Understanding Customer Needs in Canada – Importance of Marketing Research Excellence in a Market Oriented Organization

Abstract

Company X Equipment division is a mature
organization that has experienced a desire to
broaden the knowledge about the market
potentials of the Canadian markets. There is also
an ambition within the organization to improve the
sales in Canada by exploring previously unknown
market opportunities. The needs for increased
knowledge are experienced both at the Canadian
sales office and at the Lund headquarters. To be
able to make the right strategic and marketing
decisions, Company X Equipment division needs
in-depth knowledge about the end-users’ current
needs together with information regarding trends
for the Equipment division’s application areas.
The experienced need for increased knowledge
implicates an improvement potential within the
process of generating marketing information.
Company X has furthermore expressed desire to
improve within that area. Generating marketing
information is a cornerstone in a market-oriented
IV
organization according to Mohr et al (2010) and
by improving the marketing information system
(MIS); there is a possibility for Company X to
increase its degree of market orientation
accordingly.
Purpose: The main purpose of this master thesis is to
conduct a market research and map the market
potential for some of the Canadian application
areas within Company X Industrial Equipment
division. Furthermore, the thesis also describes
and explains the current and future development
of the end-user needs within the markets.
The secondary purpose of the thesis is to analyze
Company X ‘s MIS (marketing information
system) and give Company X a recommendation
of improvements in order to achieve a higher
degree of market orientation and thus reduce the
risk of future knowledge gaps.
Methodology: The research was conducted through a
combination of a descriptive and an explanatory
case study in order to achieve an in-depth
knowledge of the underlying potential of the
Canadian market and the processes of gathering
market information within Company X and
Company X Canada. The research was mainly
qualitative and the information origins from
several in-depth interviews together with written
second-hand information from literature, articles
and e-sources. In order to quantify the market
potentials, quantitative second-hand data was
used and combined with qualitative and
quantitative first-hand empirics from interviewees.
The interviews were held at Company X in Sweden and in Canada as well as externally with
different stakeholders in Canada.
Conclusions: The total potential and the size of a market are
determined by how it is defined. Consequently, in
some of the application areas studied, the
Canadian market potential estimated differs from
the one currently assumed by Company X. All the
markets currently have low growth rates and a
high amount of existing users. Thus, the bulk of
the value is in the replacement markets, where
Company X is observed to currently be less
present and where the knowledge is lower
accordingly.
There are currently some gaps in Company X’s
way of gathering external marketing information
about the Canadian markets. Those gaps create
a weakness in the MIS that connects the
Canadian markets to the decision-making
processes within the organization. Improved MIS
have potential to improve the current market
knowledge and in the long run – increase
Company X’s degree of market orientation and
thus improve both the strategic and the marketing
decision qualities.

• author: Björklund, Gustav and Fredstorp, Joel
• supervisor: Ingela Elofsson; Carl-Johan Asplund
• organization: Production Management
• course: MIO920
• year: 2012
• type: M1 - University Diploma
• subject: Technology and Engineering
• keywords: Market Research, Market Orientation, Marketing Information System, Market Potential
• other publication id: 12/5422
• language: English
• id: 3055233
• date added to LUP: 2012-09-21 12:47:41
• date last changed: 2012-09-21 12:47:41