Ka Vang MBA 712 - Pennignton Unit 5 Assignment 1.

. What type of exploratory research design (observation, projective interview, in-depth interview, focus group) would you suggest for each of the following situations and why?

A jewelry retailer wants to better understand why men buy jewelry for women and how they select what they buy. I would suggest a focus group study because the retailer is looking at a specific sampling type of gender and specific product. They also want to understand the reasons for the behavior and they cannot get this from observation, which would have been a plausible choice.

An owner of a McDonalds store is planning to build a playland and wants to know which play equipment is most interesting to children. I would choose observational because it is already specific to McDonalds playland. The location is not random and they just want to see what part of the playland is more popular. They dont need any analysis or in-depth info.

Victorias Secret wants to better understand womens body images. I would use projective interview because the info that I want to get could be bias since it is on a topic that is normally not of comfort level. By using projective I can use techniques such as word association or first response to get the best, most honest answer. I would get better data by using indirect techniques which would more so encourage participants to project their feelings on ambiguous situations.

The senior design engineer for Ford Motor Company wishes to identify meaningful design changes to be integrated into the 2013 Ford Focus. I would use in-depth interview because the trying to gather a very rich detailed set of information on a very specific model of vehicle. This is also something that can be rather difficult to interpret just by anyone so it would require a more skilled interviewer to get the results desired.

Apple wants to better understand how teenagers discover and choose popular music to download. I would choose focus group because Im looking at a population that has similarities and can interact to generate the ideas and answers Im seeking. Also with teenagers, I can use other ways to gather data such as internet for online focus groups.

Nike wants to better understand the customization and personalization to support the online product customization services provided by NikeID. I would in-depth interview. Nike wants to know the mechanics behind the customization and personalization tool to better support their customers who may use that service. To get this data, they would need to have detailed questions to the design team or technical team since it is not readily available nor would it be easily understood.

2.

The store manager of a local independent grocery store thought customers might stay in the store longer if slow, easy-to-listen-to music were played over the stores intercom system. After some thought, the manager considered whether he should hire a marketing researcher to design an experiment to test the influence of music tempo on shoppers behaviors. Answer the following questions: a. How would you operationalize the independent variable?

Independent variable would be the tone or temple of the music being played. b. What dependent variables do you think might be important in this experiment? The time customers spent in the store and how much they spent depending on the independent variable being used. For example, we could find that slow tempo versus fast tempo generates more or less revenue because customers remain in the store shorter or longer based on which music we played. c. Develop a hypothesis for each of your dependent variables. Time: Customers remain shopping in the store for a longer period of time when there is music playing with a slower tempo. Revenue: Customers spend more money in the store when there is music playing with a slower tempo. 3. What are the benefits and limitations of comparative scale measurements? Design a paired comparison scale that will allow you to determine brand preferences between Bud Light, Miller Lite, Coors Light, and Old Milwaukee Light beers. Comparitive scales require the tester to compare two or more products one on one directly and noncomparitive scales dont require any two or more products to be directly compared with one another, rather it just looks for analysis data from the tester independent of what they were comparing the product or service to. Select the brand of beer that you prefer in each line 1 through 6. Only select one brand per line. Line 1) a. Miller Light Line 2) a. Miller Light Line 3) a. Coors Light Line 4) a. Bud Light Line 5) a. Old Milwaukee Light Line 6) a. Bud Light 4. b. Coors Light b. Old Milwaukee Light b. Old Milwaukee Light b. Miller Light b. Bud Light b. Coors Light

AT&T is interested in capturing the evaluative judgments of its new wireless cell phone services. Determine and justify what service attributes should be used to capture the performance of its wireless cell phone service. Then design two scale measurements that would allow AT&T to accurately collect the data. Attributes: Would the customer purchase its service based on SPEED and CLARITY performances. Scales: Based on your usage of cellular service for this company how would you rate: Speed? Excellent (very fast) --------------------------------------------------------------- Poor (very slow) Clarity?

Excellent (very clear) -------------------------------------------------------------- Poor (Static Not Clear)

5.

Using the questions asked in evaluating any questionnaire design (see Exhibit 8.5) evaluate the Santa Fe Grill Restaurant questionnaire at the end of Chapter 8. Write a one-page assessment report. The questionnaire started out with questions on food and preference for lifestyle it seems. I thought the food questions were objective and would gather the correct data the restaurant is seeking however the questions about loud talking or loud places would help gather pertinent information for dining out. The Perception Measures section was thorough and it contained the right amount of questions that would be necessary to gain the average persons perception of a Mexican restaurant. The only criticism I have for this section is that combined perception of food quality to perception of restaurant atmosphere and customer service. It would be more beneficial to separate these out to ensure unambiguous answers. Relationship Measures section wanted to achieve whether the customer was satisfied with their experience. They ask the ultimate loyalty question of recommendation assuming that if the customer says yes they would recommend then they were satisfied. I think the first three questions achieve this desired data for analyzing but the last question did not belong in this section. How often they eat there is ambiguous. The selection factor section is well-done from my aspect. In addition to keeping the list to the key items that most restaurants would use to determine selection, they also ask for ranking order which would let them know the importance of each key item. The last section on classification would get what it wants to get in terms of demographics without the first two questions. Whether a person saw any advertisements in the last 60 days or how far they drove isnt relevant for demographic purposes that much. I can see how the distance might tell them where restaurants could be located and arent but then it should be separated so that they can get population demographics separate from geographic demographics.