Middlesex University

Marketing Research (Individual Assignment)

Research proposition for Ford Motors

SUBMITTED BY:

Dhawal Chandra
(M00397113)
Word Count (1200+)

Research proposition for Ford Motors:-

Executive Summary: Consumers interests are changing as they want to buy more eco-friendly and fuel-efficient vehicles. Ford emphasizes more on gas and oil using vehicles. As the fuel prices are sky high and these kinds of fuels harm the environment therefore the future of the company is at risk. Ford is facing a problem in deciding whether it should give more importance to environmental issues. Hence this research will be carried out to know the influence of environmental issues and fuel efficiency on the choice of the consumer. For this it would be important for us to recognize the environmental concerns of people before purchasing a vehicle, their budget for fuel and most importantly their attitudes towards Ford. The research approach will be a combination of Exploratory and Descriptive. In the Exploratory approach, In-Depth interviews and Focus groups method will be used whereas in the Descriptive approach, Survey method will be used. Background Research related to problem:It owns Ford and Lincoln brands and also a petty stake in Mazda in Japan. In 2006, the company suffered the largest annual loss in its history which was about $12.7 billion because of high petrol price and moreover ford doesnt have any segments for hybrid cars as its competitors do. It was anticipated that the situation would not improve until 2009 (NYSE). Company has currently employed 164,000 people. Only success point in ford motors is that they manufacture cars for all the segments in the society. (Dan Esty, 2006) Challenges: Due to sky rocketing fuel prices and increasing awareness about the environmental issues, the buying behavior of consumers is changing. Their interest lies in buying vehicles those are more fuel efficient and eco-friendly. The traditional oil and gas vehicles are fast getting outdated and are no more the wants of consumers the demand for vehicles using alternative fuels is increasing exponentially. Today, the primary concern of the company should be the efficient management of environmental challenges such as pollution control, judicious utilization of natural resources and energy consumption. (Indiviglio, D. 2011) Main Competitors: The main competitors of Ford are: - Chrysler Group LLC - General Motors Company - Toyota Motor Corporation - BMW - Honda and others (NASDAQ)

MDP (Management Decision Problem):-

Should ford develop a strategy to concentrate on Hybrid cars moreover should they develop a plan to incorporate environmental issues?

Research question / objective, Components of the research questions:The main objective is to find out that how environmental issues and the choice of fuel affect the consumer behavior in the automobile market ' this has been broken into the following sub objectives:a) Identify needs, expectations and buying behavior (in term of environmental issues) of the consumer when they purchase a vehicle? This would help us know the extent of environmental awareness among people and how determined they are in buying Hybrid cars. b) To determine the budget that consumers have set up for fuel for their vehicles? This would educate us about the spending capacity of the consumer in regard to fuel over a specified time period. c) To know the attitudes of consumers towards Ford and other car manufacturing companies? This would help us in understanding the image of Ford in the mindset of the people. Research design:The research approach will be a combination of Exploratory and Descriptive (Conclusive). In the exploratory approach the methods used would be In-Depth interview. In the in-depth interview the interviewee will ask certain questions to few people from each target segment individually and Focus group will be asked about their perceptions / opinions or attitudes towards the Ford's products or services (Malhotra N.K 2006). These would provide us an insight and understanding of the issue and would also act as an input to further research. This method is flexible and unstructured. The sample is small and non-representative. The primary data is qualitative in nature. The information provided by this approach would be helpful in formulating questionnaires later for survey method in Descriptive research. This approach tells us about:a) The perception of people about ford b) How do they differentiate Ford and its competitors? c) Should ford come up with a category of Hybrid cars? d) Their spending capacity over fuel and various other important aspects.

We will be using Convenience sampling. It is inexpensive, here the sample is selected because they are convenient, and this is a non probability method. It is used in the exploratory research and is not much time consuming. We will be having 4 groups: a) Group 1: Young adults (males) in the age group 21-35 b) Group 2: Young adults (females) in the age group 21-35 c) Group 3: Middle aged males in the age group 35-50 d) Group 4: Middle aged women in the age group 35-50 This would help us to gather information related to our MRQ components from all these Age groups as they include: 1) Males and Females both 2) Personal vehicle, Commercial vehicle and sports vehicle users. This would be followed by Descriptive Research (conclusive), the results from exploratory research can be verified by this approach, it is pre planned and structured. Here we will be focusing on multi-section cohort or we can say a group of respondent who experience the same element within the interval. Surveys can be conducted with a large number of people by designing questionnaires and ask people from target segments to fill them up it is also quiet costeffective. It can be done either by distributing questionnaires, over the telephone or online (Malhotra N.K 2006). In Ford's case here, we will be distributing questionnaires amongst people of our target segments. Questionnaires will contain a certain set of questions with multiple answer questions so that people can answer it quickly with much ease. We will be using Systematic Random Sample for descriptive research because in this sample we can take the opinion and suggestion of large number of people say (pedestrians on a corner).it will help us to gather large amount of information about the target audience and will help in analyzing the data for problem solving research (Malhotra N.K 2006). Data Analysis:We will be using SPSS software to analyze our Quantitative data. NVIVO can be used to analyze qualitative data. We will also be using Bar Graphs, Pie Charts etc. to represent data in the report. Total time required for the completion of research would be around 8 weeks and projected cost of
the project would be around 15,000, classified as follows:-

Fee
3000 4000 5000 3000 Total 15000

Phase
Desk search Qualitative research Quantitative research

Description
Purchasing reports Focus Groups, in depth interviews etc. 200 questionnaires

Final report

Data analyzed Findings and representation of data.

Reference List:

Websites:1) Dan Esty (2006). Ford motor Company and the green wave. [Online].Yale Centre for Environmental Law and Policy. Available From: http://blog.turningtheship.com/?p=10 [Accessed Date 20th March 2012]. 2) Indiviglio, D. (2011). Hyundai and GM Impress in April. The Atlantic [Online]. Available from: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/05/hyundai-and-gm-impress-inapril/238305/ [Accessed 21th march 2012] 3) Ford's official website www.ford.com [Accessed 19th march 2012] 4) NASDAQ (2012). Ford motors company competitors. Available from
http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/f/competitors [Accessed 27th March 2012]

Books:1) Malhotra, N.K. & Bricks, D, F (2006). Marketing Research, Pearson Education. Journal: NYSE: Cyclical consumer goods and services/ Auto and trucks manufactures.

Available from http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/ford_motor_company/index.html

Accessed Date (24th March 2012)