Starbucks Case
Exploratory research is a tool that generates ideas in a new area. This will help identify whether other coffee shops deliver or if other restaurants deliver any coffee drinks. This will also help to identify if anyone has done or is doing it now. Learning from others experience will help tremendously.
Descriptive research is designed to answer who, what, when, where and how. This could be designed so that Starbucks asks their loyal customers through an online survey some critical questions. These questions should pertain to how often they would use Starbucks during the day and how much they would be willing to pay for it. These questionnaires should be also passed out to large areas of concentrated office buildings. I find that working people are always in need of some energy boost and the Starbucks coffee products would be perfect. With deliver or traveling trucks, Starbucks would have to purchase and invest on the adequate equipment to be able to deliver the variety of their products. The cost of the equipment will play a big rule to determine how and what they will deliver.
Explanatory research will evaluate the relationships between independent and dependent variables. It will be critical for Starbucks to evaluate where delivery service or traveling trucks will be on demand. Depending of their testing results, they can use a combination of the two on different areas. In the sporadically spread market, they can sue the delivery service. However, in large concentrated market such as office parks, they could have a traveling truck that makes the drinks on the spot and all the customers have to do is walk downstairs to get it. They can station their trucks for hours at a time in different places. Then they would follow demand in where they need to be.
Levens, M. (2012). Marketing: Defined, Explained, Applied (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.