Virgin Atlantic Marketing Research #2 (Essay Sample)

Virgin Atlantic Marketing Research
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Virgin Atlantic Marketing Research
Virgin Atlantic is a choice company. It is a company based in the UK dealing in the industry of air transport. Its closest competitor is the British airways. It has its headquarters in Sussex, England. It operates under the name Virgin Atlantic Airways Limited (Ltd, 2015).
In order for Virgin Atlantic airways to complete British airways, they have to do marketing. That means promoting their services to the potential buyers. It is only that way that the company can be able to gain more customer base. Although, for their marketing to be effective, they cannot just not carry it out for the sake of it. They have to conduct a marketing research (Baines & Fill, 2014). It's most probable that the research would help them to identify opportunities that are yet to be exploited. Too, it can help them to identify problems that ought to be fixed, and gives solution to them and they would become competitive.
Marketing research has the potential to help the company to determine the prices, place and promotion strategies. Thus, this concept explains the reason for the existence of certain promotions, pricing and even the segmentation of products and services to give places (Adcock, 1998). Marketing research is referred as an examination of marketing metrics within a given market segment.
When doing marketing research, the company may decide to rely on the existing information which may be gotten from the literature review. It may also seek to get information that is first hand information from the customers, employees, and any other relevant persons. It is best for the company to rely on first hand information because the secondary information may be irrelevant since time is not constant. The secondary information from the literature review may not be helpful since it might have been getting at a time when conditions were different to the current times (Doyle, 1998). For instance, the pricing may have been different from now because of different prevailing economic conditions.
The company ought to use both quantitative and qualitative research. Both of them have their advantages and disadvantages. With quantitative, it would be easy for the company to get statistics that are concrete and which may help managers at all three levels to make informed decisions (Kotler, 2002). On the other hand, qualitative research will help the company of Virgin Atlantic to get more information on how they may remain competitive. The better part of it is that, the information may be one that they had not thought of before.
In the case of quantitative, the company may seek for questionnaires which they may use to get information directly from the primary sources. In the case of qualitative, the company may get information through interviewing some portion of the target respondents.
Importance of Marketing research for Virgin Atlantic Airways Limited
Initial and most important as the shows in the preceding part is the ability to make informed decisions. That implies that the managers will have alternatives of what they can offer, that would be the introduction of new products into the existing. That would give the company a competitive advantage over their competitors (Kumar, 1997). Decisions have to be based on a foundation, and that is the essence of research. The customers respect such kinds of decisions, and they are the only kinds of decisions that are able to withstand competition forces.
For virgin Atlantic company, it reduces the risks of being outdone by British Airways or failing to get the profits that can leave it running (Ltd, 2015). Thus, the research helps the business to survive the competition and besides that, to grow its business.
It helps the company to anticipate of changes in the sector of the air industry. That way, then management is able to adjust to the changes expected in time to avoid losses or to enjoy more of the profits (Proctor, 1992). In the case of the airline, it is also abreast with changes in technologies. Technology is of the essence in ai...