MARKETING INTELLIGENCE

Marketing Intelligence

Marketing Intelligence

Introduction

Mr. Griffins, the current CEO of the company Sanitex Limited, founded the company four years ago. The company started by providing pest control services to homeowners in West London. But in the last three years, business has grown and the company now serves local businesses, schools and industrial lands as well. Today, the company is worth around £500,000. Mr. Griffin has been trying to expand the company's operations but his limited knowledge of consumer behaviour is hindering with the idea. He also means to expand the company's product portfolio by introducing carpet cleaning and distribution of sanitary products, but the company has not been able to attract many customers outside of west London area.

Discussion

Surveying the Market using Secondary Data Sources

Surveying the market is very essential for any business to grow and survive. Secondary data is the available data that was collected for some other purpose other then the problem at hand. Availability of secondary data is quick and inexpensive. Sources of secondary data include the information system of the existing company, databanks of other organizations including government sources and data that is collected by specialized firms that sell the collected data to marketers to help them deal with different problems (Arnould and Thompson, 2005, pp 869).

For Sanitex Limited, to understand our potential market, we will have to gather information from secondary data sources such as the government sources, publications and statistics so that we are able to understand how big our potential target market is and how much is the demand for our product in the market. Before we make any decisions, it is crucial that we research thoroughly about the industry that we are working in and the market that we are catering to. Because unless we don't find out where we stand, who are our competitors, what is the demand for the product that we are offering and what the customers really want, we can't be the successful market leaders.

For example in case of pest control services, Sanitex Limited will have to gather data regarding which consumers require these services the most, for example people living in certain areas, agricultural areas, industrial areas etc require more of these pest control services. This kind of information we can get from government sources, statistics, and syndicated data sources. If we identify our market, we can easily identify demand for our product by observing the whole industry and its performance and growth by observing past trends like seasonal fluctuations.

Pest can damage our crops and spread a number of diseases and controlling these pests has become a major international industry. Therefore we have to take every precautionary step to keep these pests away. The pest control businesses are reporting a boom in their profits with households in urban areas being the worst affected. Not only households and agricultural areas, but most of the hospitals also in UK have been threatened by the frequent invasions of rats, flees, bedbugs, flies and cockroaches ...