Question: To identify relevant strategies for growth of Popular in the city and neighboring towns.

Scope: Customers of Popular
This helps in exploring the possibility of a smoothie shop and new locations for Popular shops in the city and neighboring towns.

Sampling: The principal survey options were to mail questionnaires, use personal or telephone interviews, or use focus- group discussions. Each, however, had a serious drawback. Personal interviews using trained interviewers were simply too costly and would have been feasible only with a sample that was too small. Focus-group discussions would have provided only qualitative information. The questionnaire could have been administered by mail, but experience suggested that the response rates would be low unless substantial incentives and follow-ups were used.

A market intelligence effort to gather information through surveys was undertaken over a five- week period in each store of the two stores of Popular Pizza. The customers who visited Popular over a period of time (purchase intercept technique) formed the sample for the survey. The solution was a purchase intercept technique in which customers who visited the Popular shop were asked to fill out a questionnaire. Sample sizes of 200 consumers were selected from the each of the two Popular Pizza stores. An incentive was used to boost the response rate of the respondents.

The advantage of the telephone in reaching large samples economically was utilized to establish contact with the customers of competition in areas surrounding the locations of competing pizza shops in that city. Random samples of respondents having different prefixes were selected. The sample targeted residents in and around locations of competing pizza joints in the city. A sample of 400 respondents was selected at random from the preselected prefixes.

The research approach was successful in achieving a high response rate at a low cost per completed interview. The key to success was in matching the approach to the objectives and the characteristics of the population, notably, the presence of an up to date listing, the limited geographic area to be covered, and the participants’ inherent interest in the subject of the survey.

Data:

The respondents were asked about their frequency of visits to pizza shops, the factors influencing their choice of pizza joints, the service they expect at the pizza joints, the attractiveness of menu items including smoothie drinks.