Research Outline

Conducting research is a massive part of my project therefore planning what I want to discover will make it easier for me to understand where I am with my work. So far, I have completed a number of research tasks including primary and secondary, firstly I looked at books that I found in the College library as well as looking at articles online. After this, I went to The Clarks Village in Street to do a location visit to The Shoe Museum. Although the research I have already done helped me massively when deciding on the exact project I will be doing for my FMP, I feel as though doing a questionnaire or focus group will give me a better understanding of what consumers want from my product. The plan is to ask a bunch of people several questions about their view on package design and how it effects them. Considering I do not have a specific target audience when it comes to age or gender, I would like to collect my results from a range of the public to see if the answers I get correlate.

Questions:

• Do you take notice of the packaging when buying the shoes?

• What kind of package do you prefer when buying shoes? Box? Bag?

• Would an interesting package make you want to look at that particular brand of shoe?

• How important do you think the package design is?

As well as focus groups and questionnaires, looking online for unique marketing ideas will be useful for me to come up with an idea that is relevant to fitness. Gaining knowledge through qualitative research will allow me to look at marketing campaigns that have already happened and I can look at how successful or unsuccessful they have been which will teach me what not to do. I am planning on looking into articles that list the top marketing campaigns for sports brands. YouTube is becoming as popular and as useful as Google search therefore I will also be looking on YouTube at previous sport brands adverts to look at different ways company's entice their audience. Looking into companies that are famous for their package design will give me a better idea what designs have been successful which will help me understand what attracts customers. Apple popped into my head straight away when I thought of popular packages; although packaging may seem secondary to mosst consumer companies, Apple is known to take care of each tiny detail of the packaging to make it immaculate.