Assessing demand through a questionaire

It is rather imprudent to start a business if there is inadequate demand for the product. Demand is the amount of a product that consumers are willing and able to purchase at any given price. Demand is concerned with what consumers are actually able to buy (what they can afford to and would buy), rather than what they would like to buy. I have decided to open up a sports shop and my shop would predominantly favour the selling of tracksuit bottoms for all sizes but mostly youth sizes.

I was not sure if there was a sufficient enough demand for my products so I decided to produce some kind of research and survey to find the interests of the local citizens who were mostly likely to buy my product. I decided to use primary research and one example of this is a questionnaire with all the right questions to help decide what to do afterwards. I am also going to research the market so I can get information about consumers by studying statistics and reports and gathering new data by surveys of individuals or groups.

I have decided that my products will mainly be market-orientated because I think it would be a big risk to produce a product in which the demand is too low and therefore I may not recuperate my investments and money that I produced and distributed the product with and therefore leading to no profit and that could even eventually destroy the business. The questionnaires are given out to let the company know their customers e. g. age, religion, occupation.

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The questionnaire also lets the company know its customers wants, their demands, what makes them buy sports equipment or clothes, and what makes them prefer one thing to another. My questionnaire had to be extremely precise in asking the right answers so that I can get a good suggestion of exactly how much demand there was for my Sports shop. I believe that my business appeals to a wide range of people in the youth/age segment.

Clothes are one of the five basic needs and fashionable trousers are now seen more as a need than a want because of the high demand for them in the clothes economy. Therefore I expect some positive input from the questionnaire and I expect to see some sort of high demand for the product as my market research towards the right location has shown me that the area I have chosen to open the shop in is an excellent place for my business to become a success and I hope the demand is there.

I chose people of different ages and occupation to give me a variety of answers but tried to focus on the younger generations for a more effective result as they are the more likely ones who will become the future customers. They were all random. In random sample survey, people that are chosen are selected from a list, such as the telephone directory or the electrical register, at fixed gaps of every 50 or hundred names.

This makes the questionnaire more open and fair and helps I expected a wide variety of answers from my questionnaire, this helps establish who my potential customers might be. I chose these people to see the demand, wants and how much and what I'm going to buy. I have interviewed and given the questionnaire to 12 people. I will then use my sample results which represent a variety of viewpoints. The questionnaire is not directed at any specific socio-economic group because of the nature of the products and the likely customers are unknown.

It is much easier for someone who is opening a computer trade to target a socio-economic group. He/she would aim for someone in groups C2 to A because these are the people that may have more money/earn more money an will be interested in the product or service whereas trousers are needs by all people and so they will be affordable to the majority of people but fashionable trousers will obviously differ and may even appeal to those in socio-economic groups C2 to A who have enough money to spend on their wants and needs.

The questions in the questionnaire have been carefully thought about and I have decided to have a balance of closed questions which allow the interviewee a limited range of responses and a small balance of open questions that require some kind of extended answer. The simplicity of the questions must easily be seen and unambiguous so that they do not confuse or mislead the interviewee. I will avoid technical language. I will also use leading questions to try and get a particular answer.

When I asked, "What age are you? " I found 5 people were (5 - 15), 2 people were (16 - 25), 4 people were (26 - 50) and only one person (50 and above). I targeted these people because I expected my shop to appeal to the younger age brackets in particular. The age of the interviewees does not really give me enough information about demand but I know from this result that more adults need to be interviewed in order to get a more fair and non-bias result. When I asked, "what gender are you?

" I interviewed 6 males and 6 females; a fair balance for a fair result, the results had to be a fair point for both sexes as the business is for both male and female. Although I asked this question, I now know that it would be fairly clear whether they were male/female so there was no need to ask this question. The question is important however to see what the different sexes need and want and to compare and contrast the results. When I asked "would you like a local sports shop in your area? " all the children and adults said yes which was expected but the O. A.

P said they didn't mind which was also expected. The younger generation wanted a local sports shop but the older group either said yes or I don't mind. I assumed that the older the interviewee was, the less the less chance he/she would consider wanting a sports shop in their area. I know that there is no other sports shop in the area and therefore took a risk by choosing the location but the result proved that youth community generally wanted a sports shop. When I asked, "what do you like buying from sports shops? " I got mixed answers ranging from clothes, equipment and trainers.

The younger children wanted most things from the sports shops but adults wanted fitness equipment and there was no comment from the OAP's. From the result there is obviously some kind of demand for sports equipment and clothes and this was a positive result for my business. I needed to know if there was demand for a specific product but my question was not open enough. I also asked my interviewees, "What sports are you currently involved in", I found a mixed range of answers from football, tennis and rugby, but there was no comment from the much older interviewees, understandably.

I let them choose more than one sport to give me more accurate results. This question helped in finding whether the location was right because if the people did not like or didn't involve themselves with sport activities then it would be very difficult to sell any sports product in the area but fortunately near enough everyone was interested in sports. This showed that there is potential demand for the products as people were interested in sports and I am hoping to open a sports shop. I also asked the interviewees what brands they like buying from sports shops.

This question was very important in finding out if people in the area like special brands or if they don't mind and most importantly to find out which brands they like and what brands I will need to get for the sports shop. I asked people to choose for more than one if they wanted to. I found the younger children went for the more popular brands, like Adidas and Nike but the older group didn't mind apart from sometimes. Nike is a popular and world-wide brand so the area was obviously into fashion.

This also shows that there is potential demand. I also asked my interviewees, how much they are likely to spend on a pair of trainers. I gave them a specific price range they had to choose from, this helped in finding the specific target price my business could sell trainers for. (In pounds) The pie-chart showed that the majority are prepared to pay i?? 50-100 which meant they were obviously either wealthy or able enough to buy wants as trainers have an average cost of twenty to thirty pounds but people would rather pay double for quality.

I also asked the interviewees, what sports equipment they wanted in the store. The result included all kinds of different equipment but I found the football and swimming equipment was most popular with young people. The adults agreed to gym wear and equipment, which was interesting as it was something I hadn't thought, would be popular. There is definitely a demand for some kind of sports shop as the interviewees proved that the area was definitely 'sporty'. My last question was, what football team do you support?, this was an important question as a sports shop was to deliver the customer his/hers team equipment. This question told me what team the majority supported so I can stock it in to the shop.

I got a mixed result but the majority supported Man Utd F. C and Arsenal F. C. This question helped because it proves even further that the interviewees have some sort sports knowledge and therefore demand for specific products will be high. I. e. Man Utd football shirt How to create pie charts and other types of graphs

To create a pie-chart or any other types of graphs, a simple program like Microsoft excel is used. The data is placed into the cells and once selected the data can be changed into any graph using the graph button on the top tool bar. You should end up with something like this: CONCLUSION From the questionnaire I know now, that I should use quota sampling on the younger age groups to get a more accurate and precise set of results as they are the more likely future customers.

I have found all this information from the random sampling survey that I have carried out but I now know what to do next before making any rational decisions. From the results I will consider the age/sex and I will try to conclude in why they chose the answers and to see the demand and wants that a likely customer would want. The majority of people asked were either children or students, so I would particularly want to know their wants from the sports shop and how much of each product I'm likely going to sell.

I should also survey more people for better, more accurate results and to survey people with different occupations, to see how occupation affected the results. I have decided that I am going to redo the questionnaire and this time I will use more open questions to really find out the customers ideas and thoughts and therefore see how the demand is from there. The results show a demand for the product/products I am going to sell because the area is a 'sporty' area and I believe they need some kind of sports wear/equipment store so they can benefit.

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