A STUDY OF CUSTOMER PERCEPTIONS AND EVALUATIONS OF CENTENNIAL
CAR MODEL IN SAUDI ARABIA Prepare by
To be conducted by: Students and Instructor of MKT 345 (Marketing
Research) course Department of Management and Marketing King Fahd University of Petroleum
and Minerals Dhahran,
Saudi Arabia 1.
Introduction 5.
5. Data Analysis 6.
Presentation Of Results And Recommendations 9.
9. Cost 1. INTRODUCTION As
part of the requirements for completing the Marketing Research course offered
by the Department of Management and Marketing at King Fahd University of Petroleum
and Minerals (KFUPM), students are often required to conduct research on a
marketing-related topic of interest. Upon recommendation from the Business
Development Center of the College of Industrial Management at KFUPM, this
semester the Marketing Research class has decided to use Centennial,
an up-scale car model recently introduced by the Hyundai Motor Company of
South Korea into the Saudi market. This car is marketed under an individual
brand name strategy similar to the one used by Toyota for Lexus and
Nissan for Infiniti. The study will
examine how the car is currently perceived in the Saudi market, and will
provide information that will be useful to the Al-Majdouie group (authorized
dealers for the car in Saudi Arabia) in their efforts to better penetrate the
market. The research will be designed to achieve
the following objectives. 1. To examine the level of consumer awareness of Centennial
in Saudi Arabia. 2. To identify the factors that influence consumers’
preferences for different brands of luxury cars 3. To identify the reference car models against which Centennial
is perceived as competing. 4. To determine consumers' perceptions of Centennial
compared to these other car models. This will help to determine Centennial's
main direct competitors. 5. To examine consumers' quality perceptions of the Hyundai
brand name. 6. To identify what advantages and challenges Centennial's
association with the Hyundai brand
name will have for the market penetration efforts of Centennial. A relevant
issue here is whether existing Saudi attitudes toward the Hyundai name are likely to be extended
to Centennial. To achieve the above objectives, a survey
will be conducted among owners and potential buyers of up-scale luxury cars
in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia using a structured self-administered
questionnaire. Prior to the main survey, exploratory
research will be conducted to identify the factors that influence customers’
preferences for different brands and models of luxury cars in the Kingdom as
well as the reference models against which Centennial is likely to be
competing. This will be achieved through focus group interviews and depth
interviews with selected customers as well as with resource personnel (e.g.
salespeople) in car dealerships that offer luxury models. Results fro this
investigation will be used to design the questionnaire which will then be
tested in a small-scale pilot study before final implementation in the main
survey. Students
of the Marketing Research course at King Fahd University of Petroleum and
Minerals will distribute the questionnaires. Each student will be responsible
for collecting information from a sample of respondents large enough to
enable him to write a separate individual report on his findings in order to
fulfill the course requirements. At the end of the course, the course
instructor will pool together the responses obtained by all students in the
course, analyze the pooled data, and prepare a separate report for
Al-Majdouie. Each student will code and enter his data
into a computer for electronic processing using the SPSS (Statistical Package
for the Social Sciences) software. Specific analysis techniques to be employed
will be dictated by requirements of the research objectives formulated for
the study. 6. PRESENTATION
OF RESULTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Findings from the study, conclusions drawn,
and related recommendations will be communicated to Al-Majdouie in a written
report. An oral presentation could also be arranged if this would be of
interest to Al-Majdouie. This will provide the opportunity for management of
Al-Majdouie to seek clarification of issues contained in the written
report. Table 1 shows a schedule of the time requirements for
executing the research contained in this proposal. TABLE 1 EXECUTION TIMETABLE FOR PROPOSED STUDY
8.
BENEFITS OF THE PROJECT We envisage that Al-Majdouie
will derive significant benefits from this project. First, the research
objectives have been formulated taking into account the practical marketing
issues involved with a new product launch like the type represented by
Centennial - issues related to customer awareness, market segments to target,
product perceptions compared to competitors, and factors important to
customers when they choose among alternative brands. We believe that
information collected from the project will be valuable to Al-Majdouie in
helping the company to better define its direct competitors and its target
market, and also to identify aspects of its marketing strategy that need to
be improved to make the product a success in the market. Second,
implementation of the project itself will contribute to creating awareness of
the product among Saudi consumers. When the idea of the project was first
brought up in the Marketing Research class, almost no one knew about
Cenetennial. Now all the 55 students taking the course know about the car,
and they have definitely also talked to their friends about it. Furthermore,
each of them will be distributing questionnaires to at 20 people resulting in
more than one thousand people becoming aware of the existence of the car just
by virtue of completing the questionnaires. We
hope that Al-Majdouie will contribute to the research effort by meeting
expenses involved in the data collection, and also providing a prize for the
best student report and a honorarium for the instructor for preparing an
overall report and presentation to Al-Majdouie. |