Marketing Research Assignment: Discussion On Child/ Adolescent Obesity in Australia

Question

Task: Overview
This marketing research assignment requires you to explore, research and reflect on marketing research practice, whilst examining a chosen topic/concept. You are required to develop a strategy to educate an audience and help them understand the topic through either a written report or short video presentation.

Purpose: The purpose of this assessment is for you to engage with a contemporary issue facing the marketing research industry by conducting independent research, synthesising the findings and then presenting these in a report or video presentation format to a target audience of your junior colleagues or collaborators. The assessment simulates the role that you as a marketing professional, have in both your own lifelong learning as well as in educating and informing your colleagues on trends and challenges affecting the practice of marketing, specifically the practice of marketing research in this case. Understanding the impact of contemporary issues in the practice of marketing research is not only relevant to marketing research practitioners, but to all marketers as users of research data. The task: In this assessment you will need to conduct a literature review on the chosen topic/concept, synthesise your findings from a broad range of sources, and effectively communicate your findings in a format that will help your audience understand the topic and how it impacts the practice of marketing research for both the ‘doers’ (i.e., researchers) and users of research.

As you are enrolled in a postgraduate marketing course, it is expected you are in, or are aiming for, a senior/managerial role in marketing or a related industry, or are an entrepreneur with your own (future) business. As such, you will be expected to keep on top of trends and challenges affecting the practice of marketing. Lifelong professional learning is important, but so is the ability to be able to communicate with and educate more junior marketing and non-marketing colleagues/collaborators on how these topics affect your business and how you practice marketing. You are to produce a piece of educational material, either written or a video presentation. Please keep in mind that this is still an academic exercise and thus requires rigor in your analysis, and theory must be present in what you are communicating to your audience. Your submission should reflect your learning, inquiry, and scholarly work. Your exploration and reflection on the topic outlined, should lead to a very high-quality, comprehensive, well-formulated and structured output. It should clearly outline systematic research and personal learnings and demonstrates the application of relevant knowledge pertaining to marketing research.

Answer

Background OfMarketing Research Assignment
Marketing research is a practice that has been around for many years. Essentially marketing research is a process where information about a market and consumers is collected so that marketing decisions can be made based on the gathered data. The marketing research process starts with a hypothesis that needs to be validated through research. In recent years, there has been an increase in obesity among children in Australia which has led to the need for more marketing research on this topic as well as other related topics such as obesity prevention programs.

This paper will investigate how marketing research is conducted in Australia for obesity in children, the challenges faced during the process, and its effects on society.Marketing research can be presented as a process of defining entirely new vendor opportunities through a large number of behavioral surveys as well as competent customers. However, researchers may be successful in encountering your company's target market and getting appropriate reviews and comments from individual buyers. This allows companies to develop their market segments.

Marketing Research on Child/ Adolescent Obesity in Australia
Marketing research is a valuable aspect of marketing strategy and the study of obesity in children and its marketing research will help to understand the behaviour and decision making as well as market segmentation. It will also help with understanding the socio-economic, cultural, and environmental factors which may cause this problem. There is a continuous rise in the obesity rates of children in Australia. However, as per the view of Ayala-Marín et al. (2020), the prevalence of obesity in children is at 11% and 16% for girls and boys respectively. The prevalence of overweight and obese adults has also increased from 36% to 57%.By working with people from diverse cultural backgrounds and different language cultures, researchers can get an overview of the different cultures. This gives researchers enough information to come up with different regional concepts.

Obesity is a big issue not only because it can lead to so many other diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, or some cancers but also because it can lead to decreased quality of life due to the fatigue that results from carrying extra weight. Obesity is a major concern for Australian children. This article will provide insight into the marketing research conducted in Australia to help understand the issues and find an effective solution. The studies that have been done have shown that obesity levels are high and also increasing. As per the view of Brown et al. (2019), the Australian government has introduced new initiatives to tackle this problem, but it is not clear how effective these strategies will be and what else needs to be done to make a substantial change.

Children are increasingly getting obese in Australia which is why companies have started investing more in marketing research for this age group. Marketers need to understand what exactly children want and how they think before making any decisions for them. This will help marketers develop products that are best suited for this age group. As per the view of Fryar et al. (2018), obesity in children is a global issue with increasing prevalence across the world. The marketing research practice in Australia for obesity in children is an important issue for marketers, health professionals, and policymakers. The first step of obesity research is to identify all relevant stakeholders involved. Then, the researcher needs to select a data collection method, design a survey instrument, and administer it. In order to extract valuable information from the gathered data, it needs to be analyzed and interpreted by looking at different perspectives from various fields such as psychology, sociology, or anthropology.

The final step would be for the researcher to provide recommendations that would help develop effective strategies against childhood obesity. However, as per the view of Grossman et al. (2017), market research can be successful in finding out a perfect marketing strategy that will benefit a particular topic to encourage people on that and meet the limitations as soon as possible. This research will also be successful in targeting a particular set of opinions and feedback of various people in order to implement a good marketing strategy. As per the view of Lee and Yoon (2018), market research will be successful in minimizing the competitive risk in the market. However, it can be done with various people from various cultures. In the given topic the market research will be successful in shedding light on the issue of obesity of children in Australia. It will also reflect the opportunities and the challenges along with recommendations based on the challenges of meeting the issue as soon as possible.

Opportunities and Challenges
Opportunities
Conducting market research on obesity in children/adolescence in Australia has been successful in providing various opportunities for the researcher to complete the research successfully. As per the view of Malakellis et al. (2017), opportunities in market research will be helpful in implementing the strategies in order to get the highest information about the issue in Australia. A few of the opportunities while doing the research are as follows:

Promoting more physical activity games
While doing the market research on the issue of child and adolescent obesity the main opportunity that has been by the researcher, while doing the research is promoting more physical activities. As per the view of Mihrshahiet al. (2018), it has been seen that the lack of physical activities in today’s world has resulted in children and teenagers becoming lazier and ultimately suffering from obesity. Promoting physical activities will increase physical fitness and will help in fighting various health diseases. However, it will also help in providing a safe environmentand will provide assistance to working with people from different backgrounds.

Promoting more healthy eating habits
In order to complete the market research on the obesity issue in children and adolescents in Australia, an opportunity of promoting more healthy eating habits can be observed. As per the view of Mihrshahiet al. (2018), eating healthy will help in reducing several health diseases like heart attacks, type 2 diabetes. It will also help in maintaining the blood pressure levels and sugar levels that will help in cutting down on obesity. It will help in improving the mental health of children and adolescents and will be helpful in providing ample energy(Bagherniya et al. 2018).

Providing job opportunities to different people
It has been observed that supplying employment chances from various countries has resulted in a great deal of variation in the creation of work by working with CALD backgrounds. It is also observed that diversity in work creation has aided in the success of any firm. It will aid in the creation of a large number of jobs (Mihrshahiet al. 2018). However, this will be able to lessen poverty and promoting long-term economic growth in the social environment. It will help and encourage the society's disadvantaged by improving their confidence and motivating them to operate with the best job satisfaction.

Implementation of strategies to increase food nutritional value
During the time of conducting the market research on the issue of obesity among children and adolescents in Australia, an opportunity of implementing the strategies to increase food nutritional value has been seen. As per the view of Raziani and Raziani (2020), the implementation of strategies like more dietary fibre-infused food, counting on fatty calories will influence and improve unhealthy eating habits among children and teenagers. Good food with the high nutritional value of having a balanced proportion of vitamins, minerals will make sure that the people have healthy eating habits and a healthy lifestyle.

Challenges
The impact of having market research based on the topic of obesity in children and adolescents has been successful in meeting up with several challenges(Partridge and Redfern 2018). A few of them are as follows:

Difficulty in getting the information
It has been seen by the researcher while conducting the research that there have been many parents of several children who were not eager in sharing the physical fitness status of their child, as per the view of Sagar and Gupta (2018), it has also been that many parents have been considering their child fit when they were not and were suffering from the unknown disease of obesity. The negligence of the parents has been seen to have welcoming physical unhealthiness to their children.

Complexity of language and culture
The impact of researching the market using persons from CALD backgrounds may occasionally result in entangled linguistic and cultural complexity. Adopting various cultures or languages may be difficult for people from diverse civilizations. Furthermore, this will impede the seamless execution of any function. Language and culture have been shown to have an analogous relationship with each other (Sagar and Gupta, 2018). Both cultural heritage have been effective in co-evolving by constantly affecting one another. The complicated mixing of culture and traditions can sometimes make it difficult to explain the ideas and opinions of different individuals, resulting in work dissatisfaction and loss of output.

Process evaluation
Another challenge that the researcher has found while doing the research is the issue with process evaluation. The data collected in the process contained a few fake data that hindered the researcher to find accurate information. As per the view of St. George et al. (2020), the challenge of process evaluation has also been resulted due to the lack of proper planning and lack of readiness

Disagreement between people
As conducting market research there will be a need to contact and view with a lot of people for various opinions and feedbacks, a challenge of having disagreements between people has been faced by the researcher. As per the view of Steinbeck et al. (2018), disagreements have led to collecting insufficient or not so efficient form of data in order to complete the research successfully. It has also been observed to give rise to impartial judgments to the obese children and adolescents

Recommendations
There can be several recommendations that can be recommended to the researcher in order to complete the market research based on the issue in Australia successfully. A few of the recommendations are as follows:

convince parents to support
It can be recommended to the researcher to provide esteemed support and convince the parents to cooperate and provide the required information. It can be said that in this way the researcher will be able to get accurate information and also promote awareness among parents based on the fact of obesity in children and adolescents in Australia. This will also result in the proper health of children after the care from the parents.

Clear strategy
It can also be recommended to the researcher to follow to clear strategy in order to complete the research successfully. It can be beneficial to follow systematic steps that would cover all the aspects to get accurate information on the topic. It will help researchers to be more productive and more focused.

Avoiding assumptions
To conduct the market research successfully, it can be recommended to the researcher to avoid making assumptions. Making assumptions will be successful in reducing the potentiality of the entire study which might often lead to verbal conflicts and misunderstandings. However, avoiding making assumptions can be recommended to improve the quality of work and be successful in producing a satisfactory outcome.

Research design
Research design preferablydescriptive and exploratory can be helpful to complete the given market research.

Advantages
It can be very helpful for the researcher to complete market research where there will be a need for huge information to collect. Descriptive research design can be helpful because of its cheap nature.However, it can also be helpful n analyzing and evaluating data very quickly. In order to consider the idea of the exploratory research design, it can also be found helpful for market research because of its nature of flexibility. The main disadvantage of the descriptive research design can be in maintaining a good relationship among various participants. In order to consider the main disadvantage of the exploratory research design will be its ability to provide mainly biased and judgmental results

Data collection
The advantages and disadvantages of the two data collection methods are as follows:

Advantages
Quantitive data collection will be helpful in providing a large scope of information that will be helpful in completing market research on child obesity in Australia. However, the main advantage of the qualitative data collection can be considered that it will provide a piece of unbiased information regarding the issue of Australia.

Disadvantages
The main disadvantage of the quantitive data collection will be that it may sometimes provide a false focus number whereas the disadvantage of the qualitative research design can be that it may provide a rigid scope of information with a lot of time-consuming ideas.

Sampling technique
Advantages
The main advantages of the random sampling technique can be that it will help the market researcher to target and get information from a huge number of people whereas the min advantage of the stratified sampling technique can be that will give a detailed understanding of the research topic

Disadvantages
The main disadvantage of the random sampling technique can be that will be very expensive and time-consuming whereas the main disadvantage of the stratified sampling technique will is that it will hinder in reflecting various points in the research to complete it successfully.

Conclusion
This article discusses some of the limitations of marketing research as well as its strengths; we will examine some international methods for tackling childhood obesity and discuss how they could be used to help with this problem in Australia; finally, we will draw out some implications for future research on this topic. The study found that there was a lack of understanding on how to effectively tackle obesity in children. It has been found that the prevalence of marketing research studies in Australia is much lower when compared to other countries. This is because there are not many marketing research firms in the country. As a result, it can be difficult to find out accurate data on the current marketing research practices in the country.

References
Ayala-Marín, A.M., Iguacel, I., Miguel-Etayo, P.D. and Moreno, L.A., 2020. Consideration of social disadvantages for understanding and preventing obesity in children. Frontiers in Public Health, 8, p.423.
Bagherniya, M., Taghipour, A., Sharma, M., Sahebkar, A., Contento, I.R., Keshavarz, S.A., MostafaviDarani, F. and Safarian, M., 2018. Obesity intervention programs among adolescents using social cognitive theory: a systematic literature review. Health education research, 33(1), pp.26-39.
Brown, T., Moore, T.H., Hooper, L., Gao, Y., Zayegh, A., Ijaz, S., Elwenspoek, M., Foxen, S.C., Magee, L., O'Malley, C. and Waters, E., 2019. Interventions for preventing obesity in children. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (7). c. Investigating the predictors of overweight and obesity in children. International Journal of Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Science, 9(4), pp.262-280.
Fryar, C.D., Carroll, M.D. and Ogden, C.L., 2018. Prevalence of overweight, obesity, and severe obesity among children and adolescents aged 2–19 years: United States, 1963–1965 through 2015–2016.
Grossman, D.C., Bibbins-Domingo, K., Curry, S.J., Barry, M.J., Davidson, K.W., Doubeni, C.A., Epling, J.W., Kemper, A.R., Krist, A.H., Kurth, A.E. and Landefeld, C.S., 2017. Screening for obesity in children and adolescents: US Preventive Services Task Force recommendation statement. Jama, 317(23), pp.2417-2426.
Lee, E.Y. and Yoon, K.H., 2018. Epidemic obesity in children and adolescents: risk factors and prevention. Frontiers of medicine, 12(6), pp.658-666.
Malakellis, M., Hoare, E., Sanigorski, A., Crooks, N., Allender, S., Nichols, M., Swinburn, B., Chikwendu, C., Kelly, P.M., Petersen, S. and Millar, L., 2017. School?based systems change for obesity prevention in adolescents: outcomes of the Australian Capital Territory ‘It's Your Move!’. Australian and New Zealand journal of public health, 41(5), pp.490-496. Mihrshahi, S., Drayton, B.A., Bauman, A.E. and Hardy, L.L., 2018. Associations between childhood overweight, obesity, abdominal obesity and obesogenic behaviors and practices in Australian homes. BMC public health, 18(1), pp.1-10.. Mihrshahi, S., Gow, M.L. and Baur, L.A., 2018. Contemporary approaches to the prevention and management of paediatric obesity: an Australian focus. Marketing research assignmentMedical Journal of Australia, 209(6), pp.267-274 Partridge, S.R. and Redfern, J., 2018, September. Strategies to engage adolescents in digital health interventions for obesity prevention and management. In Healthcare (Vol. 6, No. 3, p. 70). Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute. Sagar, R. and Gupta, T., 2018. Psychological aspects of obesity in children and adolescents. The Indian Journal of Pediatrics, 85(7), pp.554-559.
St. George, S.M., Agosto, Y., Rojas, L.M., Soares, M., Bahamon, M., Prado, G. and Smith, J.D., 2020. A developmental cascade perspective of paediatric obesity: A systematic review of preventive interventions from infancy through late adolescence. Obesity Reviews, 21(2), p.e12939.
Steinbeck, K.S., Lister, N.B., Gow, M.L. and Baur, L.A., 2018. Treatment of adolescent obesity. Nature Reviews Endocrinology, 14(6), pp.331-344.