4.4 Market research questions for IB Business Management

Loxley Acoustics

[1] Loxley Acoustics (LA) is a private limited company in Sheffield, United Kingdom, founded in 2012 by two acoustic engineers, Owen Pryce and Hamid Qureshi. LA designs and assembles wired studio headphones. Its products have won several engineering awards, and Owen describes LA’s approach as “build the best headphone we can, then find the people who appreciate it”. LA spends 11 % of its revenue on research and development (R&D) but has never carried out any formal market research.

[2] For many years LA sold most of its output to recording studios and professional musicians. Since 2022, however, sales have been flat. Retailers report that younger buyers want wireless headphones with noise cancelling, long battery life and a choice of colours. LA’s headphones are available only in black and only with a cable.

[3] In 2025 the board appointed Lerato Mokoena, previously a marketing director at a consumer electronics firm, as chief executive officer (CEO). Lerato wants LA to become market oriented. She has proposed spending £180 000 on a programme of primary market research, including surveys of 2 000 headphone buyers and focus groups in five cities, before LA designs its first wireless range.

[4] Owen and Hamid are worried. They argue that customers “do not know what they want until they hear it”, that the research would take six months and that £180 000 is almost half of LA’s annual profit. Hamid suggests that LA could instead use secondary data from market analyses and online product reviews, which would cost less than £10 000.

Marumitsu Foods

Marumitsu Foods (Marumitsu) is a Japanese company that makes rice crackers and seaweed snacks, sold mainly in convenience stores in Japan. Its best-selling product, “Nori Crunch”, contains fish extract and is sold in 120 g packs priced at the equivalent of INR 290.

Marumitsu plans to launch in India in 2027. Market research carried out in Mumbai and Bengaluru found strong interest in Japanese food among young urban consumers, but also concerns about price and ingredients.

Table 1: Results of Marumitsu’s survey of 1 200 consumers aged 18–35 in Mumbai and Bengaluru

Sabbura Learning (SBL)

Read the resources and answer the questions that follow.

Sabbura Learning (SBL) is a social enterprise in Minya, Upper Egypt, founded in 2020 by Dina Mahmoud, a former chemistry teacher. Sabbura means blackboard in Egyptian Arabic. Egyptian families spend large sums on private tutoring to help their children pass the final secondary school examination, which decides university places. In rural Upper Egypt many families cannot afford tutors, and girls are often the first to miss out. SBL offers girls aged 15–18 a low-cost monthly subscription to video lessons and practice tests on a phone app, plus a weekly study circle in their village led by a female university student who acts as a mentor.

Image: a group of teenage girls sitting on a carpet in a village community room, phones and exercise books in front of them, listening to a young woman mentor writing an equation on a small blackboard. App logo on a phone: “Sabbura – your future, your village”.

Resource 1 – News article from *Nile Business Weekly*

The billion-pound tutoring habit

Egyptian households spend billions of Egyptian pounds a year on private lessons. In big cities, online learning apps compete fiercely for middle-class families. In villages in Upper Egypt, the choice is often an expensive tutor or nothing. Girls’ enrolment in the final years of secondary school there is well below the national average.

Table 1: Students in the final three years of secondary school

EGP = Egyptian pounds. SBL has 18 000 subscribers, all girls in rural Upper Egypt.

Resource 2 – Social media posts from Mariam, an SBL student in a village near Minya

My father said tutors were for my brothers. With SBL I study chemistry on my phone at night and on Thursdays Aya (our mentor) explains what I didn’t understand. I got 94 % in my mock exam! I want to study pharmacy. [1/2]

Three girls in my circle stopped this year because their families could not pay the EGP 150 any more. We miss them. [2/2]

Resource 3 – Internal email from Dina Mahmoud to SBL’s board

From: Dina Mahmoud, Founder and CEO

To: Board members

Subject: Which students should we serve next?

We are only just covering our costs: each subscriber pays EGP 150 a month for ten months and costs us about EGP 135 a month to serve (mentors, data, content and the app). Three proposals:

1. Launch “Sabbura Plus” for students in Cairo and Giza at EGP 450 a month, with live online classes instead of village circles. It would cost about EGP 200 a month per student to serve and need marketing of about EGP 12 million a year. A target of 10 000 students seems realistic. Profit could be used to cut the price for rural girls to EGP 100.

2. Open SBL to boys in rural Upper Egypt at the same price and with separate study circles.

3. Sell bulk licences to NGOs and governorates at EGP 60 per student per month, without village circles.

Our identity is “the tutor for girls who have none”. I do not want to become just another app.

CONFIDENTIAL: this email and any attachments are intended only for the named recipients.

Resource 4 – Competitors in tutoring for secondary students

Resource 5 – Survey of SBL subscribers and their parents (650 replies)

Resource 6 – Interview with Aya, an SBL mentor and pharmacy student

“The circles work because the girls see someone like them who made it to university. Parents let their daughters come because the mentor is a woman they know. If we add boys, we must keep separate circles or many fathers will say no. And if SBL becomes famous as a Cairo app, I worry the village families will think it is not for them any more.”

Port Antonio Juice Co. (PAJ) is a small Jamaican business that bottles fresh fruit juices. Until 2024 it bottled whatever fruit its farmers delivered. In 2025 the owner, Marcia Bennett, paid for a survey of 400 shoppers in Kingston and Montego Bay. It found that shoppers wanted less sugar, smaller bottles for lunchboxes and juices that combine Jamaican fruits such as sorrel and soursop. The survey cost JMD 1.2 million, about a quarter of PAJ’s annual profit.

Chettinad Masala Co. (CMC)

Chettinad Masala Co. (CMC) is a private limited company in Karaikudi, Tamil Nadu, India, that blends and packs spice mixes. It has sold traditional masalas in local grocery stores for 30 years. In 2025 it developed a new product: ready-to-cook spice pastes in 100 g pouches, aimed at busy working households in cities.

Because the product is new, CMC has no past sales data for it. The marketing manager, Meenakshi Raman, ran a three-month test market in Madurai from July to September 2025. The pouches were sold in supermarkets and through two grocery delivery apps, supported by a launch discount of 20 % and in-store tastings. Madurai contains about 2 % of the target households in the five southern states where CMC plans to launch.

During the test, 36 000 pouches were sold. Meenakshi proposes to forecast regional sales by scaling up the test result. The production manager warns that meeting her forecast would require a new filling machine costing ₹18 million, and that two national brands launched similar pastes in Bengaluru and Chennai in October 2025.

Bluefields Lionfish Collective (BLC)

Read the resources and answer the questions that follow.

Bluefields Lionfish Collective (BLC) is a fishers’ co-operative in Bluefields Bay, Westmoreland, Jamaica, set up in 2019 with help from a marine conservation NGO. Lionfish are not native to the Caribbean: they have no natural predators there and eat huge numbers of young reef fish, so catching them protects the reef. BLC’s 60 members, mostly small-boat fishers, catch lionfish with spears, and eight women members are trained to remove the fish’s venomous spines safely and fillet it. The meat is white, mild and safe to eat. BLC’s mission is “eat them to beat them – and keep our fishers fishing”.

Image: a striped red-and-white lionfish with long, feathery spines swimming over a coral reef; beside it, a plate of golden lionfish fillets with festival dumplings and a slice of lime. Caption: “Bluefields Lionfish – eat them to beat them”.

Resource 1 – News article from the *Westmoreland Coastal News*

Fishers turn invader into income

Catches of reef fish such as snapper and parrotfish have fallen sharply around Jamaica, and many fishers have left the sea. Lionfish offer an alternative – but many Jamaicans have never eaten one and fear the venomous spines. “People hear ‘poison fish’ and walk away,” says BLC chair Delroy Campbell. Last year BLC caught 18 000 lb of lionfish but sold only 11 000 lb.

Table 1: Average catch per fishing trip in Bluefields Bay (lb)

Resource 2 – Social media posts from two people who tried lionfish

Kayla, a tourist from Canada: Had lionfish tacos at a beach bar in Negril – delicious AND good for the reef! Why isn’t this on every menu in Jamaica? [1/2]

Andre, a food blogger in Kingston: Tried BLC’s lionfish escovitch at a market. Tastes like snapper, honestly. But my auntie wouldn’t touch it – she thinks you can get poisoned from the meat. Somebody needs to educate people! [2/2]

Resource 3 – Internal email from Delroy Campbell to BLC members’ committee

From: Delroy Campbell, Chair

To: Members’ committee

Subject: Before we spend JMD 4.2 million

We want to build a freezer and filleting room (JMD 4.2 million), mainly to supply hotels and restaurants with frozen fillets. But we do not really know who will buy. So far our “research” is a tasting stall at Savanna-la-Mar market (results attached) and talks with six hotel buyers.

A market research company in Montego Bay has quoted JMD 850 000 for a survey of 400 consumers chosen at random across four parishes, plus focus groups. Alternatively, our members could carry out a quota sample survey ourselves for about JMD 120 000.

Some members also want to look at exporting frozen fillets to Florida, but that needs US food-safety approval.

CONFIDENTIAL: this email and any attachments are intended only for the named recipients.

Resource 4 – Results of BLC’s tasting stall at Savanna-la-Mar market (60 people who stopped at the stall)

Resource 5 – Notes from interviews with six hotel and restaurant buyers

• Two large hotels would buy about 1 500 lb of fillets a year each at about JMD 4 000 per lb, if supply is reliable and fillets are frozen and vacuum-packed.

• Guests like the “save the reef” story; one hotel would print it on its menu.

• Three buyers worried about safety and consistent sizes; one said lionfish is “too much trouble”.

Resource 6 – Selected figures