Without customers, any business will fail so before setting up any firm we must be sure that there is sufficient demand on the market to keep the firm running. There are many ways of finding out about potential customers. One of these is to look at how many people there are living in the area of Stockbridge. This is useful because it would be convenient for the residents of that area to often have a quick snack or meal from a fast food restaurant.
By using the Census Report of 2003, I have found that approximately 6,954 people live in the area with the postcode beginning with EH4, which is the Stockbridge area. This number of residents gives a promising outlook on the number of local potential customers. Stockbridge is an area near to the main part of Edinburgh so many businessmen will work in the local area so would visit Stockbridge at lunch for a quick meal. I feel those people would be the main type of consumer which the product is aimed at.
This is because many of those young professionals want a fast lunch so that they can get back to their busy work and they also will want something healthy because young professionals are known to eat and exercise well to keep in shape. One lunchtime on a working day, I went out to Stockbridge and inspected the number of young people wearing a suit. The results were as expected as a lot of the people I saw were dressed in this way so we can assume they are young professionals.
The main target market will, therefore, be young professionals.
The ACORN (A Classification Of Residential Neighbourhoods) group performs vast amounts of research into different aspects of area, some of these include attitudes, housing, socio-economic profiles and media aspects. One of the pieces of data stated that the number of microwave purchases was low, this could mean either two things: people eat out often or people do not use the microwave to prepare meals. It also states that eating out is extremely popular in Stockbridge, particularly in the evenings, and all cuisines are popular except English.
These two pieces of data are very useful because they show that many people do not eat at home but go out to restaurants. A Subway branch has potential to be one of these restaurants that people go out to eat at. The number of households in the area with two or more cars is rated high by the ACORN profile. This could mean that incomes may be fairly high and couples live together. If there are two cars then each one will probably be for each person in the couple, so at least one person in the relationship will work because they need two cars because they will be doing two different things at the same time.
This will mean that there is at least one professional in each household and they will most likely be a young professional because 47. 6% of people in Stockbridge are 20-49 years of age. The socio-economic profile for the area is the population is well educated and there are nearly three times the amounts of professionals in Stockbridge than the national average. Young professionals are the target market for the Subway restaurant so this information is very promising in constructing a customer base.
Attitudes are very important in every day life. They can determine what we buy, where we go and what we do. ACORN tells that there is a 60% greater chance of someone being a vegetarian in Stockbridge than the national average. This may be the cause for the low meat consumption in the area. The most popular grocery products are ground coffee, dog food, mineral water, fresh fish and fresh fruit. Subway provides its customers with a range of fresh products and almost all sandwiches bought have salad and other vegetables in them.
It seems that people in Stockbridge enjoy fresh foods and do not eat much meat. Because of the customisability of the sandwiches, the customers can choose what they would like on their sandwich so if they do not want meat, it will not be added to their sandwich. Unfortunately, winter holidays are 73% more popular and long holidays are 2. 7 times more popular than the national average so sales may be expected to decrease in the winter and on holiday occasions.
Many of the young professionals will not travel though because they will be hard working and want to spend lots of time on their job so may not want to travel far away, such as abroad. Stockbridge is a very affluent area with 3. 5 times more people earning i?? 40,000 per annum than the national average. This will mean there is more professionals in the area than in other places. Professionals take their jobs very seriously and do not have long lunch breaks so fast service is very important along with the healthy lifestyle the majority of people now lead.
Leisure activities are very popular in the area as people are very active. According to ACORN, they do lots of sports so probably live by the attitude of a healthy body is a healthy mind. One part of having a healthy body is the food they eat, eating at Franco’s (an unhealthy restaurant in Stockbridge) would not be a common option for healthy eaters, instead they would probably prefer a healthy sandwich. The results of my survey indicated that most people questioned in my random sample were between the ages of 20 to 39 as shown in the below distribution graph.
These ages are also the type of age which most commonly care about their general health, so it is very promising when these are the sorts of people the target market for the sandwich restaurant would be. Most of the people in the survey turned out to live in the area. Each person who answered that they would visit the restaurant if one were to open in Stockbridge and also said they lived in the area may become regular customers due to the ease of being able to reach the restaurant and they also expressed an interest in visiting the store.
Repeat customers are vital to the success of a business and make up most of the total number of sales a business will receive. This market seems to have vast amounts of young professionals in it which are the main target market. The healthy choice Subway provides would well suit the healthy attitude that most of the people of Stockbridge seem to live on so therefore there is a fairly high demand for healthy fast-food but there is no supply. A niche has been found in the market.
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