| Marketing Research Methods – Assignment #1 | |

Submitted To: Özge Turut Student Id: 20270
Submitted By: Shazeb Naseem Dated: 26/02/2015

Case 8.1 – Mountain Bell Telephone Company

Q.1 - What may be the reasons for Industrial Surveys recommending in-depth individual interviews instead of focus groups in this context?
Answer: Industrial surveys recommended in-depth individual interviews over focus groups after comprehending the situation. Although both are used for qualitative purposes, which are the current requirements in the context, however In-depth interview is preferred as it provides detailed perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes on the research objectives that have already been specified by the organization. On the contrary focus groups are used more to initiate brain storming or if they company or organization needs to get diverse and broad range of opinions on a particular topic. Moreover in-depth interviews would allow the firm to interview professionals or people relevant to the particular field and gain more from their experience of using telecommunication products. This will in turn give Mountain Bell more depth and knowledge from first hand users to improve upon their existing practices. Furthermore since it is on one to one basis in-depth interviews can be scheduled according to the convenience of the industry professionals being interviewed.
Q.2 - What are the limitations of the proposed questionnaire?
Answer: The questionnaire has certain limitations that may cause the result to vary from the ideal responses. Firstly the interviews are conducted in only the Denver area hospitals which may limit the responses to a particular geographical region and would not hence incorporate the impact of location on the responses of interviews. Secondly the sample size is too small in my opinion to generalize for the whole health care industries. There were only 14 interviews planned and furthermore they were to be conducted with three different designation of people i.e the financial officer, the telecommunications manager or the hospital administrator. Each person in the respective designation may have a different response constructed due to the influence of its job characteristics at large and may be motivated by different objectives. Third limitation could be the time constraint the respondents have and the willingness to spend the amount of time required to give detail responses. Some respondents may give short responses just to get done with the task and this may not unveil the real reasons or fulfill the research objective.
Case 10-1: Project DATA: An Urban Transportation Study

Q1. - Evaluate the overall design with respect to possible sources of bias in the results and the reasons for the poor response rate.
Answer: The research design can be evaluated based on its effectiveness, shortcomings or the potential bias it may have been marred by. The design of the research was only effective in identifying and clarifying the research objective which is only the first step. Once the objective of the research was clear it was essential to choose the appropriate method of research. In this case mail-back survey was not the ideal method. This was indicated by the poor response rate by people who had no incentive to fill out the survey and mail it back to the surveyor. A more appropriate method could be on spot surveys in which surveyors could intercept people at public places and request participation from the general public through making them understand how it is contributing to the welfare of the community or society they are living in. Moreover response bias could also be as the survey required people to track their travel history. It is not necessary that they respondents carry the survey form everywhere they go or remember all the places they had visit thus sometimes the results would just be a figment of their imagination which may skew the results in an unusual manner.

Q2. - Specify how you would improve this mail-back survey.
Answer: In order to improve this mail-back survey we need to primarily increase the ease with which they respondents can fill this survey. For example the questions should be decreased and paraphrased in a way that the respondents have no confusion understanding what’s required of them. Since most of the commuters don’t have the time or effort they want to invest in surveys which aren’t of any monetary value to them we can incentivize the respondents by adding them to a lucky draw or writing a short cover letter that tells them how this survey will eventually benefit them in terms of better infrastructure facilities. Moreover people should be provided several tools like to do it online or maybe using the social networking sites that are increasingly popular and widely used.

Q3. - Suggest an alternative design and cite its advantages and shortcomings.
Answer: An alternative design would be a system of distributing and collecting pre-coded computer cards to determine the travel patterns of commuters. This would free the respondents from the hassle of manually tracking each location and filling up lengthy surveys. Although this may increase convenience for the respondents the major shortcoming is the huge amount of cost it would require to conduct this research on a larger sample. However this would fairly be more accurate than other manual techniques which are relying on people’s memory and their willingness to fill surveys.