Executive Summary The main objective of our marketing research project was to gather data regarding the customer-insights

of TropAquarium, as well as the general opinions about tropical pets. We began the project by defining management-decision and marketing-research problems. The management-decision problem was: What can TropAquarium do to expand and attract possible student customers? The marketing- decision problem was: the determination of various needs and preferences of pet owners and how those needs are satisfied by TropAquariums current product or service. Our approach to the problem included gathering data from students via on-line survey with questions designed to explore the customer insights and preferences. The span of two weeks was used to collect sufficient data to provide legitimate suggestions to the managers. We decided to employ exploratory and descriptive research design to discover hidden issues that we might not have been aware of. And we also sought to find characteristics and descriptions of the tropical pets market in Santa Cruz. The significant findings from our marketing research is follows:

About 1 in 5 currently own a fish or a reptile. Of people who have heard of TropAquarium, only half of them was aware of its location

Only about a third of our respondents who had been to TropAquarium answered that the customer service was great, but none answered that the service was bad.

Almost everyone interviewed had a Facebook

People ranked either customer service or prices as their main motives behind choosing a pet store.

Most people felt name recognition was their least motive behind choosing a pet store.

Only ten percent of people would never buy fish or reptiles, the rest would be interested and could be seen as potential customers.

Based on our results, we would recommend that TropAquarium: 1. Supply and increase the varieties of tropical fish and lizards, while reducing the number on snakes and gold fish. 2. Expand and improve social media presence to inform effectively to students about the store. 3. Since pet food was the most popular item in the store, it will be beneficial to improve their selection on animal food and treats.

Problem Definition: ` There were several issues that the decision makers at TropAquarium presented us

with when we initially met with them problems with moving locations, diminished student customer base, difficulty with effective advertising and cultivating repeat clients limited their sales volume. After speaking with the owners, we determined that the marketing-decision problem wed be focusing on was: What can TropAquarium do to expand its student customer base? From that we determined that the marketing research

problem was to determine the various needs of pet owners and the extent at which those needs are being satisfied by TropAquariums current products and services. In order to look into the answer to both these problems, we decided to conduct research by putting together a survey and distributing it to our target market of students. When we formulated our survey, our biggest consideration was what a potential buyers needs were and how TropAquariums product offerings satisfied these needs.

Approach to the Problem: Our research questions focuses on what products potential consumers need and what TropAquarium can do to motivate customers to shop at their store more frequently, so we created a survey that included asking what types of pets people own or want to own, what products people buy most often for their pets, and whether or not special offers motivates consumers. We used an online survey approach to the problem that we determined after speaking with the decision makers at TropAquarium. After completing the survey, we distributed it online and allowed for two weeks to pass so that a large enough sample size could be collected. We targeted fellow students in order to gain insight into the market that the TropAquarium management wishes to expand into. Additionally, we collected some demographical data from those who answered our survey. This information included age, sex, location and occupation. The information that we needed to create this survey included what products and services TropAquarium offers, what kind of discounts the owners would be willing to offer, and who they wanted to target.

Research Design: Our approach to discovering a solution to our problem included implementing a descriptive research design. The development of our research design emphasized the discovery and description of the characteristics of local Santa Cruz pet owners purchasing habits as consumers. We also sought to find an estimate of the percentage of pet owners who currently shopped at TropAquarium, and those who shopped at another location. Finally, we sought to discover the perception and demand of TopAquariums products, and to get an idea of the market share of reptile and aquatic pet ownership. In a pursuit to discover how we may improve TropAquariaums clientele, we designed a survey to discover what motivated Santa Cruz locals in their decision making of where to purchase their aquarium needs. We further sought to discover any other incentives that might push people to visit TropAquarium. Before creating our survey, we first had to learn about the market we were entering in order to formulate an appropriate research design. The 2010-2011 pet age Retailer Report# by Jeff Siegel gave us an insight on how recession-weary pet retailers may make adjustments to remain open during a recession. For instance, the report states the most efficient mode of advertising is through the Internet and e-mail with a decrease in mailing out ads. We also learned through this report that many people know the existence of a pet store through a referral or by word of mouth. This insight and knowledge gave us an idea of what type of questions we would pose, such as Have you heard of TropAquarium? or How likely would you be willing to link with TropAquarium through Facebook?

Primary Data Collection: Our teams primary data collection was low cost and implemented in a two-week time frame. Our quantitative descriptive research was explained by developing a survey to question the respondents demographic data: Gender, Age, whether they were pet owners, and their occupation (as seen on the attached survey at the end of this report). The next section covered the respondents psychographic lifestylewhether they owned a reptile or a fish and what motivated them to make a purchasing decision. We decided to conduct electronic Internet survey research through the website www.kwiksurveys.com because it was convenient and easy to use. This was possible since the questionnaires were relatively easy to administer and provided a fixed-response. Providing multiple choice or scaled questions helped reduce the variability in our results that may have be caused by differences in interviewers and enhanced the reliability of the responses. Finally, it would also simplify the coding, analysis, and our interpretation of the data. We avoided the traditional telephone interviews, personal in-home interviews, mall intercepts, and mail panels due to our time constraints and the lack of funds to conduct them. Again, since we lacked the funds, we did not offer an incentive such as a monetary reward or store discount. That decision may be a factor to our small sample size respondents and be a limitation to our research design. We did not implement observational methods due time and financial constraints as well.

Scaling Techniques/ Questionnaire Development: As a team we created a database of potential questions and then selected 17 of the 25 that would actually be in our survey. We specified the information required, decided that the

interviewing method would be mainly Internet-based, and then arranged the questions to be in a proper and structured order. Before we distributed our survey, we conducted a pretest by taking it ourselves and administering it to a few housemates before publishing it. During the pretest we learned that there was room for improvement questions could have been more concise and easier understand. We did by it by improving sentence structure facilitate those taking the survey.

Data Analysis and Results: With the online survey conducted, it was decided that using exploratory research would be the best type of research because it would allow for gaining ideas and insight into the problem facing TropAquarium. The online surveys primary data results and analysis are shown in the following section:

The total number of people conducted in the survey ended up being 54, of which, 29 were male and 25 were female, giving us a near even ratio of men and women.

Of the 54 people interviewed, 38 people where between the ages of 21 and 30; 13 people were between the ages of 14 and 20; and only 3 people were older than 45. These results can bias our survey towards a younger persons mindset.

36 of the 54 people currently live in Santa Cruz County.

11 of the 54 people currently own a fish or reptile. This number appears to indicate that fish and reptiles as pets are not too common.

23 of the 54 people surveyed knew about the pet store, Trop Aquarium.

Of the 23 people that have heard of the pet store Trop Aquarium, only 54.84% of them knew where TropAquarium currently is located. Having just over half of the people know where the store is currently located shows that more marketing of the stores location needs to be conducted.

15 out of the 31 one people asked have actually been to the pet store, Trop Aquarium. This number shows, if people know where it is located they most likely have been to the pet store at some point in time.

Of the people who have been to TropAquarium, 32% feel their customer service is great; 68% are neutral about their customer service being great; and not one person felt their customer service was bad.

Of the 54 people surveyed, 50% feel reptiles are great pets; 37% of the people were neutral on the topic of reptiles as being great pets; and only 13% of people surveyed felt reptiles are not good pets to own.

The next question asked in the survey was if the person interviewed was to buy a fish or reptile, what would it be. Of the 54 responses only 5 people said they would never buy a reptile or fish, showing that there is a market out there for specialty pets. Of the 49 people who would by either a fish or a reptile, 40.74% would choose to buy a tropical fish; 24.07% would buy a lizard; 14.81% would buy some sort of snake; and 11.11% would buy a gold fish. From these results, the best choice for Trop Aquarium is to supply more tropical fishes and lizards, while reducing their inventory on snakes and gold fishes.

50 of the 54 people surveyed are currently on Facebook. With just over 92% of people conducted in this survey on Facebook, it will be recommended to Trop Aquarium to get more of a social media presence.

26 of the 50 people on Facebook are willing to be friends with a pet store in return for special discounts and sales exclusively to friends of the pet store business.

48 of the 54 people surveyed have, or at some point in time owned a pet. With 88.89% of the people surveyed owning a pet, it shows there is a demand for pet stores and there is money to be made in the pet store industry.

Of the 50 responses received, 68% of people only went to pet stores one or less times a month, while 32% of the people went more than once a month. These numbers show that the pet store industry is something people try to stock up on and shop at as infrequently as possible.

Of the 50 responses, people mainly ranked either customer service or prices as their main motives behind choosing a pet store. After customer service and prices, most people felt location and the amount of products in stock was their next motive in choosing a pet store. Lastly, most people felt name recognition was their least motive behind choosing a pet store. These numbers show that a family owned business like TropAquarium has a high chance for success as long as they focus on excellent customer service and keep prices competitive. (Note: table of results on next page).

The last question asked, was for people to rate the things they bought most frequently at pet stores. Of the 49 responses, most people bought food more than anything else. Next were treats being the item people bought more than anything else after dog food. After treats, people bought medicine and accessories. Clothing ended up being what most people bought the least amount of times. From these numbers, it will be in Trop Aquariums benefit to improve their selection on animal food and treats.

Limitation and Caveats All marketing research projects have limitations caused by time, budget, and other organizational constraints. As suggested in chapter 19 of the textbook, our marketing research for TropAquarium was also influenced by factors of budget, time and system error. We mainly gathered our questionnaire responses via social media called Facebook. Our focus was to collect data from college students who are attending UCSC because that

was the area of customers that TropAquarium wanted to improve. The on-line method allowed us to not only collect data from students in Santa Cruz, but also from many areas in California. As a filter question in the questionnaire, we asked whether a person lived in Santa Cruz county or not. With this question, we can separate sample data that are collected from Santa Cruz County and outside areas. However, we did not ask where they live if they did not live in Santa Cruz. So the owners should carefully determined if the data collected outside of Santa Cruz are relevant for them to incorporate to their decisions and management. Random sampling error is an error caused by a particular sample being imperfect representation of the population. In our case, we have collected data mainly from college students in Santa Cruz. Therefore, it is difficult to say that data that are gathered in one city can be a legitimated representation of the whole college population. Non-sampling error can be attributed to sources other than sampling. It includes errors in problem definition, approach, questionnaire design, survey methods, and data preparation of analysis. We may have a few unaware non-sampling errors due to human errors and somewhat biased analysis.

Conclusions and Recommendations: After analyzing the survey data, we have concluded that there is a significant potential market of fish and reptile buyers for TropAquarium to capture. However, we feel that TropAquarium is not yet widely known, so in order to capture a larger market (especially students), TropAquarium will need to increase publicity and awareness. This can be done effectively through the use of social media, and advertising to students. We

also determined that TropAquariums preferred products were their fishes, and that preference for snakes and lizards were not as high. We got an idea of TropAquariums customer service level, which was mainly positive, and determined the relative importance of different factors that might affect the number of customers coming in and out of the store. We also recommended that the management make the store more visible and eye-popping, as it is easily missed when driving down Mission St. Lastly, we recommended that the store keep a record of all its customers and transactions through the use of membership or preferred customer treatment. We suggested that they use a system similar to Safeways, where members receive discounts on products, and management can see exactly what customers have been buying, as well as their buying patterns and preferences. We recommended that the management use more online channels to increase awareness of TropAquariums location and/or existence. We also recommended that TropAquariums main product focus should be on fish and aquarium supplies, using more exotic pets like lizards and snakes as a way to attract people to the store and give the stores customers the impression that they have it all. Our marketing research helped us realize the extensiveness of marketing research needed in order to help an actual business make good and proper decisions. Although we were limited by time and money, mainly, we developed an idea of how to approach marketing research and relate the information to management. We took our findings to the owners of TropAquarium, and they are now working on expanding their website and Facebook presence, and are also working on getting better signs and props in front of their store. They are also looking into channels of student advertising. We suggested the

use of City on a Hill or the Fishrap, as well as CampusCred and Groupons. TropAquariums management is now considering the options.