  

From the result of the survey it can be easily understand that maximum customer stated no to answer this question. The main reason behind this is they think that soft drinks will provide them more value than the flavored water products. It is seen that maximum customer describe that if they have to buy product in the higher prices, then it would be better for them to buy the soft drinks so it is very much important for the Feel good company to set the price of their flavored water in low level.

The survey table reveals the fact that 58% customers demonstrates that they do not think higher price can provide good product to them. They have stated that, if any organization wants to provide their product in low price then they can provide the product by following low pricing strategy. They think that, any organization mainly decide their pricing strategy based on their brand value. Therefore, in order to achieve the huge amount of attraction from customers\, it is important for Feel good company to set an average price and it is important for them to adapt an effective promotional strategy to promote their products. 

It can be revealed from the survey table that, most of the customers describe that their main preference is the soft drinks so it can be understood that there are an effective market for the soft drinks so it is important for the Feel good company to invent soft drinks company than the flavored water brand.

d) Data analysis technique:

The required data is collected for fulfilling the research objectives and answering the research questions raised from the research problem. The collected quantitative data is analysed with the help of percentile and inferential analysis technique whereas descriptive analysis is taken into consideration for analysing the qualitative data.  

e) Conclusion and recommendation:

It could be concluded from the above discussion that the consumers prefer the fruit juices more than that of the other preferable drinks that are available in the market. On the other hand, the research that is conducted provides good information of the reasons that are behind the consumer choice. The research is mostly conducted through the secondary data analysis and collection of data. Moreover, it has been further observed that the data that are available from the research shows that the consumers are very likely to prefer the fruit juice. The feel good fruit juice is preferred by the consumer in the market over the flavoured premium drinking water in the respected place due to the reasonable price that it is sold for in the super market. The nutritious value that it contains is very vivid as it provides 100% fresh fruit having several flavour option for the consumers to make their choice. Together with this it could be clearly said that the fruit juices are mostly preferred by the consumers in the market than the drinking water that is available in the market.

Recommendations: 

The recommendation that could be done based on the following research is as follows:

Need to conduct marketing research to understand the market competitiveness: 

The respected organisation is required to perform the market research so that a clear picture of the competition could be received by the organisation. It is because there are several competitors that are operating the business of fruit juice and it is observed that the juices that are offered are of nutritious value. Therefore, the organisation is required to make the market research so that the modification in the taste and the flavours could be made by the organisation so that the consumer prefers to buy more of the product from the market. On the other hand, it is with this, the organisation also needs to increase the number of stock that are distributed in the market to increase the sale of the product.

Tesco will need to go for distribution rights of tasty soft drinks rather than flavoured premium water:

It is with this the organisation would be able to frame the taste and the preferable demand of the consumer over the soft drinks than on premium flavoured water. Moreover, the tasting of soft drinks would further increase the scope of evaluating new innovative ideas to manufacture new brand of drinks that would help the organisation to make a good name in the market.

Need to follow a competitive pricing strategy:

It is seen that the customers do not think that any high value product can provide good nutrients to the customers and a low value product cannot provide any value at all. Moreover, there are several premium water brand with varied range of products are present. Therefore, Tesco can include Feel Good Drinks as its main supplier for flavoured premium drinking water. 

Need to maintain effective promotional strategy:

In order to achieve the competitive advantage and to attract huge customers to the newly developed products, it is very much important for Tesco to develop an effective promotional strategy through an effective media by which they must describe the uniqueness of their product to the customers as competitive rivalry in the market is high. Therefore, as Tesco will sell the premium water after buying it from Feel Good Drinks, they need to use promotional strategies for gaining competitive advantage in the market. 

f) Limitations of the research:

During the conduction of the research the researcher faces a lot of issues and difficulties which could be discussed as under.  It has been noticed that due to the lack of time the researcher could not complete his research in an appropriate manner. Therefore, the researcher have completed the research taking help from a particular place, as it would not be possible for the researcher to conduct the survey in a large arena. Budget is another issue that is faced by the researcher for conducting the research. As the budget that is offered to the researcher is limited therefore the researcher could not spend a lot of amount on the research study that is conducted by him. Apart from this, time is another factor that becomes an issue for the researcher to conduct the research. As the offered time being very less therefore all the surveys could be completed with effectiveness. As there are a few limitations that are there in the research study, so there is scope for the further improvement which could help the researcher to do potential research in the time of completing the research. If the researcher collect the data for a long time and if budget is available to him in the time of collecting the data from the different sources, then the research could have more generic, credible and compact.

The research has focused on collecting primary data. It is a matter of fact that consumer opinions and preferences change over time.  With the same sample and same questionnaires, a different researcher can get different opinion from the consumers. This is mainly due to the close ended questions which makes the respondents to give haphazard answers. Thus, this haphazard answer and the nature of data collection poses question on the reliability and validity of the current research.  The final outcome that has been identified may be tampered. However, even after that, the research has been able to identify core concepts and factors that are associated with consumer behaviour towards flavoured water in UK. Further, this research has also been able to present future research scope in this particular area for future researchers who will be able to use this research as a secondary data source. 

g) Timeline of the project:

The identification of the task has started in the very first week. After the topic and the task are identified, collection of both primary and secondary data has started from the second week. The analysis of the collected data is done thereafter from 13^th to 16^th week. Based on the findings, recommendations are written in the next weeks whereas the final file is submitted on 28^th week after reviewing the entire task.