Nếu Sears nghĩ rằng không có tăng trưởng trong bán lẻ, làm thế nào để chúng ta giải thích Wal-Mart hay Home Depot? Các công ty đã cố gắng nhiều con đường để tăng trưởng: chi phí và cắt giảm giá, tăng giá tích cực, quốc tế mở rộng, mua lại, và các sản phẩm mới. Mỗi người có vấn đề. Giảm giá thường là phù hợp và vô hiệu hóa. Tăng giá là khó khăn để | arketing Research Marketing research in the early days was aimed more at finding techniques to increase sales than to understand customers. Researchers applauded the development of store audits warehouse withdrawals and consumer panels to provide needed information on product movement. Over time marketers increasingly recognized the importance of understanding buyers. Focus groups questionnaires and surveys came into vogue. Today the marketer s mantra is about the importance of understanding buyers at either the segment or the individual level. According to an old Spanish saying To be a bullfighter you must first learn to be a bull. Today s marketers use a whole bevy of marketing research techniques to understand customers and markets and their own marketing effectiveness. Here are some of the major research techniques in use In-store observation. Paco Underhill author of Why We Buy runs Environsell to study in-store customer His researchers use clipboards track sheets and video equipment to record the movements of shoppers. They are retail 115 116 Marketing Insights from A to Z anthropologists studying over 70 000 shoppers a year in their natural habitat. The findings include Shoppers almost invariably walk to the right. Women are more likely to avoid narrow aisles than men. Men move faster than women through store aisles. Shoppers slow down when they see reflective surfaces and speed up when they see blanks. Shoppers don t notice elaborate signs in the first 30 feet of the entrance. In-home observation. Companies send researchers into homes to study household behavior toward products. Whirlpool arranged for an anthropologist to visit several homes to study how household members use large appliances. Ogilvy Mather sent researchers with handheld videocameras into homes to prepare a 30-minute highlight reel of in-home behavior toward different products. Other observation. Observation can take place anywhere. Japanese carmakers stood in supermarket .
