Pillsbury

Introduction
The Canadian Pillsbury’s Refrigerated Baked Goods (RBG) was experiencing a slow and low growth rate over the past few years. Hence, the marketing manager was under pressure to make strategic decisions and aimed to achieve five to seven per cent annual category growth. This paper will focus on the development of consumer insights by using market research and how marketing managerscan use the results to determine marketing strategies. In the first section of the paper, quantitative and qualitative researches are analyzed while recommendation is provided in the second section.

Consumer Insights Market Research
The marketing manager engaged with the help of the consumer insight team to conduct market research studies that will shed light on consumers and their attitudes,behavious, and preferences towards the product. With some understanding of the nature problem, the RBG team hired MarketTools to conduct a descriptive research, the usage and attitude study. Supplementary qualitative studies such as in-home immersion visits and discovery workshops were conducted to supplement the insights that were gained from the usage and attitude study.

The main objective ofundertaking these two researches were to perceive deeply and clearly of the Canadian consumers in order to improve the cookie segment’s performance. In other words, these researches helped RBG team to embed knowledge about its consumers and markets that helped structure Pillsbury’s decision-making by penetrating discoveries that led to specific opportunities.

Quantitative Research (Descriptive)Descriptive research was conducted to determine the characteristics of various population groups such as users, lapsed users and non-users. For example, questions consist of: How each participant bakes their cookies in Canada? What aspects drive the consumer to purchase? How they perceive Pillsbury product?. In this case, Pillsbury used consumer surveys with the focus on the frequency ofproduct purchase and use, desirable attributes in products and product strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, psychological questions, such as what consumers’ perception and feeling, are included in the surveys. Many of these questions are unconscious behaviours or thoughts on the part of consumers in terms of loyalty and brand image. Hence, these surveys enable RBG team to tap into facts or conceptsthat are not directly observable.

This usage and attitude study is vital for understanding the public appeal of a product and the opportunities for sales with the targeted market. Ultimately, in order to reach its main goal - leverage the growth in Canada, this quantitative research aided to make accurate predictions as well as to gain meaningful insights into its consumers and baking products.* Evaluation
The surveys’ results were considered as a primary data as the data are specifically collected for this research study. The usage and attitude study is developed to obtain answers to the research objectives of the study, which means that data received will be analyzed to determine if the market research objectives have been met. The outcomes of the study will be evaluated basedon three fundamental dimensions:
1. The extent to which the data exists
2. The degree to which the data have been interpreted
3. The extent to which it is understood why the data were collected and assembled

For primary data, the data completeness is the most vital characteristics of evaluating the outcome of market research. The data is considered as complete when expected andright amount attributes of data are provided. Furthermore, the data has to be relevant to the research objectives and relating to the problem issued. By providing valuable information, it will provide a good quality and accurate result that will affect the future marketing decisions.

However, it is not sufficient based on one research. When placed alongside qualitative evidence, quantitative...