Market research is the action of gathering information about consumers’ needs and preferences. There are various limitations faced by market research which can hinder the validity and use of the information gathered from the research. Without market research Bedford College would fall without a doubt because In order to succeed Bedford college need to know what their target audience want and need. Before Bedford College starts analyzing they will first need to gather enough information about their current students and potential student’s needs.
For example, he level of qualification they expect to achieve. This information will provide the college with the knowledge it needs to be able to provide an exceptional service that meets the requirements that have been placed by the students. However if these aren’t taken into consideration, it could have a bad influence on the marketing plans because they will not understand the weakness, strength opportunities and threat that their business may have.
The first recommendation I would make to improve validity of market research Is for an organization such as Bedford College to Ask Specific and Objective Questions. Bedford colleges mall objective Is “Delivering world class skills and vocational education to the communities we serve. ” Furthermore In order to achieve this goal, the college would need to carry out research to find out the areas in which they need to improve the services they provide.
However if the questions asked are not specific, this might cause the results to be invalid therefore Bedford college should make a sample of specific and objective questions as it will increase the chances of getting accurate results and in doing so making the right decision. If Bedford College carries out an analysis to find UT if students are happy with the services they provide, and only question about 10% of students who might say they are satisfied with the service, this might lead to the college making a decision that could cost them potential students and current students because the 90% might not agree with the minority 10%.
As a result the amount of the students questioned being to small affect the validity of the Information. A recommendation I would make for the college to avoid this kind of complications would be to interview about 20-40% of students. Although this isn’t 100% it still gives the college the potential to gather an accurate result. It is impossible for the college to interview 100% of the students because not all students are present in a particular day and not all will be willing to participate, causing this to take time and money.
To receive a non-biased result that could affect the validity of Bedford colleges research, I would recommend that they use secondary research rather than primary research this is because Bedford college are organization that are very rich in candidates so they could easily carry out a primary research on their premises. But the result they receive could be blabs because the participants are their dents and they can be easily influenced by the quality of service the college provides so they would feel obliged to give an answer that favors the college.
Using secondary research could help Bedford College Improve on the weakness of their competitors giving them an advantage over other colleges and helping them to secondary research might not be specific to the needs of the college so it could prove irrelevant to use. A suggestion to overcome this would to carry out a thorough screening process to see if the secondary research they acquire will be specific to their needs or have accurate results.
