How is customer perception studied?

Summary

 

The market for mobile apps for language learning is a highly competitive environment. To successfully develop and be popular, the application must meet the needs of users.

This paper presents a model of an "ideal mobile application" for learning a foreign language. It is based on the collected secondary data and the survey.

The paper has the following structure. The Theoretical part describes how to study the needs of users and considers the subject of mobile applications for learning a foreign language. The Empirical part presents the results of collecting secondary data and conducting a survey aimed at identifying the opinions of users of such applications. The desired model of the "ideal application" is presented in the Discussion part. The Appendix contains diagrams of survey respondents' answers, the text of the survey itself, and a table that reveals the opinions of users of different groups.

 

1. Introduction

 

Every day, almost every one of us uses mobile applications. They perform many functions, satisfying our various needs. As you might guess from the topic of the paper, we will talk about mobile applications for learning foreign languages. Looking ahead, there are a large number of such applications of different types.

However, some applications develop much more successfully than others. In this paper, I will try to answer the question of what is the secret of success and failure of mobile applications for learning a foreign language. Why do some applications rapidly grow their audience and profits, while others remain outsiders?

There may be several explanations for this. Perhaps this is a difference in teaching methods or in the functionality of the application. Maybe it's the design of the application? Another hypothesis could be a constant analysis of trends by developers and continuous improvement, coupled with competent promotion and acceptable monetization conditions.

It is worth noting that, just as in sports, a mobile application will never replace a coach, so in learning languages, no matter how functional and convenient the application is, it cannot be compared with a live teacher in terms of efficiency. However, the number of users around the world of the most popular applications in this category reaches hundreds of millions of people [Roskatchestvo, 2019].

Language learning apps are a highly competitive market [Duolingo (2), 2022]. Without a sensitive understanding of the needs of the audience, it is impossible to successfully exist and develop here, which is why the problem disclosed by this paper is relevant. My goal is to determine the specific requirements of the consumer for such a product, to capture those preferences that allow applications to become successful in their market segment.

In the course of the research, I will first consider the methods of market research, and then I will consider the types of applications for language learning and their nature. In addition, in the empirical part, I will need to conduct a survey to fulfill my goal, in order to identify all the pitfalls hidden in the superficial analysis. In addition, I will first collect secondary data from open sources in order to have a complete picture in front of me.

As a result of my research, I intend to get the sacramental secret of the success that accompanies some applications, and find the reasons for the failure of others, and also to build a model of the "ideal application" based on the information obtained in the course of the research.

 

2. Theoretical part

 

2.1. Research methods

 

In order to determine, how consumers choose a particular product, in our case this is a mobile application, first I will consider the customer decision model, the methods by which they study the perception of a product by customers, and those that will be suitable in this paper.

 

 

2.1.1. Customer Decision Model

 

No one buys a product without a problem, need or desire. The decision model demonstrates how people solve life's day-to-day problems that lead them to buy and use all sorts of products and services. The model considered in this paper was originally developed by Professors Angel, Kollat, and Blackwell at Ohio State University [Blackwell and Miniard, 2007].

The Consumer Decision Process Model is a map of the mindset of consumers that enables salespeople and managers to develop product, communication, and sales strategies. This model schematically summarizes the actions that take place in the decision-making process and shows how various internal and external forces, interacting with each other, influence the thoughts, assessments and actions of consumers.

As the model shows, consumers typically go through seven major stages in their decision-making process: need recognition, information seeking, pre-purchase evaluation of options, purchase, consumption, post-consumption evaluation, and release.

1. Awareness of the need. This happens when a person feels the difference between what he perceives as an ideal, in comparison with the real state of affairs. A consumer buys a product when he believes that the ability of the product to solve his problem is more valuable than the cost of acquiring it. Thus, recognizing an unsatisfied need is the first step in selling a product.

In the case of the considered mobile applications, awareness occurs when the consumer has a desire to improve their level of foreign language proficiency or learn a new language from scratch for any personal reason.

2. Search for information. After realizing the need, consumers begin to look for information and a solution that can satisfy their needs. Search is related to the perception of information to solve problems, and not with the search for specific products.

The duration and depth of the search are determined by such variables as consumer personality, social status, income level, purchase size, past experience, prior perception of brands, and consumer satisfaction.

How consumers search for information on applications, I will find out in the course of my survey.

3. Pre-purchase evaluation of options. It is an evaluation of alternative choices established during the search process. At this stage, consumers are looking for answers to the questions: “What options do I have?” and “Which one is the best?”. They compare, contrast, choose.

For mobile language learning applications, this is one of the most important stages in which the consumer decides which of the many applications he will use. Being a beginner in the field of language learning in this way, the client is not yet able to appreciate all the nuances of the proposed options, therefore, at this stage, the promotion of applications plays a special role, which will be discussed in more detail below.

4. Purchase. Having decided on a purchase, consumers then go through two stages. First, they choose a retailer (or some other form of purchase: catalogue, electronic sale - via TV or the Internet, or direct sale). The second stage is in-store selection, which is influenced by vendors, storefronts, electronic media and point-of-sale advertising. A consumer who intends to buy a particular product or brand can go through the first three stages of the decision-making process according to a preconceived plan. But sometimes the events that happen during the purchase or choice cause the consumer to buy something completely different from what he was going to, or to refrain from buying at all.

A purchase in the case of language mobile applications is not necessarily the purchase of a subscription to the mobile application. We will consider this stage as downloading from the application store (basically, you do not need to pay money for installation). I will overview ways of monetization for these applications further.

5. Consumption. After the consumer has made a purchase and taken possession of the product, there may be consumption—the period in which the consumer uses the product. Consumption can occur immediately or be delayed. The way consumers use products also influences their satisfaction with their purchase and the likelihood of buying a given product or brand in the future.

“Consumption” of a mobile application is its direct use. How long a consumer uses an app depends on how good the product is. If the developers have thought out a competent motivation system, then this period can be quite long. However, an important role here is played by the user's personal interest in learning the language.

6. Evaluation of options based on the results of consumption. A consumer is satisfied with a purchase when their expectations match the perceived performance of the product. When the consumption experience and performance do not live up to expectations, the consumer feels dissatisfied. Consumption outcomes matter because consumers store their ratings in memory and refer to them when making decisions later.

Competitors tend to have a very hard time influencing the opinions and decision-making process of satisfied customers, as these customers tend to buy the same favorite brand from the same store. But consumers who are dissatisfied with the product they bought or the store they bought it from are ready to respond to competitors' marketing strategies that promise something more.

If the application is really good, then it is unlikely that the client will switch to another. But if the product has a number of disadvantages that are unacceptable to the client, then this is a great opportunity for competitors to poach an unsatisfied client.

7. Liberation. This is the last stage of this model. The consumer has several options: complete disposal of the product, its disposal or the so-called remarketing. Ways to get rid of goods largely depend on the possibility of waste disposal and the environmental awareness of consumers.

If the consumer no longer wants to use this mobile application, he simply deletes it in a couple of clicks.

The Consumer Decision Model is a guide to understanding how consumers find their way in the world of consumer decision making. As consumers progress through these stages, sellers are able to respond to and influence their behavior with effective communication and marketing strategies targeted at each stage.

Having decided on the general decision-making model for using mobile language learning apps, we need to clarify what exactly attracts and pushes off customers when using these services. This can be determined in several ways, which I will discuss next.

 

 

You can study the perception of mobile applications by customers with the help of market research. Marketing research is a systematic and objective identification, collection, analysis, distribution and use of information to improve the efficiency of identifying and solving marketing problems (opportunities). [Malhotra, 2000]

This definition of market research states that organizations undertake market research for two reasons: to identify and to solve marketing problems. This distinction serves as the basis for classifying marketing research into those conducted to define a problem and those conducted to solve a problem.

Market research is used by all types of organizations for a wide variety of purposes: small businesses, large corporations, manufacturing companies, technology companies, online retailers, politicians, service industries and non-profit organizations. They are also suitable for mobile applications.

The focus of marketing is on identifying and satisfying consumer needs. Marketers need information to determine consumer needs and implement marketing strategies and programs to meet those needs. They are interested in information about consumers, competitors and other market participants.

With the growth of the business scale of companies in the national and international framework, the need for information on larger and more geographically remote markets is also growing. As consumers become more discriminating and sophisticated, marketers need more reliable information about how consumers respond to products and marketing programs. Increasing competition necessitates information on the effectiveness of their marketing programs. With the rapidly changing marketing environment, executives also need more timely information. [Erdem and Swift, 1998]

The goal of market research is to assess information needs and provide company management with information that is accurate, reliable, valid, up-to-date, and relevant. The highly competitive marketing environment and the ever-increasing cost of managerial errors require that market research provide high quality information. Effective decisions cannot be based on intuition or simple reasoning.

Marketers make a large number of strategic and tactical decisions in the process of identifying and meeting customer needs. They make decisions about a company's potential, target market selection, market segmentation, marketing program planning and execution, marketing success measurement, and marketing control.

These decisions are complicated by the interplay between the controllable factors in the marketing environment: product, price, promotion, and distribution. Additional complications in the activities of marketing managers are introduced by uncontrollable environmental factors: economic, technical, political, regulatory, competition, as well as social and cultural. The marketer should also take into account the interweaving of interests of various groups of people related to the running of the company: consumers, employees, shareholders, suppliers, etc.

Marketing research helps the chief marketing officer align the marketing strategy with factors in the marketing environment and the interests of interest groups. With their help, the company's management receives the information it needs, which makes it possible to partially eliminate uncertainty in business development. If it is absent, then it is impossible to predict with a sufficient degree of reliability or accuracy the reaction of consumers to the company's marketing programs.

Systematic marketing research provides information about controllable and uncontrollable environmental factors and the interests of various groups, which improves the effectiveness of decisions made by marketing directors [Marx, 1997].

Traditionally, marketing research specialists (market researchers) were responsible for assessing information needs and providing relevant information to the management of the company's marketing department for decision making. However, the picture is changing: research professionals are increasingly involved in management decisions, while marketing directors are increasingly involved in research. This trend can be explained by better training of marketing directors, advances in technology, and a change in the marketing research paradigm, in which marketing research increasingly crowds out research undertaken in response to certain marketing problems or opportunities [Malhotra, 1992 and Murphy, 1997].

The marketing research process consists of six steps [Malhotra, 2000]:

1) The first step in any marketing research is to figure out the problem. In determining it, the marketer must take into account the purpose of the study, the relevant background information, what information is needed and how it will be used in making a decision.

2) Development of an approach to solving the problem - this stage includes the formulation of the theoretical framework of the study, analytical models, search questions, hypotheses, as well as the identification of factors that may influence the study design.

3) A research plan is developed that details the progress of the procedures necessary to obtain the desired information. It is necessary in order to develop a plan for testing hypotheses, identify possible answers to search questions, and find out what information is needed to make a decision.

4) Data collection is carried out by field personnel who work either in the field, as in the case of face-to-face interviews, or from the office by telephone, mail, or more modern electronic means.

5) Data preparation includes editing, encoding, decoding and data validation. Each questionnaire or observation form is checked or edited and, if necessary, corrected. One-dimensional or multivariate methods are used for data analysis.

6) The course and results of marketing research should be presented in writing in the form of a report, which clearly identifies specific research questions, describes the research method and plan, data collection and analysis procedures, results and conclusions.

It should be noted that there are many ways to use the Internet for market research: learn about market research companies; find secondary data; select marketing research software; and collect data from focus groups, surveys, etc.

The Internet serves as another source of information for the firm's marketing information system. One of the biggest advantages of doing research on the Internet is that the data can be processed as it comes in. Data from the Internet does not require an additional input step because it has already been sent electronically from the respondent. The Internet is useful in marketing research management. The Internet is also used to disseminate market research results and reports, which can be posted there, making them available worldwide [Malhotra, 2000].

Marketing research is exploratory (to understand the essence of the problem) and final (an in-depth understanding of the problem identified by exploratory research). The final study, in turn, can be both descriptive and causal (obtaining evidence of the existence of causal relationships) [Malhotra, 2000].

Since I already have pre-formulated hypotheses, in my paper I will focus on descriptive research. A causal study is more complex due to the need for an experiment, so it is missing in the paper.

The main task of descriptive research is to describe something, usually market characteristics or functions. The basis for conducting a descriptive study is good awareness of the current problem situation.

Descriptive research is pre-planned and structured. It is usually based on large representative samples. The formal research plan defines the methods for selecting sources of information and for collecting data. The descriptive type of research requires precise wording of questions; who, what, when, where, why and what way (Six Ws).

Descriptive research is carried out using the following main methods:

· use of secondary information;

· surveys;

· panels;

· observational data, etc.

The panel in this study is not suitable, as it implies the periodic receipt of information from a predetermined sample. Observation is excluded due to the specifics of using mobile applications. Therefore, in this paper, I will focus on collecting secondary information and conducting a survey.