A Report on Day Dream Toys Case Study
Unit Title: Managing people and organizations
Unit code: HP7147
Assessor:
Student Name:Student ID:Word Count:
Date of submission:
Table of Contents
TOC o “1-3” h z u 1. Introduction PAGEREF _Toc86322142 h 32. Key Characteristics of Marketing Concepts PAGEREF _Toc86322143 h 3a. Customer satisfaction PAGEREF _Toc86322144 h 3b. Total company effort PAGEREF _Toc86322145 h 4c. Profit PAGEREF _Toc86322146 h 43. Key Factors influencing the Micro and Macro Environment of Day Dream Toys PAGEREF _Toc86322147 h 4a. Suppliers PAGEREF _Toc86322148 h 4b. Customers PAGEREF _Toc86322149 h 4c. Competitors PAGEREF _Toc86322150 h 5d. Economic Conditions PAGEREF _Toc86322151 h 5e. Ecology and Physical Environment PAGEREF _Toc86322152 h 54. The importance of Market Research to Day Dream Toys PAGEREF _Toc86322153 h 5a. Better understand the Customers’ Demands and Needs PAGEREF _Toc86322154 h 5b. Research provides revenue projections PAGEREF _Toc86322155 h 6c. Discover the company’s and the competition’s strength and weakness PAGEREF _Toc86322156 h 65. How Day Dream Toys might collect and use market research information PAGEREF _Toc86322157 h 6a. Focus groups PAGEREF _Toc86322158 h 6b. In-depth Interviews PAGEREF _Toc86322159 h 6c. Surveys PAGEREF _Toc86322160 h 75. The Process of Market Segmentation and Targeting and the benefits to Day Dream Toys PAGEREF _Toc86322161 h 77. Conclusion PAGEREF _Toc86322162 h 8References PAGEREF _Toc86322163 h 9
Day Dream Toys Case Study
1. IntroductionThe main purpose of any business irrespective of the industry is obtaining and retaining its customers. Marketing concepts gives businesses the opportunity to gain customers who are considered the most vital to a business’ life. In this case study, the marketing concept at Day Dream Toys is explored in depth. The report also looks at the main factors influencing the micro and macro environment of the company, explores the need for information gathering, and describes the process of market segmentation.
2. Key Characteristics of Marketing ConceptsAccording to Iacobucci et al. (2019) marketing concepts must be in line with the goals of the organization for it to be successful. Therefore, companies such as Day Dream Toy Company must determine their customers’ wants and needs prior to setting the organizational goals. The marketing concepts provides that the achievement of organizational goals relies on knowing the target markets’ needs and wants and delivering the satisfaction that the target audience desires better than competitors do (Iacobucci et al. 2019). Marketing is much broader compared to selling and it is not an activity that is specialized at all. Marketing comprises of the whole organization. It is the entire business perceived from the final results’ viewpoint that is from the customers’ viewpoint (Dadzie et al. 2017). Therefore, marketing’s concern and responsibility must permeate every area of the organization. The three characteristics of marketing concept include:
a. Customer satisfactionThe organization should not only identify but also define the wants and needs of customers as well as their expectations. All the services and goods that the organization produces must satisfy the needs of the customer (Dadzie et al. 2017). Day Dream Toy Company for instance identified that children need toys that they can play with both at school and at home and therefore, they produced wooden toys such as wooded building bricks, wooden jigsaws, and wooden animals.
b. Total company effortThis includes the efforts put in place by all the sections, functions, and departments of the organization must work in collaboration to meet the company’s main objective, that is the satisfaction of customers’ requirements (Dadzie et al. 2017). In Day Dream, the production department, the management team, and the marketing team should work together to ensure the satisfaction of the target market.
c. ProfitThe marketing concept presumes that the company can only gain profits if the customer is satisfied. The target audience is entitled to reasonable products at reasonable prices (Dadzie et al. 2017). The company on the other hand is entitled to reasonable profits for reasonable product. In the case of Day Dream Toy Company, they produced reasonable wooden products that customers were willing to pay for and in return, their profits skyrocketed due to this demand.
3. Key Factors influencing the Micro and Macro Environment of Day Dream ToysThe micro-environment factors that influence Day Dream Company directly include:
a. SuppliersSuppliers are responsible for providing resources to Day Dream Company and these resources are raw materials that are used to produce and manufacture the toys. For instance, they supply the woods used to make the wooden toys (Mose, 2016). If the suppliers fail to provide the woods timely and sufficiently, it would delay the company’s production process which would affect their entire process up to the selling point.
b. CustomersDay Dream Toy’s customers are the receivers of the final products. They are central to the company because they are the ones that generate income by paying a price for the product (Mose, 2016). The profits increased when more customers were attracted to Day Dream toys. When the demand of Country Cousins merchandise decreased, the sales decreased by 40% thereby reducing the company’s profits.
c. CompetitorsDay Dream Toys’ competitors have directly influenced the company’s business strategy. For years, Day Dream has had a unique selling point by producing wooden toys making their products preferred over their competitors’ products (Mose, 2016). For Toys is a competitors that has forced manufacturers to produce at low prices and Day Dream has been forced to agree to such demands due to decreased demand.
Macro-environment factor include:
d. Economic Conditions
The performance of all businesses relies on the market’s economic conditions. Favorable economic conditions meant that the customers of Day Dream Toys had a higher purchasing power and therefore the demand for the toys increased. But unfavorable economic conditions in the market caused the company to suffer decreased demand due to the decreased purchasing power.
e. Ecology and Physical EnvironmentEcology and physical environment play a vital role for Day Dream considering it uses wood as its primary raw material (Mbithi, Muturi, & Rambo, 2017). For instance, an adverse change in the physical environment would distribute rainfall in various regions which affects forestry causing a shortage in raw material production.
4. The importance of Market Research to Day Dream ToysMarket research would help Day Dream Toys make more informed and better decisions. The more research Day Dream Toys embeds in its strategic plans, the better equipped the company would be to deal with the changing environment within its operation (Fisher & Kordupleski, 2019). The information gathered would help Day Dream Toys to:
a. Better understand the Customers’ Demands and NeedsWith the increased number of ways to reach the target market including the use web communities, online panels, depth interviews and focus groups, telephone surveys, market research would help Day Dream Toys to know the needs of the customers, improve on their offerings and customers service based on the customer feedback from the research (Fisher & Kordupleski, 2019).
b. Research provides revenue projectionsA market research is a market analysis’ key component that would project Day Dream Toys’ customers’ characteristics, future numbers, and trends. Through market research, the company can divide its target audience into segments, thereby focusing on the best segment (Pereira et al. 2019). The segment identified would be the one that matches the profile of Day Dream Toys.
c. Discover the company’s and the competition’s strength and weakness
With market research, it is essential that Day Dream Toys adopts an ‘eye’s wide open’ approach. By conducting an unbiased market research, the company will identify and understand its strengths and weaknesses as well as those of the competition such as For Toys (Pereira et al. 2019). From the research findings, Day Dream can adapt and learn from its weaknesses while capitalizing on the new-found knowledge about the competition and take advantage of their weaknesses to forge ahead of them.
5. How Day Dream Toys might collect and use market research informationSome of the ways Day Dream Toys can collect and use information from market research include:
a. Focus groupsDay Dream Toys can use focus groups to collect information. The focus group can comprise of six to ten members that discuss the toys that the company produces and the strategies that the company uses to market the toys (Belk, 2017). The focus group will include a moderator stimulating the discussion to derive the members’ opinions. From the discussions, Day Dream Toys will be able to know the customers’ needs, the strategies to implement in its marketing efforts, and to anticipate the customers’ future expectations.
b. In-depth InterviewsDay Dream Toys can conduct face to face or telephone interviews to collect information from its target audience. This form of research method is more conversational (Oltmann, 2016). The company researchers can ask open-ended questions which would help them collect better data from the subjects of research.
c. SurveysTo gather information from its customers, Day Dream Toys can conduct survey using web-intercept surveys, paper questionnaires, online polls, and online surveys to ask questions from the participants (Belk, 2017). Surveys is among the most common market research methods that Day Dream Toys can use to understand their target market and to understand the customers’ perception about their toys.
5. The Process of Market Segmentation and Targeting and the benefits to Day Dream ToysTo conduct market segmentation and targeting, Day Dream Toys can segment their customers by sorting them in terms of their demographics, geography, behavior, psychographics, and benefits sought. Psychographics include the customers’ interests, lifestyle, personality, and opinions (Nadanyiova & Das, 2020). Behavior is the customers’ purchase occasion, loyalty, and rate of usage. Benefits sought include the values being sought by the consumer like price, convenience, and the status that is associated with the toys. Day Dream Toys can also segment its customers by asking why, what, and who.
By asking the “why” question, Day Dream Toys aims to understand the behavior of the customers. The company can collect information from the past purchases of the customers in order to make good predictions for the future (Nadanyiova & Das, 2020). Therefore, Day Dream Toys will be allowed to target the right people. The “what” question on the other hand focuses on the behavior of purchase. The data that would be of interest to the company can be broken down into frequency, recency, and monetary value. The three indicates the number of times customers shop, the last time a customer visited the store, and the amount of money they are comfortable spending. This would help Day Dream Toys to determine the customers’ value and loyalty. The “who” question provides information such as the customers’ education level, income, age, and family size.
Segmentation and targeting will enable Day Dream Toys to identify opportunities within the market. The marketers will identify each segment’s needs in light of the company’s and the competitors’ current offerings and the customers’ current satisfaction (Nadanyiova & Das, 2020). The segment with lower satisfaction levels might present an excellent market opportunity. For instance, one segment may express dissatisfaction with the current toy offerings in terms of the products. In such a situation, Day Dream Toys can launch a new range of toys meant for that particular segment and market those toys well.
7. ConclusionDay Dream Toys just like other companies aims to keep the customers at the center of its operations and the same goes for customer research. Key characteristics of marketing concepts have been identified in the discussion to include customer satisfaction, total efforts from the company, and profits. The main factors influencing the micro and macro environment of Day Dream Toys include suppliers, customers, competitors, economic conditions, and the physical and ecological environment. further, the research finds the importance of market research to Day Dream Toys as a better understanding of the demands and needs of the customers and better revenue projections.
ReferencesBelk, R. W. (2017). Qualitative research in advertising. Journal of Advertising, 46(1), 36-47.
Dadzie, K. Q., Amponsah, D. K., Dadzie, C. A., & Winston, E. M. (2017). How firms implement marketing strategies in emerging markets: An empirical assessment of the 4A marketing mix framework. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 25(3), 234-256.
Fisher, N. I., & Kordupleski, R. E. (2019). Good and bad market research: A critical review of Net Promoter Score. Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry, 35(1), 138-151.
Iacobucci, D., Petrescu, M., Krishen, A., & Bendixen, M. (2019). The state of marketing analytics in research and practice. Journal of Marketing Analytics, 7(3), 152-181.
Mbithi, B., Muturi, W., & Rambo, C. (2017). Macro environment moderating Effects on Strategy and Performance.
Mose, A. (2016). Analysis of Macro and Micro Environment on the Marketing Strategy Formulation and the Influence to the Competitive Advantage (Case Study). Academy of Strategic Management Journal, 15, 35-41.
Nadanyiova, M., & Das, S. (2020). Millennials as a target segment of socially responsible communication within the business strategy. Littera Scripta, 13(1), 119-134.
Oltmann, S. (2016, May). Qualitative interviews: A methodological discussion of the interviewer and respondent contexts. In Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research (Vol. 17, No. 2).
Pereira, V., Vrontis, D., Christofi, M., & Temouri, Y. (2019). Analysing three decades of emerging market research: future research directions. British Journal of Management, 2019, 1-12.
