Marketing Research Proposal

Purpose of project

Market research proposal is a plan, stock of ideas and offers for conducting the
marketing research. The proposal plan will deal with who is to be surveyed, how this will
be done, how the analysis will be conducted, including the use of any specialized licensed
research techniques and what will be delivered to the client. In this research proposal I will
be highlighting Arla food products problems or opportunities in the market.

Executive summary

The marketing proposal is divided into different sections with each focusing upon different
aspects, which helps in research problem solving.

The first section describes the history of the organization, which will provide the
background, secondary research, and the marketing environment in which the company
operates. It consists of the operational activity carried out by the company and their
marketing strategy.
The second phase is identifying and specifying the problem or opportunities faced by Arla.
Research objectives will be developed which defines the main purpose of the research.
After setting up the research objectives, a research design, which will, lay down the
foundation for conducting the project, will be specified. This includes the method of
collecting the data for the research, nature of instrument used for collecting the data,
sampling plan and the sample size.
The next step will focus on the way data is collected and who will be responsible for it. The
methods of analyzing the data and reporting will also be given. The subsequent step deals
with presenting the cost and timetable of conducting research by breaking down into
various segments.
The penultimate involves noting down the research organizations or the key researchers
involved in the whole research project.
The ultimate steps include all the secondary sources from where data has been taken
and it is included in the bibliography section.

Background research

This section of the proposal outlines the brief description about the company’s
establishment, the nature of the business as well as the components of the marketing
environment in which it operates.

Arla food was established in 1869 as Arla ek. for. Arla Foods amba is a cooperative
formed by the 2000 merger between Sweden's Arla and Denmark's MD Foods. The
company controls 95 percent and 65 percent of the dairy production markets in
Denmark and Sweden, respectively. Yet these countries represent only half of Arla
Food’s Dkr 38 billion ($4.66 billion) in annual sales. The merger of Swedish dairy
cooperative Arla with its Danish counterpart, MD Foods, created Europe's leading
dairy products company in 2000. Both companies had their roots in the cooperative
movements of the late 19th century. The company is the largest producer of dairy
products in Scandinavia. The name Arla derives from the same word as the English
word "early" and is an archaic Swedish term for "early (in the morning). Arla Foods
immediately revealed its commitment to maintaining its leadership in Europe while
pursuing its expansion into other markets. At the same time, Arla Foods formed a new
subsidiary in the United Arab Emirates to promote its products throughout the Persian
Gulf region.

Product line of Arla food UAE is:

• Lurpak range of butters.
• Three cows and
• Puck range of dairy products.

Competitors and problems faced by Arla food UAE

The main competitors of Arla food UAE are craft cheese and Almarai. Both these
companies are strong in the dairy food sector in UAE and are preferred over Arla. The
company faced major problems. Arla's sales were seriously affected by a boycott of
 Danish products in the Middle East in 2006. The cause of this was international anger
among Muslims over satirical cartoons of Muhammed. After the Danish government
refused to condemn the cartoons or meet with eleven concerned ambassadors from
Muslim nations, a boycott was organized, starting in Saudi Arabia and spreading
across the Middle East. Soon after the boycott began to affect Arla's sales, the Danish
government met with Muslim ambassadors, the newspaper issued apologetic
statements. Unfortunately for Arla, the boycott continued undiminished for some
time. Saudi Arabia was their largest market outside of Europe. During the year 2006
the company said that sales in the Middle East had stopped completely, costing the
company US$2 million a day. Because of these issues, Arla has started sponsoring
humanitarian causes in the Middle East in order to reduce bad feelings from
consumers.

Problem/opportunity and Research objectives

From the above background research, Arla food UAE seems to be suffering from a
major problem. They need to evaluate the market by comparing it with other
competitors and also assess the damage done. But, a slight error might be enough for
its competitors to take over sales and customers

Once the problem or opportunity has been identified, the next step is to set the
Research Objectives with the help of the background secondary information. Setting
up our research objectives will help us in framing various broad questions for
research.
This research aims to understand to what Arla foods can do to get back customers who
prefer its competitors. Proper advertisement is one of the key factors affecting to company
at present. Therefore this portfolio aims to focus on this unexplored field in order to provide
more accurate tools for Arla food to get back customer and perform better. Research
objectives are:

• To evaluate the position of Arla in the market by comparing it with other major
competitors
• To study the brand image perceived by the customers.
The research objectives are broken down into various research questions(R), which are
refined statements of the components of the problem.
- How many customers buy Arla products?
- Where do customer rank Arla foods as compared to its major competitors.
- How do customer perceive Arla in different terms as compared to its
competitors.
- Which factors of the product image do you consider most in your purchase
decision.

All the above research questions will help us in accomplishing the research objectives. It
will provide us with a view whether the customers prefer Arla products to other brands.
From this a hypothesis will be developed to supplement the research questions. A
hypothesis is an educated guess, which is testable. A hypothesis may be either null or
alternative. The hypothesis here is: