BJ's Wholesale Club, Inc. (NYSE: BJ), commonly referred to simply as BJ's, is a membership-only warehouse club chain operating on the United States East Coast, as well as in the state of Ohio.[1] The company is ranked #232 on Fortune magazine's 2010 listing of America's 500 largest public corporations

PRESENTING THE RESEARCH PLAN

The last step in market research is the presentation of a formal plan. At this stage, the marketing researcher should summarize the plan in a written proposal to management. A written proposal is especially important when the research project will be large and complex or when an outside firm carries it out. The proposal should cover the management problems addressed and the research objectives, the information to be obtained, the sources of secondary information or methods for collecting primary data, and the way the results will help management decision making. A written research plan or proposal makes sure that the marketing manager and researchers have considered all the important aspect of the research and that they agree on why and how the research will be done.

MANAGEMENT'S USE
OF MARKETING RESEARCH

In spite of the rapid growth of marketing research, many companies still fail to use it sufficiently or correctly. Several factors can stand in the way of its greater utilization.

A narrow conception of marketing research. Many managers see marketing research as only a fact-finding operation. The marketing researcher is supposed to design a questionnaire, choose a sample conduct interviews, and report results, often without being given a careful definition of the problem or of the decision alternatives facing management. As a result, some fact finding fails to be useful. This reinforces management's idea of the limited usefulness of some marketing research.
Uneven caliber of marketing researchers. Some managers view marketing research as little better than a clerical activity and reward it as such. Poorly qualified marketing researchers are hired, and their weak training and deficient creativity lead to unimpressive results. The disappointing results reinforce management's prejudice against expecting too much from marketing research. Management continues to pay low salaries, perpetuating the basic difficulty.
Late and occasional erroneous findings by marketing research. Managers want quick results that are accurate and conclusive. But good marketing research takes time and money. If they can't perceive the difference between quality and shoddy research, managers become disappointed, and they lower their opinion of the value of marketing research. This is especially a problem in conducting marketing research in foreign countries.
Intellectual differences. Intellectual divergences between the mental styles of line managers and marketing researchers often get in the way of productive relationships. The marketing researcher's report may seem abstract, complicated, and tentative, while the line manager wants concreteness, simplicity, and certainty. Yet in the more progressive companies, marketing researchers are increasingly being included as members of the product management team, and their influence on marketing strategy in growing.

More companies in the Inc. 500 are using social media as part of their business and marketing strategies, and they are seeing success and viewing social media overall as more valuable.
These firms, which include the fastest-growing private companies, have been using a mix of tactics, with Facebook as the most popular.

According to a study released in January 2011 from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research, 71% of companies used Facebook in 2010, up from 61% in 2009.

Twitter, at 59% in 2010, and blogging, at 50%, are also still high on the list.



If a company has used social media, it has most likely also seen success, the study found. Eighty-five percent of companies viewed Facebook as successful, a significant jump from 54% in 2009.

Yet Facebook hasn’t matched message or bulletin boards, with 93% reporting it was a successful tactic. foursquare also saw a significant increase in usefulness; it wasn’t even measured in 2009, yet in 2010, 75% of companies reported it was a successful tactic.



As social media becomes more prevalent and valuable, the perception of it is changing.

More companies view it as important, with 86% reporting social media technologies to be somewhat or very important to their business and marketing strategies in 2010, up from 79% in 2009. And growth is even stronger among those who consider it “very important.”



These fast-growing Inc. 500 companies see social media as increasingly important to their businesses because of the success they’ve seen, and marketers will continue to test various social networking sites to find the right mix for their company’s strategy.


The specific market segmentation does consist of detecting, evaluating and selecting groups of individuals whether they are consumers or not as with the purpose of designing and directing competitive strategies towards them. A review of academic research reveals the scant attention paid to the evaluation and selection of segments. Most of the studies merely evaluate the sales potential, the attractiveness, or the stability of each segment, with no reference to management needs. On the other hand, the creation, application and verification of quantitative methods which would build these groups have been the main target of academic efforts (Wind, 1978) as detecting better segments is of such great importance that it has very frequently been considered as a goal in itself.



Methodology

The companies which perform segmentation studies in their marketing and research departments, the principal companies working in this field are market research through telecoms as there covers survey questionnaire/interviews and from the interviews there is qualitative information about segmentation research design. There are two main objectives first, to assess the level of evaluation and selection of segments tasks of UK telecom market segmentation process. Second, to discover frequency with which the industry assess and select segments and the research methods used. The interviews were required to indicate the degree of difficulty they found in the performance of the different stages of the process. The possible answers were structured following a five-point Likert scale (1 = very low level of difficulty; 5 = very high level of difficulty). Aside, it is very important to make use of management support systems, which allow the identification and evaluation of alternative segments (Reeder et al., 1987). The full co-operation of all the company departments involved in segmentation study and strategy is fundamental. The evaluations must be able to detect deviations and discordances between the detected segment characteristics and the objectives of the market segmentation strategy.
 
BJ's Wholesale Club, Inc. (NYSE: BJ), commonly referred to simply as BJ's, is a membership-only warehouse club chain operating on the United States East Coast, as well as in the state of Ohio.[1] The company is ranked #232 on Fortune magazine's 2010 listing of America's 500 largest public corporations

PRESENTING THE RESEARCH PLAN

The last step in market research is the presentation of a formal plan. At this stage, the marketing researcher should summarize the plan in a written proposal to management. A written proposal is especially important when the research project will be large and complex or when an outside firm carries it out. The proposal should cover the management problems addressed and the research objectives, the information to be obtained, the sources of secondary information or methods for collecting primary data, and the way the results will help management decision making. A written research plan or proposal makes sure that the marketing manager and researchers have considered all the important aspect of the research and that they agree on why and how the research will be done.

MANAGEMENT'S USE
OF MARKETING RESEARCH

In spite of the rapid growth of marketing research, many companies still fail to use it sufficiently or correctly. Several factors can stand in the way of its greater utilization.

A narrow conception of marketing research. Many managers see marketing research as only a fact-finding operation. The marketing researcher is supposed to design a questionnaire, choose a sample conduct interviews, and report results, often without being given a careful definition of the problem or of the decision alternatives facing management. As a result, some fact finding fails to be useful. This reinforces management's idea of the limited usefulness of some marketing research.
Uneven caliber of marketing researchers. Some managers view marketing research as little better than a clerical activity and reward it as such. Poorly qualified marketing researchers are hired, and their weak training and deficient creativity lead to unimpressive results. The disappointing results reinforce management's prejudice against expecting too much from marketing research. Management continues to pay low salaries, perpetuating the basic difficulty.
Late and occasional erroneous findings by marketing research. Managers want quick results that are accurate and conclusive. But good marketing research takes time and money. If they can't perceive the difference between quality and shoddy research, managers become disappointed, and they lower their opinion of the value of marketing research. This is especially a problem in conducting marketing research in foreign countries.
Intellectual differences. Intellectual divergences between the mental styles of line managers and marketing researchers often get in the way of productive relationships. The marketing researcher's report may seem abstract, complicated, and tentative, while the line manager wants concreteness, simplicity, and certainty. Yet in the more progressive companies, marketing researchers are increasingly being included as members of the product management team, and their influence on marketing strategy in growing.

More companies in the Inc. 500 are using social media as part of their business and marketing strategies, and they are seeing success and viewing social media overall as more valuable.
These firms, which include the fastest-growing private companies, have been using a mix of tactics, with Facebook as the most popular.

According to a study released in January 2011 from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research, 71% of companies used Facebook in 2010, up from 61% in 2009.

Twitter, at 59% in 2010, and blogging, at 50%, are also still high on the list.



If a company has used social media, it has most likely also seen success, the study found. Eighty-five percent of companies viewed Facebook as successful, a significant jump from 54% in 2009.

Yet Facebook hasn’t matched message or bulletin boards, with 93% reporting it was a successful tactic. foursquare also saw a significant increase in usefulness; it wasn’t even measured in 2009, yet in 2010, 75% of companies reported it was a successful tactic.



As social media becomes more prevalent and valuable, the perception of it is changing.

More companies view it as important, with 86% reporting social media technologies to be somewhat or very important to their business and marketing strategies in 2010, up from 79% in 2009. And growth is even stronger among those who consider it “very important.”



These fast-growing Inc. 500 companies see social media as increasingly important to their businesses because of the success they’ve seen, and marketers will continue to test various social networking sites to find the right mix for their company’s strategy.


The specific market segmentation does consist of detecting, evaluating and selecting groups of individuals whether they are consumers or not as with the purpose of designing and directing competitive strategies towards them. A review of academic research reveals the scant attention paid to the evaluation and selection of segments. Most of the studies merely evaluate the sales potential, the attractiveness, or the stability of each segment, with no reference to management needs. On the other hand, the creation, application and verification of quantitative methods which would build these groups have been the main target of academic efforts (Wind, 1978) as detecting better segments is of such great importance that it has very frequently been considered as a goal in itself.



Methodology

The companies which perform segmentation studies in their marketing and research departments, the principal companies working in this field are market research through telecoms as there covers survey questionnaire/interviews and from the interviews there is qualitative information about segmentation research design. There are two main objectives first, to assess the level of evaluation and selection of segments tasks of UK telecom market segmentation process. Second, to discover frequency with which the industry assess and select segments and the research methods used. The interviews were required to indicate the degree of difficulty they found in the performance of the different stages of the process. The possible answers were structured following a five-point Likert scale (1 = very low level of difficulty; 5 = very high level of difficulty). Aside, it is very important to make use of management support systems, which allow the identification and evaluation of alternative segments (Reeder et al., 1987). The full co-operation of all the company departments involved in segmentation study and strategy is fundamental. The evaluations must be able to detect deviations and discordances between the detected segment characteristics and the objectives of the market segmentation strategy.

Hey netra, it is really nice to see that people like you are sharing such an important information and helping others. Well, i am also going to share some useful information on BJ's Wholesale Club which would be useful for many people and help them in their research or project.
 

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