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Chapter 10: Marketing Research and Customer Satisfaction

Discussion Questions:

1. Are small business owners at a disadvantage if they lack the marketing research resources that large companies have? Why or why not?
2. Online marketing research seems to be the wave of the future. What drawbacks do you see associated with online research? What are the privacy issues?
3. Why do you think so many marketing research companies are consolidating – that is, merging with or acquiring one another? Is it solely to conduct global marketing research?

Activities:

1. In this activity, you will conduct a survey using either Zoomerang.com or SurveyMonkey.com. Divide into groups of four people. Each group should do the following:
* Choose a food-service establishment on or near your campus.
* Create a ten-question survey designed to gauge how satisfied customers are with the establishment's food and service.
* Decide how you will deliver the questionnaire you've created. Choose a sampling frame, or list of people from which you will draw your sample.
* Administer the survey. After you have collected the results, analyze them and write a research report with the sections outlined in the chapter.
* Contact the owner or manager of the establishment, and present him or her with the findings. If your research is helpful to the manager, who knows? It might earn you a free meal or at least some money-off coupons.
2. Would you like to own an all-electric car? Do you think there is a viable market for such a product? Team up into small groups of three or four people. As a team, use secondary data to research the viability of selling electric cars profitably. Utilize some of the sources mentioned in the chapter. Try to determine the population of electric-car buyers. Lastly, write a research report based on your findings. Each group should present its findings to the class. Do the findings differ from group to group? If so, why?