Marketing managers often commission formal marketing studies of specific problems and opportunities.

This is the situation presented with Saxonville Sausage Company. Ann Banks was hired as the new marketing director at Saxonville to assess the Italian opportunity for the company. Saxonvilles Italian sausage line, Vivio, was the one line that was showing growth across producers of the retail sausage market. Banks job was to develop a national product under the Vivio name or as a new brand. The idea was to get more national exposure as Vivio was only available in 16% of the nations large supermarkets. And the primary areas of distribution was Expression problems New England and South Carolina. Once Banks decided on a research approach, she had to design a sampling plan. There are a couple of questions that must be considered when preparing for this, and Banks went about it in the following way. First, Banks had to determine the population that was to be surveyed. Her first group involved four to six men and women aged 25-50. This consumer used either branded or store-brand Italian sausage products. This group of researchers was used to form focus groups. Next, Banks had to determine how many people were to be sampled. Since larger samples give more reliable results, there were 437 women that were cold-called to participate in the study; upon screening, 103 were qualified. Finally, Banks had to decide how the respondents would be chosen. It was decided that females were the primary purchasers of Italian sausage. Female heads of household who purchased and prepared Italian sausage at least once every six weeks were chosen. A lot of information was generated from the focus groups. Banks and her team learned the primary targets of each line of Saxonvilles sausage (brats, breakfast sausage, and Vivio Italian sausage). This included which meals each were prepared for, how the price compared to other brands, and how it was prepared (i.e. on the barbeque). Furthermore, specific considerations were also discovered. This included how often Italian sausage was consumed, the age of the user(s), income level, employment status (full time, part time, out of the house, in the home), and whether or not users considered other brands such as private labels or store brands. Good The results of the focus groups were broken into three groups: heavy, medium, and light users of Italian sausage. Heavy users purchased at least once a week during fall and

winter months and once every two weeks during the spring and summer. Light users purchased at least once every six weeks with the same seasonal variations as the heavy users. Additionally, the focus groups revealed that the Saxonville name was well known, and their Italian sausage received a lot of votes as a result of this. Inherent in any good research design is the assurance that the right consumers are being surveyed. The research specifications are developed partly by understanding who the core target customer is in terms of basic demographics (sex, education level, household income), partly by consumer behavior (purchase frequency, brand loyalty) and partly by understanding exactly what kind of information is required. Different types of consumers must be engaged as respondents in the groups; homogeneous groups provide the most accountable and therefore usable output. Banks and her research colleague Bishop must determine the kind of information they need and then develop a research design that has a plot of the different homogeneous groups. They must juggle age, brandedness (brand loyalty), geography, and lifestyle (in this case determined by a working/nonworking FHH) and stay within budget (i.e., they cant go out and run 50 groups). In the Saxonville case, three crucial areas must be considered in determining the kind of information required when developing the research design: Age, Lifestyle and Geography Banks stated that she usually follows a four-step process in performing positioning works. There are three qualitative steps and one quantitative piece. The qualitative steps give depth and help to surface ideas. The quantitative piece validates the ideas across a broader population. Oftentimes, qualitative research steps are unstructured. It is sometimes difficult to find out consumer perceptions of brands and products, and this serves to uncover that. After the qualitative research steps have been performed, the quantitative research delivers the final verdict of consumers perceptions. Saxonville Sausage Company gained very high purchase-intent scores from consumers; the highest they had ever seen. Banks used six distinct themes, or bases, on which to position the new Italian sausage brand. The top scoring bases were Family Connection and Clever Cooking. Each of these bases had individual characteristics of

how a consumer used the product. Since Saxonville is a family oriented company, and Italian equals family, they need to use the Family Connection theme towards developing a name for the new Italian sausage product and for marketing. Good You have excellent understanding of the case but you spent too much effort describing rather than analyzing. Also please avoid expression problems in the future. I know proof reading is a drag but its necessary. Thanks 107/120.