Report+by+Amanda+and+Dee

Report on H&F MP3 players in the market

1. Introduction

1.1.Background With the technology development in the music player industry, it is important for our company to get updated understanding of our market position through research es and customer surveys. Only in this way can we make in time improvement in our product and services.

1.2.Purpose As required by Mr Connick, this report presents the result of a recent market survey and analysis and potential possible reasons for problems identified. Conclusions are drawn, and are followed by recommendations to improve the unsatisfactory aspects.

2. Procedure The resources for the analysis are derived from a recent market survey conducted by M&D Market Research Company. Four hundred consumers were interviewed in the research including 200 H&F MP3 users and 200 iGADGET MP3 users. Customer opinions were collected for various aspects such as functions, design, and headphone quality. The satisfaction rate and market shares of our product were also compared with those of the iGADGET.

3. Findings Attachment 1 shows the customer satisfaction rate of MP3 players from both H&F and our main competitor, iGADGET in terms of the design, functions, sound quality, battery life, headphone quality and overall satisfaction. Attachment 2 displays the local market share of MP3 from these two companies from September 2009 to August 2010. (say which aspects you are going to focus on)

3.1.Design Less than half of the respondents were contented with the design of H&F MP3 while nearly nine out of ten users were happy with that of iGADGET’s. One possible reason may be that we have not implemented any new design in the players for two years. This may imply a decrease in appeal to young music lovers who follows the fashion trend closely.

3.2.Function In the survey, less than two-fifths of the interviewees spoke highly of the function of our product. However, the satisfaction rate was nearly dou ble for iGADGET MP3 concerning that function. It This may be attributed to the troublesome way for our customers to add songs into the player through special software. (some more details)

3.3.Headphone quality Among all the aspects examined, least people (just around one-third) were happy with the headphone quality of H&F MP3. In contrast, the satisfaction rate for IGADGET players is slightly higher at 40%. The poor feedback might be due to the fact that our players are made in Malaysia where quality control is not sufficiently applied implied. More stringent supplier selection criteria may be needed in future.

3.4 Market shares The chart clearly shows that the market share of H&F was steadily decreasing starting from 2010 while its competitor iGadget was gaining more market shar es. There may be mainly two reasons contributing to this. First, with the emergence of iphone4 and Android mobile phone which have the music playing function, people tend to demand less MP3 thus leads to the decreased market shar es. In addition, our spokesperson Felix Chan, a 49-year old TV star, may not be attractive enough to impress our major target group, the youngsters.

4. Conclusion The findings clearly indicate the main sources of dissatisfaction are design, functions and headphone quality, it is concluded that the company should make some major improvement in these aspects. (Also spokesman?)

5. Recommendations 5.1 Design In light of the low satisfaction level in design, I suggest that we adjust our design idea and get it in line with the current young people. As an alternative, we may also outsource our design process to external companies that specializing in this field. (more detail)

5.2 Functions Given that most customers were not contented with the functions of the product, we may have to put in more effort into R&D and include more practical functions in our product. For instance, we may set up a ‘my radio’ function which randomly plays songs for users from their favourite music pool.

5.3 Headphone quality Since many customers are disgruntled about our headphone quality, we should pay more attention to the internal quality control, especially to our Malaysia manufacturer. Maybe we should pick a proportion of products as samples from them and see whether the products are made according to the contract.

5.4 Market shares Given that our market shares are decreasing steadily, I suggest that we change our spokesmen and focus more on internet marketing which may be more appealing to young people. (more detail)

Generally good.

Some wrong words; also more detail needed in places.