Fashion stores continue to discriminate against plus size women shopping in there stores. My objective is to develop a research and marketing plan to incorporate this particular target market into today’s biased society because plus size women want to look and feel phenomenal too. As a way to end size discrimination we want to create an environment that accepts those that are different in terms of size and let people know that “fat” is in, but not in this context; (PHAT) is back and we view plus size women as PHAT-PRETTY HOT AND TEMPTING. To improve the overall quality of life for illions of oversized Americans and other foreigners, weight must be added to the list of categories covered in anti discrimination laws. (NAAFA) Curvy Fashions is an urban clothing store for plus size women that will open in January 2010. This fashionable clothing store is designed for those women who are tired of old woman clothing and want to step into style and make a statement saying plus size women can look elegant and sophisticated, sassy and stylish at the same time. The clothing line includes dresses, skirts, shirts, suits, shorts, dress pants, jeans, capris, regular ants, and shoes. Curvy fashions will operate under a partnership through Ayrian Fletcher and her business partner Christy Goines. Our emphasis is not on size but fashion. The Curvy Fashions is committed to being a good citizen in the cities in which we do business. We are committed to conducting ourselves in an ethical demeanor, acting in accordance with our values and standards. Fashion is a competitive industry and our customers expect the best prices for value. We will utilize the newly launched Curvy Fashions catalog business to better serve our loyal and growing customer base, operate he business with a focus on cash flow production in order to maintain substantial financial elasticity and shift sales and profit mix to higher generating margin brands and channels. I will be using primary and secondary data sources in this marketing research. The procedures and devices used to obtain primary data differ depending on the sampling and measurement requirements. Data collection is an important part of the research plan and frequently represents the biggest cost of primary research. The learning objectives include: 1) Differentiate between qualitative and quantitative research. ) Describe the advantages and disadvantages of commonly used qualitative research approaches. 3) Describe the pros and cons of direct questioning, observation and in-market experiments. 4) Express how to construct an observational research project. 5) Discuss how to set up and conduct an in-market experiment. 6) Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using surveys to acquiring market information. 7) Explain the advantages and disadvantages of the three basic methods of direct questioning as well as combination methods (e. g. , Phone-mail, phone-disk, etc. . 8) Describe the uses and the advantages and disadvantages of diary panels, store audits, electronic data generators in marketing research. 9) Describe the necessary approaches and methods for merging data from different sources. Secondary data is information collected for purposes other than the completion of a research project. A variety of secondary information sources exist to the researcher gathering data on an industry, potential product applications and the market place. Secondary data is also used to expand initial insight into the research roblem. Secondary data is classified in terms of its source – either internal or external. Internal, or in-house data, is secondary information acquired within the organization where research is being carried out. External secondary data is obtained from outside sources. As in any organizational change initiative, proper planning is needed. The goal of planning customer-centric marketing strategies is to find win-win opportunities with customer and to recognize the best mutual opportunities for your customers and your company.

This requires the organization to see the issue(s) from the customers’ viewpoint and to strategically plan the organization’s resources around them. Our research approach will focus on three important parts. 1) The planning will focus on customer wants and not looking inwardly at company goals. 2) The focus on the honest feedback and suggestions through creating various channels of communications- listening to the customers, rather than forcing them to listen to us. 3) Combining our customers in every aspect of the business, from new product design to after-sales services and more.

Once the data has been collected, we will design a research instrument or question- naire. The information I will be looking for in the research will include: Looking for relevant data that focuses on the immediate market needs. Relying on subjective information only as support for more universal findings of objective research. Analyzing for stability; comparing the results of different methods of the data collection. Quantifying your outcome; look for common opinions that may be counted together.

I will formulate questions and research studies for the sample planning to describe and explain the manner of specific consumer activities and behaviors. Survey research is the method of gathering data from respondents thought to be representative of some population, using an instrument composed of closed structure or open-ended items (questions). This is perhaps the dominant form of data collection in the social sciences, providing for efficient collection of data over broad populations, In this research we will use mail surveys and telephone interviewing as our contact method.

Mail surveys are normally among the least expensive modes, are often best for sensitive items, and there is no interviewer bias. However, mail surveys are a bad choice for open-ended items or complex survey designs as they place a high burden on the respondent. Other liabilities contain lack of control over respondent interaction with unknown others while taking the survey and while being faster than face-to-face administration, mail surveys are slower than phone or web surveys. Mail surveys are often used for very small instruments.

Telephone interviewing has the advantage of speed of data collection while supporting longer instruments than mail surveys and supporting open-ended responses, though not as well as face-to-face interviewing. There is also moderate control over interviewer discrimination since interviewers follow predetermined protocols, and there is high control over respondent interaction with others during the interview. Telephone interviewing can be a good moderate-cost concession between mail and face-to-face survey research, and amenable to administration in person, by telephone, and over the Internet.

Some forms of survey research by telephone or the Internet may be completely automated. Critics of survey research methodology hold it to be a method which artificially forces respondents to formulate opinions, masking the difficulty of conflicting views and unconscious biases within each respondent, and critics note that in many arenas (e. g. , race relations) survey items poorly predict actual behavior. I will follow this outline for the basis of my research and use this research process approach for the duration of my plan.