Reference no: EM132273640
Assignment: Scenario: You have been hired by a company that publishes textbooks to explore students' perceptions, expectations, and usage of printed and online textbooks. Specifically, the publisher wants to understand students' perception of the different textbook formats, in addition to learning more about how students physically usetextbooks, how students use online resources that accompany textbooks, the duration students keep textbooks, and if they sell and buy used printed textbooks.
The publisher wants to determine whether it is important to continue offering textbooks in different formats and if so, in what form and with what support materials. This information should help the company meet the needs of both prospective and existing students as well as professors.
Your Task: As the marketing researcher is to prepare a survey questionnaire.
To prepare yourself, here are the general activities you will need to perform:
1. Summarize the management problem and the marketing research issues faced by the publisher. What information isneeded to make better decisions? Define the target market or population that has the information you need.
2. Conduct basic secondary data research to gain some background and perspective. What are the issues, challenges, and opportunities faced by publishers with respect to textbook publishing (consider using a framework to complete your analysis such as PESTEL or SWOT)? Cite your references.
3. State your research purpose, and then write at least three specific (SMART) research objectives.
4. Create a self-administered survey. This questionnaire should take no more than 10 minutes to complete and include at least five different question types and scaling techniques with at least two different NOIR elements. Provide the questionnaire in print-form in Appendix A (not online).
5. Furthermore, identify the research objective that each question is intended to answer by placing "(RO#)" at the end of the question, replacing the # sign with the actual number.
6. Pre-test the questionnaire with a small number (5) of respondents-include a brief summary of your findings from the pre-test process, and "fix" the survey, as necessary.
7. Within the methodology section of your report, make sure to define the population, sampling frame, and sample size that you will be using for this part of the project. Furthermore, provide a brief description of how you would recommend administering the questionnaire to students (i.e., how would you make them aware of it?)
To conclude the project, provide the following sections:
8. Discussion: In this section, describe the combined results of your analysis. What have you learned by conducting the interview and completing the pre-test questionnaire analysis?
9. Conclusion: Provide a conclusion and recommendation based on your initial analysis.
Deliverable: The deliverables for this assignment include:
• A single-page transmittal cover memo, including your name(s) and student number(s), addressed to your professor. Provide a 1-paragraph description of the research project.
• A write-up of your research project, including the following sections:
1. Introduction - situation analysis and definition of research problem and objectives.
2. Methodology - explanation of the research design process including a description of the sample, sampling frame and proposed data collection method. Also include a review of the pre-test and improvements that need to be made to the questionnaire as a result of the pre-test.
3. Discussion - a brief summary of your findings from your pre-test. Consider using a chart or graph to summarize your results.
4. Conclusion - a proposed recommendation based on the findings from the pre-test.
5. References and Appendix - Appendix should include the final version of the questionnaire. You could also include the version used for the pre-test if you needed to make significant changes.