Oskar Wallin Comm 101

Before launching a new product, every business needs to do market research to get an understanding of how this new product will perform. However, market research is not always useful.  A perfect example of this is Targets failed attempt to enter the Canadian market. In order to succeed in any competitive market, you must be aware of the culture, wants and needs of your target segment (Audra, Bianca). Before entering a market like this, careful and useful market research should be conducted.

Targets problem is that they did not fully understand Canadian consumers. They did not get their pricing strategy right and their brand image in Canada was effected by it. In addition to that shoppers complained about a lack of inventory (St. Louis, Dara). These issues all originate from market research problems. Problems with market research could be the questions asked, type of research (Quantitative vs qualitative etc), biased consumers etc. In this case the questions asked were not sufficient to establish a good overview of their target market.

What interests me is the complexity of market research. A lot of time and money is invested into this. Even a massive firm like Target can have their market research be completely redundant if the wrong questions are asked.

Works Cited:

Audra, Bianca. Small Business Chron. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 2015.

St. Louis, Dara. “Why Target Failed in Canada, and What Other Companies Can Learn from It.” Vision Critical. N.p., 30 Jan. 2015. Web. 16 Nov. 2015. <https://www.visioncritical.com/target-canada/>.