Methods of marketing activities consist in the following: analysis of the external environment, which includes not only the market, but also political, social, cultural and other conditions. The analysis identifies the factors that contribute to or hinder commercial success. The analysis results in a data bank to assess the environment and its potential; an analysis of consumers, both real and potential. This analysis consists in examining the demographic, economic, social, geographic and other characteristics of people making purchasing decisions, as well as their needs in the broad sense of the term and the processes of purchasing both our and competing products.
The result of this analysis is information that includes information:
* About the consumer
* about consumer preferences
*Future trends and forecasts of consumer preferences Information on capacity and market trends
*Representation of a particular product in the marketplace
* about the market share of the company, the brand
* Competitors, their market share and pricing policies, the study of existing products and the planning of future products, the development of concepts for the creation of new products the modernization of old ones, including their range and parametric series, packaging.
Outdated goods that do not give estimated profit are removed from production and market. planning of goods and sales, including the creation, if necessary, of their own sales networks with warehouses and stores and/or agency networks; ensuring demand generation and sales incentives through a combination of advertising, personal sales, prestigious non-commercial activities and all sorts of material incentives aimed at buyers, agents and specific sellers; providing price policy consisting in planning systems and urban development. Market research is not an end in itself, but a source of information for making effective management decisions. This solution can apply to any aspect of foreign trade and marketing activities, so it is not rational to limit the costs of such research due to cost savings: losses caused by the wrong decision are usually 10 - 100 times greater. Depending on the firm"s resources and the complexity of information needs, the marketing information network may or may not be computerized. Small firms can effectively use such systems without computers. But in the conditions of the big, constantly developing firm with a huge field of activity specialized computer systems are an irreplaceable element of the qualitative analysis.
Marketing research answers the following questions: Who is the consumer? What is it? What does a consumer want from a product service? What are his expectations? What will be the consumer"s expectations and preferences regarding this product service in the future? What will be the competitive product in a few months? What is the market capacity? How has the market for these services changed or will it change? Will it grow or shrink? What qualitative changes is the market undergoing? What are their positive and negative sides for the company? What changes await the market in the future? What is the share of the enterprise in the market at the moment? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the enterprise? What share can the enterprise take in the future? Who are the competitors? What is the share of competitors in the market? What is their pricing policy? What are the strengths and weaknesses of competitors? What are the competitors" opportunities? In what direction is the enterprise better to develop? What are the advantages of such development? What difficulties can arise?
The result is a concrete effective marketing program based on the answers to the above questions. From the aforesaid it is possible to draw a conclusion that practically any system of the marketing analysis by definition is a system of support of decision-making. All functional tasks in the general view can be divided into two semantic groups.
Group 1 - "Consumer" - includes information about the consumer, information about consumer preferences. The information on this topic is obtained as a result of the survey, accumulation of statistics of relations with clients for a certain period of time and other methods.
Group 2 - "Market" - includes information on the capacity and trends of the market, representation of a certain product/service in the necessary market, information on the market share occupied by the enterprise, trademark, information on competitors, their market share and pricing policy. This information can also be obtained through the collection of statistics.