business, theme 1.2

• what are markets?


  a market can be a place, product or a group of people.
• what is competition?


  competition affects how a business makes decisions
• how do businesses compete with other companies?


  they look at the strengths and weaknesses of competitors
• what are some strengths and weaknesses?

  price , customer service, quality, product range and location.
• why is price important?


  because customers often prefer to pay lower prices
• why is customer service important?


  offering customer services will attract customers and they will be willing to pay higher prices
• why is quality important?


  offering better quality products will make customers more satisfied and likely to pay more.
• why is product range important?

  having a larger product range will be attractive to more customers
• why is location important ?

  customers are more likely to buy if its sold in a convenient place
• what is market research?


  Finding out what customers want.
• what is one purposes of market research?


  identifying who the customers are and what they will want
• examples of customer needs

  types of product, quality of product, price, convenience (where it is sold) and choice of products
• using market research to understand customers and their needs helps businesses too:


  make informed decisions - (eg. what products to sell, where to sell them) Spot gaps in the market - (e.g customers may have needs that aren't being met , so the business should fill it before competitors can) Reducing risks - selling things customers are bound to like
• what are the two types of market research?


  primary and secondary
• what is primary research?


  doing your own work. Getting information from customers or potential customers (e.g. questionnaires)
• what is secondary research?


  looking at other peoples work. allows access to a wide range of data
• how is social media used for market research?


  it allows businesses to collect information and use it for their market research. for example, they can see what things are trending and popular and what is going downhill
• what is quantitative data?


  anything you can measure or reduce to a number
• what is qualitative data?


  all about peoples feelings and opinions. useful to get a greater depth of peoples opinions.
• why use market research?


  it can be used to see if a business has any problems or how it can improve. Data needs to be reliable.
• what is market segmentation?


  segmenting a market can help a business to figure out who exactly they are most interested in selling too.
• what is market size?


  number of people (including companies)within the market
• what is market share?

  The percentage of total sales in a market that a company or product holds.
• what are the 4 methods of market segmentation?

  age, income, location and lifestyle
• why is age a method of segmentation?


  if the customers are mostly teenagers the business needs to make the products suitable for that age category.
• why is income a method of segmentation?


  how much different people earn will affect what they are willing to buy