Business Marketing – Homework

Analyse the possible methods of sampling that could be used to gather information about The Play Zone
Sampling is obtaining data from a group that gives a good representative of a larger population.
There are two methods of sampling that The Play Zone could use. The first option is convince sampling. The benefit of using this method is that they can easily ask their target audience, potential customers, who are on the waiting list to join The Play Zone, if they would interested in the new play group. This allows them to judge if purchasing the nursery, will act as a substitute for excess demand, therefore they can reduce their risk, by forecasting potential demand and calculating financial risk. One potential disadvantage of using this method is that it only accounts for the excess demand, it does not query whether people in the neighbouring village would actually be interested in the group, as demographics of this village may be different and not correspond with The Play Zone’s target audience.
The second is to use stratified random sampling. This is the process of collecting data, where the individual they collect data from is the target audience of The Play Zone, and the people chosen, are selected with no bias. They could create a questionnaire, and mail it to people in the village, who meet the characteristics of their target audience i.e. parents with infant children. The advantage of using this option is that money isn’t wasted on