Final Project: Zen Vapors

Zen Vapors

Hypothesis

Zen Vapors gave me the opportunity to do some market research on a recent mod they’ve received and have not been able to sell many of. The mod is a copper mod for your mechanical vaping system. When seeing where Zen Vapors keeps this product located for sell, I came up with a hypothesis. If the copper mod was moved to the front near the cash register, more would be sold.

Survey

My hypothesis led me to conduct a survey of 50 customers during a Saturday afternoon at Zen Vapors. Nearly all of whom that were surveyed,  were young adults. This is what I found out:

A big portion of the people vaping has recently started from three months ago to three years ago. You can see when an individual gets started on vaping; they become a potential customer for years.

The majority of people vaping used to smoke cigarettes. Seeing this many smokers switch to vaping shows a possible trend in smokers switching to vaping. New vapors require a new mod, specifically a copper mod!

When getting into vaping, mods soon become an accessory. Ladies and gentleman alike want to have mods to match their personality or even their favorite outfits. The longer they’ve been vaping, the more mods they’ll acquire for every occasion.

Mod personalization isn’t as popular as I thought it would be. You can get your name etched in certain mods or even logos if you’re trying to promote while you vape. With personalization not being as popular, they’ll have more chance to sell the copper mod on the spot then to suggest personalizing it.

I was shocked to see as many people as I did who spend over $100 a month on vaping and literally nobody who spends under $20. People vaping are for sure spending money every month to enjoy the many flavors of vaping and in upgrading their vaping tools.

People vaping do their research! Very few people would normally listen to a shops advice; instead they prefer to plan out a purchase ahead of time. It still doesn’t hurt the shop to offer a customer a nice shiny copper mod!

It’s nearly even on vapors who keep shop loyalty up and vapors who like to explore the availability of other vape shops. Your loyal customers may not have seen the copper mod in the shop yet and anyone just passing through may find an interest in the mod as they check out and grab one.

Conclusion

I recommend moving the copper mods near the register to increase awareness of the product to everyone coming through Zen Vapors. People vaping spend nearly as much on vaping as the average smoker does on cigarettes, with a good percentage of the people vaping staying loyal to a specific shop they like. Knowing an average customer will purchase over five mods in their vaping life, the likability of selling more is high when the opportunity is presented right in front of them. 

EOC Week 9: The Darkside of Market Research

When thinking about the dark side of market research, money is unfortunately the first thing to come to mind. The world we live in today, you see money being thrown around to create deals that’ll benefit the individuals with the most money. Our politics in America are the worst at this. Like the point made in class, why is it if I call and want to talk to anyone running for presidential election, it’s 99% accurate to say it won’t happen. Now if I have $100 million just laying around and decide the candidate would like this money more than me, the candidate becomes all ears and I’ll be the first person they speak with. Now being the kind of person I am, I won’t give them the $100 million without something in return. What can $100 million by from you? This is not only in politics. The sad truth is money bribery is entwined in every business industry alive, from politics to soccer. Here recently FIFA officials have been arrested on charges of money laundering, a scam that has been going on for 24 years which also involves Nike. The world was made to believe the soccer league was legit in every deal made, but the truth is the league has been receiving bribes for quite some time. This kind of manipulation may have been the reason behind the rise in Brazil’s team. I feel once you break a certain money barrier you can manipulate the market to always be in your favor. With this much money it also makes the chances of you getting caught, slim to none. There’s a dark and dirty side to everything in life, you just have to learn as much as you can about it and be cautious.

Week 8 EOC: Excel Drafts

 After entering the information into Microsoft Excel you can easily turn that information into a variety of graphs. Type the question at the top of the page and the answers aligned under the question. To the right of the answers you will have to type the percentages equally up to 100%. Highlight all the information needed and click the insert tab. You will see a section called charts. In this section you will have a variety of charts and graphs you can select. By selecting one, the information that is highlighted will be turned into that graph or chart. Now take a screenshot, paste in paint, save, crop, and upload onto the blogger. Graphs are an amazing tool used to show a physical representation of the information presented. By being able to see the information in a graph form and not in number form, you can get a better understanding of what the information actually entails. This will also help in comparing survey answers and questions and also in presenting the information. When presenting a lot of numbers and percentages, the individuals presented too may become overwhelmed and lost in the presentation. This means you're not getting your message across accurately. Graphs and charts will help explain the information so you're clear in describing the outcome of your survey.

Week 7 EOC: Final Product Pitch

I’ve gone around prospecting different stores, but have yet to lock down a store to do the market research project. I’m waiting for a response from Artifact, an antique type shop in Town Square. I also spoke to a Crystal shop on Eastern who I’m waiting for a response from. I’m thinking I would have to do market research for either one of them to help bring in costumers rather than sell an individual product. There is a company called Watch Me Rave that sells light up watches who would love some research done for their light up watch product. I don’t believe they have an actual storefront though. They sell their products at music events, festivals, and online. I’ve emailed Watch Me Rave to see if they’ve expanded into any shops, but if they haven’t I believe I could help them expand into some shops around town here or maybe in some different cities.

Even though I have yet to fully lock down a merchant, I’ve been speaking to multiple different places who would be interested in allowing me to do a project like this. I’ve ran into trouble with stores in a few different areas; if they were corporate they are really private about others doing market research, even private owned shops it was hard to get in touch with an owner or someone who could give me permission to do such a project, and some shops just did not want somebody surveying their customers. I think the most difficult part of this project is finding the merchant and what product to research. It’ll be exciting to get out and survey the people to try and make a company some money. I know upon completion of this product, I’ll be able to use the skills learned towards bettering my companies.

EOC Week 6: What did you learn? From your project? From the class discussion?

I unfortunately did not finish the project fully to be able to learn everything I should have. I realize this is not acceptable and cannot happen with the final. I did however read through all my other classmates projects and discovered how different everyone in class feel about fragrances. All the products were unique in their own ways. Some with packaging you wouldn’t expect a fragrance to have like that of a gypsy or in what seems to be a flask. Packaging is a key factor in the success of a fragrance and I now have a stronger understanding of that. The scents themselves ranged in variety as well, with the one that has a smell of love sticking out the most. It seems a lot of the class had troubles with following the directions of the project. My project was by far not the only one not finished, though that is still no excuse. This class is teaching me a skill I can take with me everywhere, help businesses make money through market research. Doing the work and projects will ensure I learn the knowledge and be able to use it outside of the school whether for my own businesses or for others. Not many classes in this school offer anything of the sort, thus why I must stay focused and get the work done.

EOC week 6: Deeper meaning of the film BIG

The film Big demonstrated a couple different marketing research methods. In one scene you’ll see Tom Hanks running around the toy store the company he works for owns and makes the toys for. As he’s running around playing what looks to be laser tag, he runs into his boss, the owner of the company. The boss says how he’s there every Saturday doing his own market research. This shows actual field research, not anything controlled. They were able to study the consumers in the presence of the toys they make in a natural setting. The other form of research methods used throughout the movie is a controlled method. A group of selected kids are brought into a room with only one, one sided window and a door. In this room the children are given select toys to play with and then are watch and studied on how they act and play with each individual toy. Not a very comfortable setting if you ask me. So in my eyes, I see the first method being used to be the better of the two methods. For this example, putting a group of children in a room to test toys, you’re going to get untrustworthy information. The boss understood this and that’s why Tom Hanks ran into him while playing around the toy store.

Week 4: EOC

Using secondary data has its advantages and its disadvantages. When doing marketing research, your best bet would probably be your primary research collected. Secondary data has a few key advantages that make it quiet useful sometimes. There is so much secondary data that it’s really easy to access now and is also a low cost to acquire. Instead of spending your time and money trying to acquire certain data, you may be able to find this data through another company’s previous market research. Secondary data may be used prior to primary data in many cases. This can help clarify the research focus and maybe change the research question. Some disadvantages of secondary data, may include the quality of the research. The research may not be specific to the researcher’s needs. When the data was collected, it may have been collected for different reasons other than the reason’s you need it for and it may have been collected in different ways not according to what you need. You would also have to be careful to check if the information is complete and not outdated. Research done years ago may be irrelevant now due to many changes in the world.

Surveys are the most common method used for gathering information from other individuals. Surveys can be implemented in a few different ways, including telephone, by mail, in person, or even the internet. Surveys are useful in gathering information that wouldn’t normally be available to the public. This is useful for companies to grow, increase sales, better consumer relations, or create better products. The biggest downfall to surveys is how accurate the information gathered will be. Make the surveys simple to ensure a more accurate response.