More questionnaire commentary

Great effort folks!

Am finally down to building my own survey that will become the data collection tool for us.

Here are some examples of well-intended but imperfectly executed work. Can you ID whats off about these questions?

20. How much travel in terms of kms do you do?
Less than 10 kms 10-20 kms 21-30 kms Greater than 30 kms

21. How much do you travel on a Highway in a week?
Daily 1-3 times a week More than 3 times a week

22. How much travels do you within city in a week?
Daily 1-3 times a week More than 3 times a week

...

27. Are you satisfied from your vehicle?
Very Dissatisfied Not Satisfied Neutral Satisfied Very Satisfied

28. Are you satisfied by the service?
Very Dissatisfied Not Satisfied Neutral Satisfied Very Satisfied

Or take this one where the catch is slightly more subtle:

1. How much distance do you travel each day?
0-2 Km
2-5 Km
5-10 Km
10-20 Km
20-50 Km
>50 Km

I totally get an appreciate the thought process behind the question. Am only pointing out that the execution could be somewhat finer. The above, BTW, was the first question a respondent faced.

While brevity is a virtue, its shouldn't be at the expense of the main point itself. I would go more conversational on this question:
"How much distance. on the average, outside your home do you travel to go to work or for other purposes?" types.

Again, PLEEZE don't take me in the wrong sense on this one. Not saying my way or the highway, just pointing to newer ways to think from inside the respondent's shoes. Wouldn't want the respondent to become despondent now, would we?

4. Do you own a car/s?

Would phrase it as "How many cars do you own?" Easier and less ambiguous.


Now here's agreat question spoilt by minor sloppiness....

18. What is the BIGGEST negative impact of owning a car on your life?
Traffic - driving in heavy traffic is tough
Service - Owning a car means getting it serviced regularly
Costs - commuting by car is more expensive than public transport
Safety - i dislike driving because i am scared of having an accident
Time - commuting by car takes longer than commute by public transport
Parking space - finding parking space is very difficult
Security - if my car gets stolen i will lose a lot of money

Now the question that follows is an example of how to better do differential emphasis within question wording:

19. Which one ATTRIBUTE MOST influenced your decision your decision to buy that particular car? *
(Page Logic – answer determines which ‘in-depth’ section you go to : The logic here being that rather than asking each consumer indepth questions about parameters he may not have considered or be aware of, we are only trying to track awareness levels and granular data on the key parameters that consumers have mentioned as their MOST influencing factor)
Price
Power
Size
Fuel Economy
Looks
Brand Name/Manufacturer
Handling / Manoevrability
Reliability
Safety
Availability and terms of Finance

First off, its good that differential emphasis was thought of and deployed in the first place! I would have highlighted ONE and MOST in the question, not ATTRIBUTE.

Again, avoid phrasing like here:

40. Age? *

Better to speak full sentences here, doesn't take so much more and the respondent feels a tad respected, perhaps. I would go with "Pls write your age in years."

Lastly, the groups that wrote the questions I highlighted - pls don't take me in the wrong sense. I picked on you not because you did badly but because you did well otherwise.

Thoughts on the Project questionnaires

First off, great effort and a 'good show' to all teams.

Some of the things I am looking out for (not an exhaustive list):

1. whether a good (or any) introduction was written

2. whether consideration was paid to how long or hard any particular question was from the respondent's Point-of-View (POV). More cognitively taxing a question, higher the dropout rate. Typically the most complex matrix type questions would/could/should be broken up into a series of smaller questions - quicker, easier and more nonthreatening to answer even if the question count appears to go a notch higher.

3. whether consideration was paid to the client (i.e. xyz corp's) POV. Given their decision problem, marketing mix levers they could find of use such as advertising (how many did this tool influence? in what media?), promotions (were sales made at special discounted rates? what kind of promo schemes?), reference sources (word of mouth? any particular websites researched? any particular media referred to?), any possible segmentation bases, etc would have been useful to pay attn to.

This is of course in addition to the basic car attributes (must-have, nice-to-have, totally optional) people have expectations, preferences and aspirations over.

4. There are of course way too many attributes to fit into our kind of survey. Am looking out for whether consideration as paid to how to reduce that dimensionality, whether gateway questions and skip logic were used to reduce this, whether secondary research was used etc to prioritize and shorten this long list.

5. whether the questions and answer categories are well-phrased, well thought out, unambiguous and exhaustive. What kind of constructs were identified and targeted? what kind of scales were used? What kind of downstream analysis might have been kept in mind?

6. whether the questionnaire design and execution was as professional as could be - minimal typos, mismatches between question instructions and what the answer categories show, false claims ("takes 10 minutes only" whereas the survey actually took 40), good grammer, simple words and avoidance of excessive jargon, etc.

7. whether the skip logic as programmed into the websurvey actually works as claimed.

8. other miscell things as they come up. Points 2, 3 and 4 yield insights into the quality of questionnaire topics coverage. Points 5 and 6 are more about actual questionnaire execution.

of course, given the constraints we all have labored under, wouldn't expect perfection from anyone. In any case, we don't wanna discourage any team by being too strict in grading in the project phase I and taking away too many marks at this stage.

Chalo, just sharing some random thoughts here. Hope these helped. The applied, hands-on work that you will do in MKTR, in this project, is what will stay with you long after the course is over. So, pls continue to give it as much enthusiasm, left-brain, right-brain and heart as you seem to have in phase I!

Sudhir

Final Exam outline

Hi all,

Have received a few queries about more guidance on the final exam structure, this being a relatively 'free' weekend and all.

Well, haven't yet gotten down to framing the paper, that will happen in the last 1 week.

The exam will have a mix of questions (MCQ, quiz type questions) to short answer ones (likely based on interpretation of analysis results) to perhaps 1 lenghty essay type one based on a case/caselet.

Toyed with the idea of an open book exam but am likely to go with closed book. Closed book usually means easier questions, close-ended answers etc. Open book can be all over the place and would necessarily involve building test statistics and the like.

How much of the textbook to read? Well, smart-read relevant chapters - summary + all key definitions and distinctions in that chapter (given as a keyword list at chapter end).

Put particular emphasis on anything textbook related that has been mentioned in class. There are slides from the publisher that I show for a few seconds saying "from the textbook, look it up". Well, look those up and ensure you know thedefinitions and distinctions that could arise from there.

Again, the idea is not to trap janta into giving wrong answers to tricky questions over some minor detail, but to test understanding and thought-process.

Hope that helps.

Sudhir

End of week 3 - some thoughts

Hi all,

Week 3 is done. 2 more to go and Anni returns home. Bring it on!

We are descending slowly but surely into data analysis proper. Am slowly learning to get into the groove, so to say, of how to handle pure quant topics for a largely non-technical audience.

Usually, the section D class is the smoothest - am practised and ready, all the kinks have ironed out, the timing has been worked out, confusing subtopics have been better elucidated/ modified/ deleted etc etc. Lecture 6 was an exception, though. IMO, the class for section A was the best (or at least one I liked most) simply because it stuck to the original schedule of communicating Quant intuition - and had been well laid out a priori. In later sections, I tried to change course midway driven partly by content related feedback, focus on a real life survey response dataset etc and though I hope the students found the lecture useful, I myself didn't quite have much fun teaching it.

Have decided to go easy on the feedback thing. It seems to have outlived its purpose and was starting to get counterproductive, diversionary and confusing. Small, targeted, actionable suggestions are always welcome. Content related comments and feedback shall not be welcome anymore. For better or worse, I will take my own call on what the students would be better off covering in class, within the broad structure specified and bid upon in the course outline. End of story.

Now that we are getting into Quant anyway, let us though take a moment to look back. Hopefully, the efforts made in the first 3 weeks - the emphasis on careful, deliberate thinking-through of business problems that could involve MKTR solutions - has sunk in. End of the day, there is no substitute to calm, clear, composed thinking, period. As someone on the other side of the aisle, (in a manner of speaking), lemme assure you thoughtful work shows.

The AAs have started grading the questionnaires submitted. Am yet to get started on my portion. They tell me the students seem to have done a good job - lots of effort, thought and creativity. Am hajaar happy to hear that. Will soon see for myself, I guess. The project will be your best hands-on engagement, involvement and advertisement re MKTR. Give it your best shot!

On a more personal note:
Many of you folk remind me of what it was like during my own MBA days.... a crazy n hazy time in Joka, Calcutta. It was 10 yrs ago and I was young then. Hindsight is 20/20 and I can at least now pinpoint what I could have done better back then.

Its perhaps all too easy to get so caught up in the flow that the wood is missed for an unending series of trees. Sounds corny maybe, but my sincere advice to janta caught up in the non-ending adrenaline rush called 'surviving the MBA program' would be - Stop. Catch your breath. Breathe deeply. Step back. Look around....

Ciao and happy Halloween.

Worthwhile intvw

India's Financial Sector in Current Times, S Guhan Memorial Lecture by YV Reddy, Business Standard, Oct 26, 2009

One excerpt that should say it all:

First Question: Is macro economic management reasonably balanced?

The answer is obviously yes – by and large. We have no excessive current account surplus or deficit; no excessive dependence on exports or external demand; no excessive reliance on investment or consumption expenditure; and, no excessive leverage in most households or corporates or financial intermediaries.

We are, however, vulnerable to shocks on four fronts: Fuel; Food; Fiscal; and Finance – external. In regard to fiscal, the quality of management and subordination of monetary policy continue to be issues. On external sector, the quality of capital flows will continue to be an area of concern. In particular, quality of FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) also deserves a close look, in terms of extent to which FDIs are financing green field projects.

Bingo.

About some lec 5 topics

Here's from a student who'd made good points in class and actually took the trouble of organizinig his observations in written form.

Posting in full.

Dear Prof. Sudhir,

I am Prasad attending the tue, thu 8-10 classes of MKTR. In the last lecture, I had a few suggestions on Customer Visits. You had asked me to post these on the blog.

1) You had commented that customer visits are done in a B2B context largely. But in my experience, customer / consumer (more specifically in FMCG) visits are also done in a B2C context. Apart from all the reasons that you mentioned on slide 22, they are also done to understand the product usage pattern or method, which can aid greatly in new product / new concept development. In fact, some of the most difficult product designs are carried out after conducting a series of such consumer visits and learning their usage pattern in depth. Aditya Jalan also pointed out to the ethnographic studies that are done in this context, and I am a witness to such studies in my previous job, where one uses the learnings from the culture and history of a target population to design new product appearance etc. Ethnographic studies are jus’ emerging in India now, with an already wide presence in the European market.
2) Another comment that I learned out of personal experience is the substantial hurdle of Confirmation bias that one has to overcome while doing a consumer or customer visit. It is really hard, from a designer’s perspective. The reason being the sheer effort the designer puts in the process and attachment to the product he develops can blind him from observing the otherwise glaring realities of consumer perceptions of the new product. The way we used to overcome this bias was to be very non-judgmental while interacting with the consumer and also recording the whole interaction, as you mentioned, and later on replaying it in the presence of experts who are not directly involved in the project, which can point some realities. In fact, we have overcome some interesting consumer problems using this tool of consumer visits. Not only this, even FGD’s are used for observing the process.
3) Another point was that we also do the qualitative studies in large scale, especially when we are trying to understand the Habits and Attitudes of consumers while using our products. This is done typically to observe and measure, say for example, the entire washing process.

Kindly let me know if these comments make sense to you. Else, I can have a chat with you on them.

Thanks & regards,
Prasad.

Good!

Tks for sharing these thoughts, Durga Prasad.

More 11th hour websurvey Q&As

I got this from P:

Hi,
I have been trying to code in skip logic into our survey for some time now, but it just does not work. I have understood the concept and gone through your blog post, but the survey keeps jumping to the 2nd page whether I add a condition or not. So whenever I add more than 1 page and click preview, the survey shows me the 2nd page, no matter what the page logic is. Is this a known bug and has anyone complained about this?
As I see it, I have to insert the condition in the page logic of the 1st page if I want a conditional jump based on a question on that page. Let me know if my understanding is correct or am I going wrong somewhere?

I replied:

Am not clear what the question/problem is.

Were you able to successfully add a condition or not? Click on ‘page logic’ on the page from where you will skip out of. Then select ‘conditional jump’ and press the blue button titled ‘add condition’. Then add your condition. Give group numbers 1,2,3… etc. The group numbers won’t mean much unless we have a ‘select ALL that apply’ kinda question.

Nobody has complained about this so far, so I guess they are able to make it work.

Sudhir

To which he replies:

Hi,
I just talked to another student who was facing the same problem and I am giving the solution here in case anyone else encounters it. After you preview a survey once, it will keep that in the memory and from next time, the survey begins from the next page.

To remedy this, go to ‘Manage surveys’ and click the ‘Clear responses’ icon (Scissors icon) against the survey. I guess you have to keep doing this if you are testing the survey for skip logic etc. I apologize if this was mentioned in the blog or in any of the emails.

Tks!

Focus group youtubes

Hi all,

Pls see the following page on youtube. The scroll windown on the right gioves many more FGD options.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqCTZ5_Iwrc

The point is to get some idea of what FGDs are like.

Sudhir

Gaming concerns

Class,

Have received concerns regarding quiz taking and I agree with these concerns.

The unfortunate fact is that people (yup, even ISB grads) might be tempted to game the system if allowed an opportunity. And by allowing people (and quite a lot of them) take quizzes with other sections when they are late etc, maybe I unwittingly created such an opportunity.

So plz note, there will be no such exceptions made for quiz 2. None, period. The concerned students should be more concerned about a 5% course grade in the quiz than my worrying about it more than them, I would think. I have to get out of this mold of thinking like a grad student and should start thinking more like a faculty now.... at least in these matters.

Again, there will be no more flexibility in project deadlines like the one granted this time.

Also, quiz scores will be normalized by section because the quiz papers differ by section. What that means is that the highest score for section A will be the 100% mark for section A and so on.

More Mailbag stuff

Dear Sir

The free account has certain constraints for sure like:

1. If you mark questions as required, navigation using back and next is messy.
2. We cannot download reports or upload questions.
3. Logic can be designed for page, not individual questions.
4. Questions cannot be numbered, or % completion not shown.
5. Question types are very limited, for instance, we cannot pose constant-sum questions.
6. There is a bug in formatting question fonts/spacing once posted (try pasting from a word doc, cannot undo the style easily).


Hope these design-related, and other software-related issues will be considered in evaluation.
Abhijit

My response

SUre they will.
What does 'cannot upload questions' mean? Even with the pro version of zoomerang, we would copy paste questions and answer categories from the MSword questionnaire soft copy.

Even the pro versions provide skips to pages and not to questions. It is not really a limitation because a page can contain just 1 question.

Question numbering is tricky. Don't know about % completion, have myself never used it.

Of course since all groups are working under the same constraints, it will be the same for everybody.

When we (i.e. I and the Acad associates) do send you the final questionnaire websurvey for data collection from your respective networks, we wil provide you a link from the ISB professional account at surveymonkey.com, so a lot of the limitations will hopefully be mitigated.

Another email:

Hi Sir,

Can we have conditional jump when entering a page?

For example, I would like to skip say Q10 depending on response to Q3, without any changes in between.
How can I program that?
The questions have been arranged as per a logical order, and it does not make much sense to have the current Q10 after Q3.

Please advise.
S

My response:

Hi S,

You certainly can have conditional jumps when entering a page.

SO if you wanted to have people who picked a particular response option in Q3 to take a few additional questions, have them skip out to a new page where Q10 and 11 are presents and after Q11, skip out unconditionally (i.e. regardless of the response they choose) back to Q4. Other people from Q3 would proceed directly to Q4 (which would have to be in a new page because you are skipping to Q4 from Q11).

It sounds more complicated than it is. The logic is straightfwd when actually programming these things

Hope that helps

Sudhir.

Google form due to info security concerns

Important additional announcement:
Even if you have previously submitted via email, pls take a few seconds to also fill in the google form for your group. This will help keep our records up to date and avoid controversy later.

Should you, for any reason refuse to use the google form, then also, write in the form that you won't use it for submission and why you won't do so.

I have tested the google form myself. It is fairly secure. I don't expect janta to have major concerns on that front.

Tks

Sudhir

Class,

Have received concerns galore that since the google doc is open access, other groups can (and will) access websurveys and perhaps steal ideas.

Good point and should have thought about that.

But that’s the beauty of seeking feedback. One can't possibly think up all the scenarios in advance (Murphy's law and all that) but we come to know in sufficient time to make amends.

Have created a google form to which I alone shall have read access. That should alleviate security concerns, I think. Tks to Sarvagya Sharma for this suggestion.

Pls send in your responses on this one at this URL:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dC1TelFFUWNfWThGWVphRTRJSVNwMnc6MA

Hope that helps. If you are completely unable to access the form, detect any other problems with it etc, let me know. You can then email your answers to your respective Academic Associates with information on the following questions:

1. Total # Questions (including all possible SKIP paths) - add up all the questions that are there in the survey to give an idea of overall survey length.

2. Pls list any exploratory research efforts made prior to questionnaire design. Any secondary research on the web, (informal) interviews with people in the market for a car etc should be mentioned here.

3. Approx time in minutes it will take for a respondent to complete the longest string of questions possible.

Pls be candid in providing the additional info. Don't bother with what others might have written. The quality of the questionnaire and websurvey is all that will be graded.

Sudhir

More proj related mailbag stuff

Got this one jussnow:

Dear Professor,

The below website does not allow us to insert IF-THEN loops. The message is as below:

Question Visibility
NOTE: Question visibility can only be changed for Corporate Accounts and above

We are unsure as to what website we can use. Kindly help us with this. Thank you.

Regards,
N

My response:

Hi N,

Its not ‘question visibility’ that yields SKIP logic. There’s a blue button called ‘Page logic’. Click that. Then select ‘Conditional Jump’ and specify the option of the question you want to jump from and the page number to jump to.

Websurveys are organized along ‘pages’. A bunch of questions (or sometimes only 1) question can be placed on a ‘page’. SkIPS are made to pages.

Try it and lemme know if it works.

Sudhir

In fact this is what it looks like this: (images uploaded, click to visit and then enlarge)
test survey has 3 questions - 1 on each page. I use answers to Q1 to skip to either page 2 or 3

Click the 'Page Logic' blue button to get to the following page. There, select "Conditional Jump" and so on. See below picture.

screen camp of how the skip logic is coded

Hope that helped.

"Hello Sir,

I have a few doubts regarding the project.

1) In the project scope document, you have said that we need to find the current market shares and trends in shares? Should we do this via a the survey by asking the respondents on the car they own or is it that we take this directly from the secondary data like the Crisil Auto sector report?
2) In case we use the survey method for determining the current market shares, should we try to find the market shares for individual car brands like Maruti Alto, Hyundai Santro etc or should we do it for umbrella brands like Maruti, Hyundai etc?
3) Also the project scope document asks us to find the brand perceptions for the five top selling brands in India. Here also, should we try to find the market shares for individual car brands like Maruti Alto, Hyundai Santro etc or should we do it for umbrella brands like Maruti, Hyundai etc?

Thanks and regards,
S"

My response:

Hi S,

1. Use the secondary data to obtain current mkt shares.
2. Redundant. Just collect data on present and past cars – some sorta switching matrix we could then get, perhaps.
3. Car brand would have to be both the corporate marquee and the model name. So ‘Maruti Alto’ is a car brand, not merely Maruti.

Hope that clarifies.

Shall put this up on the blog for wider dissemination.

Sudhir

Monday Miscellaneous

Class,

1. Am hearing that esurveyspro is also not allowing SKIP logic programming in its free account. Found that hard to believe, so I signed up and built a dummy survey myself. Seems to work fine, actually. There are ads appearing on the header, which is the reason why the survey usage is free.

2. Got diverse vibes to the modeling primer bit today. Kindly know that the primer is there for a purpose and has a point to it. The plan is to get across an intuitive feel for model building using basic math tools and 'solving' the models using, again, basic tools. We were actually solving nonlinear models in class today, a big step up over the regular linear models that are mainstay in the field. I mean, if you can do nonlinear, you can always do linear, no?

Ran out of time in the morning section, as usual. Will send an excel sheet and instructions on the ppt to make up for it.

R-janta, let me know if you are able to execute the code sent.

3. I mean it when I say "If you didn't follow the technical aspects of the Modeling primer discussion, don't worry about it." Nothing grade related will be based on it. Period. You will however be expected to understand and assess analysis results yielded by the advanced Quant techniques.

4. Quiz went through smoothly. Was surprised at janta claiming it was hard. Didn't square with evidence wherein majority of both sections finished up before the allotted 15 minutes. So thats good, I guess.

5. Got an interesting suggestion today. Why not go over each quickfire without quick-firing at all? That is, instead of eliciting a timed response, just cover the answer choices 1 by 1 and invite discussion. Well, that's an interesting idea and certainly merits consideration. Shall try next time, perhaps.

Any more queries or comments, most welcome.

Google Doc for websurvey link submission

Class,

Pls ensure your group is in here and fil out a working websurvey link adjacent to it.

Google Doc for websurvey link submission

The edit access to this doc closes tuesday midnight. Don't wait till the last hour, though.

Also submit a word doc copy of your questionnaire at blackboard. Same deadline.

Sudhir

Added later:

Have requested additional info from you using the Google doc. 3 new fields have been added.

1. Total # Questions (including all possible SKIP paths) - add up all the questions that are there in the survey to give an idea of overall survey length.

2. Pls list any exploratory research efforts made prior to questionnaire design. Any secondary research on the web, (informal) interviews with people in the market for a car etc should be mentioned here.

3. Approx time in minutes it will take for a respondent to complete the longest string of questions possible.

Pls be candid in providing the additional info. Don't see what others have written and compete with that. The quality of the questionnaire and websurvey is all that will be graded.

Tks.

Sudhir

Websurvey programming issues - aaj ka Mailbag

Got these emails with queries which I thought bear wider dissemination:

Dear Professor,
We are making the entire survey on esurveypro.com with the if-then logic.
Do we need to submit a word doc for the questions as well? Explaining the same logic in the word doc might be a bit taxing.

Regards,
S

My response:

Hi S,
No. There is no need to 'explain' skip logic in the word doc.

After you program the survey, the software produces a URL (a hyperlink) which can then be sent to potential respondents. When a respondent clicks on the link, the survey opens on his/her browser. Send me and the acad associates the websurvey link with the skip logic programmed in, after you have finished programming and testing the websurvey.

Just send in the soft copy in MS word of the questionnaire also. Would be useful when we are putting together the final questionnaire document.

Hope that clarifies.

Sudhir

In fact this is what the esurveyspro tutorial page itself says about data collection options

There are three options for collecting responses:

1. A URL is provided that you can simply cut and paste into your own email.
2. Code for an HTML link is provided that you can embed in a web page.
3. You can have SurveyPro send and track survey email invitations for you.

Very peaceful and user-friendly tutorial section, IMO. Plz go through it (I would estimate <30 minutes for the exercise). Here is a list of best practices for websurvey design. Of course we have to fit it within our time constraints.

Another one from V.

Hi Sudhir,

I am having a lot of problems in doing the skip logic for the web survey on EsurveysPro. I was wondering if you have any tutorial on skip logic either for this site or any other website. Please do let me know.

Regards,
V

My response:

Hi V,
I just looked at the site and found this link for tutorials on how to create surveys. Somewhere there, the skip logic would be explained as well.

http://www.esurveyspro.com/Help.aspx

From what I recall of skip logic programming on the zoomerang.com software package, you can get a skip from a particular answer choice in Q10 (say) to a particular page (and not a particular question). Of course that [page can contain only 1 question, so its fine. But the survey design must typically incorporate questions divided along pages and skips are to pages, not particular questions. That was in zoomerang.com, not sure about how it works in esurveyspro, though.

Sudhir

Pls feel free to use the comments portion here to ask questions of me or the entire class, generate discussions, share tips and tricks, links etc.

Sudhir

Added later:

Alrite, am now looking through esurveyspro.com and a few things are noticeable straight off the bat.

Good set of common sense guidelines to question and answer framing can be found here.

In the features section, URL below,

http://www.esurveyspro.com/Features.aspx

it mentions that for free surveys also, "Powerful skip logic lets you jump to specified pages based on answers to prior questions" is provided. So we know the feature is provided.

Then I started looking around where in the tutorials section specifically this feature might have been explained. Turns out it is not.

Has anybody successfully programmed skip logic so far in the class? Plz email me ASAP. In any case would you be kind enough to share any resources/ help links for the same online? TIA.

Achcha, the websurvey submission deadline for the entire class shall be midnight Tuesday. By then these issues would have been resolved, hopefully.

SUdhir

Lecture 5 announcements

Class,

Am in the process of prepping Lecture 5.

Doesn't need mention that Lec 5 is the mid-point for the course. (Gosh! It is accelerated, eh?!)

Have taken the poll results to heart. There will no zabardasti ka Quant. Even if popular demand were 80% in favor of such an idea, I would have taken my own call on this one.

But, standing at mid-point, the time is nigh for Quant to make its presence felt again. The scales tip.

The first 15 minutes of lec 5 will be a Quiz (different papers for each section).

The next 45 min will be spent understanding Qualitative research as an MKTR tool.

The last 50 min will be spent delving into a "Modeling and Estimation Primer".
Very briefly, this will cover
(i) the very bare basics in elementary math model building,
(ii) elementary nonlinear estimation using Excel SOLVER (and R's optimize() function),
(iii) elementary linear algebra (inverting matrices in Excel and of course, in R) and finally
(iv) a bridge to multivariate analyses using the least squares method.

Just to reset expectations, this will be, as repeatedly mentioned, elementary. So if the engineers start to feel bored and all, too bad. (Just don't yawn strategically in the classroom only....)

Pls ensure you have Excel Analysis Toolpak and importantly, SOLVER installed and ready to go. Would be great to take a small SOLVER tutorial from any friend or neighbor if you don't know it already.

Shall be sending you datasets and Rcode for this mighty soon.

It shall soon be time to roll, fellow Quant-heads......

Sudhir

An interesting WSJ article

Indian Firms Shift Focus to the Poor

Some salient excerpts:

Indian companies, long dependent on hand-me-down technology from developed nations, are becoming cutting-edge innovators as they target one of the world's last untapped markets: the poor.

India's many engineers, whose best-known role is to help Western companies expand or cut costs, are now turning their attention to the purchasing potential of the nation's own 1.1-billion population.

The trend that surfaced when Tata Motors' tiny $2,200 car, the Nano, hit Indian roads in July, has resulted in a slew of new products for people with little money who aspire to a taste of a better life. Many products aren't just cheaper versions of well-established models available in the West but have taken design and manufacturing assumptions honed in the developed world and turned them on their heads.

And about time too, eh? If anybody, and I mean anybody, can make a profit selling in scale to the desi masses, they can succeed mighty well anywhere in the world. India has the right combustible mix of low cost, high quality, good brainpower and developing institutional as well as infrastructural support to pull this off. If anyone can, we can.

The Nano is an overused example. Am looking for more examples in profitably serving the bottom of the pyramid. And I found some in the article.... Yippie!

For the farmer who wants to save for the future, one Indian entrepreneur has developed what is, in effect, a $200 portable bank branch. For the village housewife, a wood-burning stove has been reinvented to make more heat and less smoke for $23. For the slum family struggling to get clean water, there is a $43 water-purification system. For the villager who wants to give his child a cold glass of milk, there is a tiny $70 refrigerator that can run on batteries. And for rural health clinics, whose patients can't spend more than $5 on a visit, there are heart monitors and baby warmers redesigned to cost 10% of what they do elsewhere.

Such inventions represent a fundamental shift in the global order of innovation. {Yup, and you can say that again.}Until recently, the West served rich consumers and then let its products and technology filter down to poorer countries. Now, with the developed world mired in a slump and the developing world still growing quickly, companies are focusing on how to innovate, and profit, by going straight to the bottom rung of the economic ladder.

They are taking advantage of cheap research and development and low-cost manufacturing to innovate for a market that's grown large enough and sophisticated enough to make it worthwhile.

"There was a large potential market that all the players have not been able to reach," says G. Sunderraman, a vice president at Mumbai's Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Co., which developed the inexpensive refrigerator dubbed the "Little Cool." "Now economic factors are making these areas more and more attractive."

Also note the fortuitous emergence of mobile phones and microcredit - both enabling business and consumption at the pyramid bottom in ways not possible 10 yrs ago. The next 10 yrs promise to be an exciting time. If only we can keep our internal divisions manageable, we have a lot to look forward to as a nation.

Change's in the air....anybody notice??

Sure enough, the biggies have started to smell competition, and perhaps opportunity....

As with all innovations, many of these new products will fail to make their mark. But with so many unlikely products aimed at overlooked consumers, the trend could bolster bottom lines over time, create new companies and lead to a new kind of multinational corporation that thrives outside of the developed world. Unilever NV and General Electric Co. are taking notice. GE's chairman, Jeffrey Immelt, on a recent tour of Asia, outlined how the global giant is restructuring to take advantage of what he calls "reverse innovation." While in India this month, he said the innovations in medical equipment here could eventually help bring down the cost of health care in the U.S.

As expected, the academics simply have to say something at this juncture.

"The biggest threat for U.S. multinationals is not existing competitors," says Vijay Govindarajan, professor at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business and chief innovation consultant to GE. "It is going to be emerging-market competitors."

And no, this is not some SKU size tinkering producing incremental sales only. O no, not that boring this time...

What is happening today is much different than the so-called "sachet revolution" of the 1980s when Unilever and other consumer-goods companies realized they could sell hundreds of millions of dollars more of their shampoo, detergent, toothpaste and snacks just by selling them in tiny packets.

This time, Indian engineers are reinventing products to cut costs and reach the billions of people world-wide who live on less than $2 a day.

The growing awareness of this new market has sparked start-ups as well as new business divisions in established Indian companies. Everyone from small local players -- looking to go national then global with their low-price inventions -- to the country's biggest conglomerate, the Tata Group, are in the race. They are trying to figure out what the poor want and how much they are willing to pay for it. Then the companies are going back to their research teams and crafting new products and unprecedented price points.

"These are not cheap knockoffs of Western products, they are in many cases very different products," says Arindam Bhattacharya the Delhi-based managing director of the Boston Consulting Group. "Western companies have not often explored these segments so they are untapped markets."

Gives a whole new twist to "the meek shall inherit the Earth" now, doesn't it?
Read it all!

Sudhir

Summary of Ice-cream case discussions

Class,

I realized the Ice-cream case much better serves our quest to understand about questionnaire design than the HRES case did, by the time I came to sections C and D. For the benefit of sections A and B, shall summarize the take-aways from the discussion in section D.

1. Open both the HRES case and the Ice cream survey (ICS) document. STudy the layout of the questionnaires. The ICS has psychographics and demographics placed last.

2. Look at Q1 in the ICS. "How can we ask anything on a past 6 month timeframe", you ask? Well, its a Yes/No question, so its ok. Answers would be fairly reliable and not noisy. Its calls like these I want you to make. Besides, Q1 serves as a gateway to skip 'No' answerers directly to psychographics.

3. Look at Q3 in ICS. It is an attempt to find the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT criterion. A direct, structured question that also has a open ended space given.

4. Look at Q4. A paired comparison that leads to a ranking. Why not go for ranking directly? Well, perhaps because ranking is cognitively taxing on respondents. The ICS designers figured its easy and more robust/reliable to get the info through a series of questions this way even though this way is longer. The same logic applies in Q11-14 ICS.

5. Open endeds are having full and free play. Sample Q9, 10, 15, 16 in ICS.

6. Look at Q17. See the way certain words are emphasized in the question. See how some answer categories lead to skips to other questions.

7. Look at Q22. A transparent attempt to see what else particular consumers buy to later on try to bundle together items perhaps, or do cross-selling.

8. Look at the psychographics questions in Q23. The construct seems to be the consumers' own "self-personality perception" kind of thing. Its important to recognize this is self-image data. A consumer exercising once in 3 days could think of himself/herself as a 'regular exerciser' whereas one exercising once every 2 days may not.

The point to obtaining self-image data is to tailor ad messages to target particular target profiles, perhaps.

9. Look through the demographic section. Why is info on kids under 18 asked for separately? Etc.

Now Look at the HRES questionnaire. The question types there will likely map onto the limited set of question and answer types that your survey software package allows you to do.

Shall stop here.

Hope the discussion summary helped.

Deliverable for Project phase I.

Class,

Pls visit the projects open thread for some pertinent questions. Those can be found in the comments section of the following post:

http://marketing-yogi.blogspot.com/2009/10/project-discussions-open-thread.html

Am re-posting my answer here though, for wider dissemination.

Janta,

Pls use www.esurveyspro.com software to create a websurvey. Program your questionnaire along with skip logic into it. The skips should *work*.

The professionalism, appearance and overall impression one gets whilst taking the survey is also a factor being considered.

Besides, an electronic draft on a word editor is the first step to getting a programmed websurvy out anyway. If you've gotten that far, you're over 80% done. But pls don't stop short at the last lap.

Its not a great big deal to program the survey into the software. Not doing so and emailing in the word draft with SKIP logic written down would be considered an incomplete submission. Besides all 6 folk are not required to sit together and do it. Once the draft is finalized, any 1 group member could finish the job.

Hope that clarifies.

Sudhir

P.S.
This is worthy of wider dissemination, IMO, as a separate blog post, perhaps.

Added later:

Another reason is that after the final questionnaire is finalized, I will program it with skip logic into the ISB account of surveymonkey.com.

I will then share the survey URL with you for your data collection.

IOW, Questionnaire Design is about the only stage wherein you actually do some/any websurvey programming in MKTR. So plz don't mind having to do so.

Tks for understanding.

Sudhir

Aaj ka Mailbag...

Some interesting email I got that perhaps bears wider dissemination:

Can you please confirm about the type of questions you will be asking in quiz?
I mean will all the Qs be MCQ or we can have short answer Qs also.

Thanks a lot for your support.

Regards,

My response:

Only MCQs and some almost closes-endeds like Fill-in-the-blanks etc. No verbose answers involving subjectivity anywhere, as far as our efforts go in quiz design.

Hope that clarifies.

Sudhir

This one is about the project scope direction. Good question, this one, IMO.

Dear Prof Voleti,

Could you kindly clarify on the query regarding the project?

“Has the player XYZ (auto manufacturer) already designed the hatchback intended for use and is looking for ways to market”
(or)
“IS XYZ planning the entire hatchback design only based on the inputs from the survey? (Is the survey intended to circulate among existing car users and based on their preferences, XYZ will go ahead and design the car”

Request you to kindly address this query at the earliest. Thanks much.

My response:

Good question.

I'll go with scenario 2.

XYZ corp is yet to finalize size (hatchback or bigger?) or design specs yet. They want to know the preferences and tradeoffs picture before they settle on a particular (hopefully optimal) design and production resources.

Hope that clarifies.

Sudhir

Another email/feedback, this time on case discussion handling:

Dear Sudhir,

During our group discussions for the project and otherwise the overwhelming feeling is that we are not spending sufficient time discussing the Case Studies in class. Since the subjectivity and ambiguity are major issues in marketing research, it would be really helpful if we could discuss the cases for at least 30 minutes in the class. Since we are constrained on the time aspect and have even less opportunity to explore the research out in the field, cases might be our next best resort to experience the field issues first hand.
A case in point is the Harvard Graduate Housing survey case. I found it really helpful in putting into perspective the questionnaire issues but it would have been exponentially more helpful had the class discussed it threadbare.
The class of 2010 has already gone through over 40 Harvard cases since April. Hence, we are pretty aligned with the case method of teaching and in general people are more enthusiastic reading through the cases than the textbooks.

It may be difficult to change, at this juncture, the way lectures have been designed but I still leave this as a request for you to consider.

Thanks and Regards,
Abc

My response:

Hi Abc,

How useful and/or relevant case studies can be varies with subject and context.

In MKTR, I took a call that datasets rather than cases would add much more to the targeted skill sets and owing to constraints we are operating under, they had to be traded off – one against the other. I chose to downplay cases. I came to this decision after the course pack had printed, so I couldn’t withdraw the cases per se.

Not sure how much (or if at all) you follow the informal course blog, but I have previously addressed some case related queries here:

http://marketing-yogi.blogspot.com/2009/10/preliminary-case-questions-on-coop-case.html

http://marketing-yogi.blogspot.com/2009/10/more-feedback.html

Again, you may or may not agree entirely with my reasoning, that’s up to you. I shall however keep your feedback in mind. It was only by the time I got to sections C and D (particularly, D) that I realized that the Ice cream ‘case’ (more like dataset, actually) had a much greater impact and relevance in bringing out questionnaire design issues than the Harvard grad student case.

Shall try to put up the salient points of that discussion on the blog.

Also, pls download and read the lecture slides putup after section D’s class is done. That contains not just the quickfires and my answers to them, but also updates, revisions and improvements that I keep making as the lecture progresses from one section to another.

Hope that helps.

Sudhir

A strom brews in the outside world

OT to Mktg but relevant to the general economy:

Reports filter in of employment travails from all over America. How difficult it is and is getting to be out there, especially in the mid-west, once the industrial heartland of the American nation, is hard to believe.

How Being The Slightest Bit Overqualified Can Cost You A Job

It will get worse, before it gets better, I fear. A protectionist impulse is possibly all set to sweep the world. Global trade may have already peaked, possibly. I would watch the coming months with some concern. We in India are shielded from the worst of the storm, perhaps. But in direct proportion to our involvement with global trade, our vulnerabilities will grow.

Some conjecture that the emerged economy consumer has possibly changed permanently (i.e. for a generation, at least). That luxury product, conspicuous consumption, large premiums for brand name and other such happy things have gone away with happier times. The savings rate has risen even in America. I would watch the data coming in on broad economic indicators a while more before arriving at any conclusion.

Mktg Serv Project

Class,

Got a few inquiries on whether the questionnaire being developed for the MKTR proj can also concurrently be used for the mktg services project.

My answer would be "no". The questionnaire you'll administer for data collection would not be your own. The one you submit for grading though, is yours and you are free to use it as you deem fit.

Sudhir

The Conjoint conundrum

Class,

Getting some vibes that there are 'many' folks who took up MKTR because it was offering implementation gyan on conjoint analysis.

Spoke just now with my colleague Prof. Manish Gangwar who will be teaching "New product development" in term 6 and who will be basing his entire course heavily on Conjoint and related methods. Conjoint is after all about New Prod Dev. Tried to talk him into taking a half-session on conjoint for MKTR but it didn't work out, partly because it doesn't make sense to do it now.

Then There's Gary Lilien who will be teaching Marketing Engineering in 1 of the later terms. He will use MEXL to demonstrate conjoint.

Then there's Arun Pereira's Term 8 course "Marketing Models" that also implements Conjoint.

Now I hear that Arun Pereira actually taught some Conjoint to janta for the ELPs. Also in Marketing II, Conjoint was again taught.

With all this going on, I'm not terribly keen on 'teaching' Conjoint implementation in MKTR.

More later.

Sudhir

Added later:
Alrite, seems Gary Lilien will be teaching Marketing Models in Term 8 (and not Marketing Engg, as I had originally assumed) and that will have heavy doses of conjoint to keep some of you happy.

Too little of Quant?

Janta,

Got this feedback from a casual conversation. "Too many definitions and too little Quant."

Let me reassure you, it won't be like this throughout. The last 2 weeks, after your SPSS licenses go live, will be quite, quite quantitative.

Also, am reminded of an old jungle saying "Be careful, what you wish for."

This course is about getting things done right. Quant skills are seductively easy to tap into and hype around. But lets be clear about what quant can do - it can only increase your efficiency, i.e. your ability to doing things better, faster etc.

The reason why I stress definitions and the qualitative/contextual complexity of problem formulation so much is the second, perhaps more important aspect of MKTR - effectiveness. Doing the right thing. Tougher call, IMO.

So yup, The Quant you will see in this course will not be about quant for its own sake but only as a prop, a means to doing the right thing. Baki sab secondary hai.

Queries and comments welcome.

Sudhir

Whence the rise of India?

Got asked whats this rise of India that I keep alluding to every now and then.

Well, think of it this way. Suppose you're an investor with a pot of money to invest. Now generalize yourself to the entire global investor class and the pool of investible capital.

Now there's competition for that pot of money, naturally.

There's one group of countries, erstwhile G7, rich nations which are the most vocal and confident looking. A deeper look shatters this myth though. This group is a low-growth, high-cost, high-debt bunch with a demographic deficit that worsens by the year. They are still relatively wealthy but their wealth may well have peaked and could now well be on the wane. They control the big media, the big PR and big research dollars, the big awards etc and by and large they ensure their POV and their interests are kept up foremost.

Pls note, all this is conjecture right now, lets say. The truth may soon be revealed, in the next few yrs perhaps, ki kaun kitne pani mein hain.

The rest of the world's countries are a diverse bunch. One group here is a bunch of basketcases - with poor socioeconomic indicators on almost all major parameters (subsaharan Africa, Rwanda etc). Another group here is so completely lawless and orderless that no investment is either feasible or desirable. Somalia and Pakistan come to mind. Then there's a third group of countries that have order but little by way of law. These are dictatorships or plutocracies where the law of the land does not rise enough to rule over the ruling elites. Any country where the government cannot be sued in theoretical or practical terms would fit this bill. Some miracle economies in Asia could fit this bill.

Then there's a small group of countries which are not western democracies but democracies and which have both the rule of law and the application of order enough to control anarchy/chaos and actually make investment possible and profitable. India and Brazil dominate this bracket, IMO. These are high-growth, low-cost, relatively young and vibrant economies who are on the rise. As time goes by, they should attract ever more of the global pool of investible capital as their competition finds reality catching up with them.

Well that's the story, in a nutshell. That's the reason why i am so hopeful about the fate, fortunes and future of our country.

Project related email

Bears dissemination, IMO.

For the project, are we only supposed to design the survey? Or do secondary research regarding the car market as well?

For example, how would the survey answer the “market share” point?
Thanx for the help.
Regards
xyz

My response:

Hi xyz,

The first phase of the project involves ‘only’ questionnaire design.

But pls note that in order to design a *good* survey, it would help to know what broad topics to include in the questionnaire, some idea of what major car attributes/features around which to structure questions (since space will be limited in the final form).

Ah, but at this stage you may say “How to know these things before running the survey when it is in fact the survey that is supposed to tell us these things, no?”.

Well, that’s the irony. We have to start with some idea. A good starting point would be to consult some knowledgeable folk in the car market to get some sense of what to include and what to exclude. In some sense this would be the very rough, quick exploratory phase preceding the actual questionnaire design.

Hope that helps.

Sudhir

Rural mktg and MKTR

Class,

Have received multiple inquiries about what MKTR tools would be good for desi rurals.

I suspect it just might have something to do with the Rural mktg course concurrently going on.

Let me state upfront that I am probably not the best person to ask this question of. My experience with, study of and consequently gyan about desi rurals is limited at best and woefully outdated (last time moi put desi rurals was in 2000 as a summer MBA intern for then Smith Kline Beecham).

So sorry, would rather not proclaim expertise where I have little to show.

Sudhir

Youtube Video on questionnaire design

Class,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3eg5n-g-Sk

Tks to Somnath for sending this in.

I haven't had a look at it yet. Pls see and let me know what you think.

Sudhir

Websurvey software

Class,

IT tells me that sharepoint software in the Atrium allows for surveys with the skip logic that we need. So that is certainly an option.

www.esurveyspro.com is likely a more user-friendly option.

Check it up and lemme know.

Sudhir

Project discussions: Open thread

Janta,

Pls feel free to use the comments space to ask questions, initiate discussions, share material with the class and otherwise make conversation on anything project related here.

Sudhir

Case discussion Questions for lecture 4

Class,

Lecture 4 will focus solely on survey research and questionnaire design. Have emailed the slides beforehand and see how that works.

We shall discuss the ‘Harvard graduate housing survey’ case towards the end of lecture 4. Pls read the case and come!

Following are a few general questions to structure discussion with:

1. What type of research design was adopted in the 2001 survey? Do you think this research design was appropriate? What research design would you recommend for the 2005 survey?

2. The case mentions the use of focus groups. Are focus groups the most appropriate form of qualitative research in this situation? Why or why not?

3. The 2001 survey was a web based survey. Was this the most appropriate method for administering the survey? What would you recommend and why?

The case has details of the actual questions used etc in the appendices. Pls peruse!

Sudhir

White slide backgrounds

Class,

Alrite, one constructive feedback I received is that the slide backgrounds be made white so that the lights can beturned on brighter without affecting readability.

Now there's what I would happily call a constructive suggestion that can be undertaken without much consternation. Thanks to the student who'd come up with this!

Shall send in slides of lecture 4 beforehand. By evening today, shall try to finish the slides by then. Lets see if it works.

Tks.

Sudhir

Lecture 3 pacing

Class,

Lecture 3 was a fast paced one. It combines almost 1.5 sessions worth of material (under the original schedule) into 1 session. So if you felt this lecture was a tad fast, you wouldn't be alone.

I got asked today about why I am trying to cover 'so much' in the compressed schedule. I think it is another aspect of the lecture-3-speed-will-continue syndrome. The agenda laid out in lecture 1 - the 6 major tools - that is all I intend to cover and that IMO is the bare basic of what an MBA class should take away from a MKTR course, especially when it is the only MKTR course they will do in the course of their business masters.

Also, if one scans the textbook for like 10-15 minutes before class (the summary, key definitions, key classifications) from the relevant textbook chapter before class, the class won't feel so fast paced and overwhelming, perhaps.

If too many people turnup for the R tutorial (unlikely I know, going by the poll results so far), we can have another identical session but that is a far cry at the moment.

Sudhir

More email feedback

I am in MKTR section C. I have a few requests to you.

Is it possible for you to give us handouts of the slides so that we can take notes at the relevant places in different slides? This works for all other subjects at ISB so far and helps us in keeping the course content organized.

Is it possible for you to follow your question slides with another set of similar slides but this time with the answer (your take on the answer of course) highlighted in bold or something? It would help us in revising the slide content. Your pace of teaching is fast and while I am still trying to internalize the concept underlying the question, I sometimes miss out what all did you tell were the answers to the question (answers in your opinion of course).

Our class is morning 8’o clock. Dim lights around the room have been making me drowsy in all the classes so far. You may think this is a problem with me but I have had 8’o clock classes in two core terms and didn’t feel specifically so in any of them. Further, in all the other subjects, we can perfectly see the projector screen even with full room lights on. It helps keep us alert.

Thanks,

Theek hai.

Am getting a lot of these 'putup slides beforehand' vibes. Shall try experimenting with it sometime soon.

Good point about highlighting my own answers. Shall do so in slides putup on blackboard after each lecture. Caveats apply - those are my opinionated answers to the questions asked and one is free to disagree and move on.

Dimlights help me see the screen. Naturally thought students would also be similarly benefited. Perhaps, moi was totally wrong then. Shall find out market-facts first and then take a call on this one. (Practise what you preach, eh?)

Sudhir

Final exam pattern

Got this email jussnow, thought it merited wider dissemination:

Dear Sir,

Would appreciate if you could provide us a heads up on the pattern of the final exam so that we can prepare appropriately from now, rather than 2 days prior to the exam! It would really help if you could let us know if we would be tested on definitions and the basic stuff etc. or something more complex!!!

Regards
xyz

My response:

Hi xyz,

Pls note that the quickfire questions in class are necessarily subjective and leave a lot to unspoken assumptions that might be made etc. Am rather careful pronouncing anything ‘wrong’ in the quickfires quite simply because there’s a large grey area there.

The quizzes and final exams won’t be like the quickfires. To avoid grading issues and disputes, have decided to stick to the straight and narrow (directly taken from the textbooks or slides) when it comes to graded quizzes and the exam.

The first quiz should give you a heads up on the pattern of close ended questions likely to landup in the final as well.

Hope that helped clarify matters.

Sudhir

More feedback

Got this email:

Dear Prof. Sudhir,

Thank you for today’s informative session. I had a small observation about the course and thought to share the same with you. You mention in the class quite often that class’s time is better spent while focusing on things not present in the book that sometime causes a disconnect & makes class appear very fast. I have an alternative suggestion.

I was hoping that if you can consider a more horizontal approach to spend time only on important aspects of MKTR & real world examples irrespective whether it’s in book or not, while presuming that class has skimmed through assigned reading may make the class further enriching experience.

This is just a thought. In case you find this observation not apt, I completely trust your judgment. Thank you!

Well, I appreciate the politeness and the kind words. Would quite like to take up real world Indian examples. Am not very familiar with many right now. All we find in the textbook and in the literature are US examples. And the last 1 year has changed the way business is done. So starkly that many of the US examples now seem to me to be out of whack. Way out.

For example, consider the examples featuring a Starbucks or a Citibank. Would they continue to be as relevant now that we know that Starbucks had expanded too recklessly and has since had to forcibly shut down so many stores all over the world? Or that Citibank USA has since fallen on such hard times that MKTR now seems the farthest thing on their minds?

This blog could be a great place to bring together examples that have an Indian hue. Press articles, columns etc if any out there dealing with MKTR wold be most welcome here.

As for focusing on the important, recall the basic skill sets we sought to develop via the course. Conceptual fundamentals lie at the heart of problem formulation and solution design. And this is exactly where I try to spend most time on. Sure, things don't always work as I plan them, but overall, I believe I am bringing some real value to the table in the classroom that is not textbook constrained.

Pls email me with any interesting examples or anecdotes you may have about MKTR. Shall disseminate if sufficiently relevant.

Again, appreciate the feedback.

Sudhir

Textbook confusion

Hi all,

The original prescribed MKTR textbook is no longer in print, am told. The new one (dual-authored) has very similar (almost identical, for our purposes) content. Even the chapter numbers are the same.

So, folks, pls feel free to buy the new book. Hope that helps.

Also, would help to read, or at least scan textbook contents from the relevant chapters before class. Lecture 3 will be about Measurement, Scaling and Sampling.

Sudhir

R tutorial venue

Class,

The R tutorial will be held at the AC8 LT starting approximately 8.15 pm, tomorrow. Am told there is some other marketing event going on till 8.30 pm. In that case, kindly join us in AC8 LT after that event is over.

Am happy to note that there seems to be a core R group forming within the class. Great, because R thrives on community. Pls use this blog and other venues to share tips, tricks and shortcuts.

Sudhir

ASA missive

Janta,

Have had visits from ASA staff.

Since I'd like to keep as much away from trouble as anybody else, let me state for the record:

Only those registered for the course have my permission to be inside the classroom during the lectures. Period. No exceptions.

Thank you.

Sudhir

R installer

Rahul Garg from section A(?) sent this message that could do with wider dissemination, IMO:

Rahul said...

Might be good if everyone comes with R pre-installed on their laptops. I have downloaded and pasted the installer at
\\isbdata\Student_Data_2010\General_Folder\Rahul

Tks Rahul.

OT and hilarious

A spoof circa 2006 on the then spate of phoren journos and ABCDs parachuting in to write about Yindia .... Strictly for laughs only. Ensoi.

How to write about India?

Youtube video tools for VLOOKUP() and PIVOT

Hi Class,

The following youtube links are on videos that show, step by step how to use the excel functions that we'd required for the exercise in lecture 2.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wHtcct7mCE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zHLnUCtfUk

I haven't checked them out completely myself. See if they are useful. If you find any more such links, let me know.

Tks to Acad Assoc Somnath for this initiative.

Sudhir

Help for R

Class,

Have received a few odd inquiries on help documentation for R.

My advice would be, simply google for "Getting started on R" or some such string.

This is the google result I got

Mathwiki is another good place to lookup:
R on mathwiki

In the tutorial, we will cover some basic ground such as input/output, basic arithmetic operators, control operators, loops, simple user-defined functions, installing packages and accessing help.

Let me know if there are any queries.

Sudhir

Another email exchange

....that perhaps could do with wider dissemination.

Dear professor

I just wanted to confirm if "Marketing research" by Naresh K. Malhotra is the book you follow for the class. I bought the book but wasn't sure if it resembles exactly what you teach in class.

My response:

Yes, what is mentioned in the syllabus document is the prescribed textbook. Its single-authored. There's another dual-authored one in the bookstore which could be different.

The chapter numbers should match the lecture topics, at a minimum.

There's a Marketing Research authored by NK Malhotra and some S Dash. That is not the textbook even though it seems quite similar to the prescribed textbook in terms of chapters etc.

Let me know if there are any questions etc.

Sudhir

An aside

This is a personal aside, quite OT to MKTR or Marketing.

Today, the 18th of Oct is a very special day for me. On this day, 2 yrs ago, my little girl, Annapurna Voleti, was born. It is easily one of the most, if not the most memorable day in my life.

Suddenly, in one swoop, I was no longer the center of my world. It is a profound, powerful experience. Nothing I'd heard, read or seen could have prepared me for it.

Generational turnover had happened. No longer were we (I and Archana) at the cutting edge in the family tree, the young 'uns in our families. Someone younger had just come along. Ma and Pa were now, officially granma and granpa. The concept of 'home' and 'family' had changed. Peacefully and permanently. Call it a conceptual preliminary of life changing proportions. All my memories of that day are as if imbued with a golden hue. Miraculous is nothing.

I vividly recall my phone conversation with Dad on that day, recall my own breathless excitement and his solemn voice on this phone saying "Congratulations, Son. May God bless you and YOUR family." I was stunned. "Whoa, wait a minute..." So it ain't OUR family anymore? Something had changed for sure. Even 3 yrs after our marriage, I (and Archu) would instinctively think of 'home' as the place where Mom and Dad lived. That changed after 18-oct-07. Now on, 'home' was wherever the walls echo with Anni's laughter. Mom's first words were "Congratulations nana. Intilo lakshmi ochindi." [Ghar mein Lakshmi ayi hai, translated from Telugu.]

I changed otherwise also. Became more risk averse than ever. Was never quite a speed junkie but I would quite often test the 'unofficial' speed limits on US freeways - typically 5-15 mph above the official speed limits of 65 mph. That stopped. Became more cautious in my finances, in my health choices and while crossing the road. My risks were now no longer about what would happen to me.

Also became more patient, more calm and dare I say it, more happy. It was a happiness quite beyond reason and rationality - not the 'victory adrenalin' variety but the more grounded, sure one that wouldn't disappear if I stopped to catch my breath. This was happiness despite sleeplessness on a grand scale (she'd wake up every few hours the first few months), uncertainty & nervousness everytime she cried and so on.

It was easy to be happy now, I guess, now that my time, my priorities, my work etc were no longer the overriding factor ordering my life. Became noticeably less hawkish in my geopolitical and policy views. Also developed renewed appreciation for what Ma and Pa had done for me when I was that little.

Anyway, Anni (and Archu) are right now at my in-laws' place in Sikkim, since late September. They'll return sometime mid-November, after term 5 teaching is done. The house feels empty now. And so silent. I prefer spending time at school, nowadays. And that's become an imperative too. My laptop crashed on Friday. And the school IT department's help wasn't exactly inspiring. Luckily I take weekly backups, so not much in data terms were lost.

Anyway, this post has gotten way too long even by my own verbose standards. Am practically rambling now and its a good time to stop. To all those in the class who are parents themselves, my good wishes and good will.

Meanwhile, another day dawns. More work to do.

Ciao and cheerios.

Sudhir

Erratum in a conceptual preliminary

Class,

Wasn't happy with the conceptual fundamental covered regarding the 'meaning of Solution' in Lecture 2. Specifically, was not comfortable entirely with the service provided by a hairdresser becoming == a solution under the current definition.

Thought long and hard about it, contacted some gyani folks back in Rochester and debated the issue and now I think I finally have it.

Currently, we have defined Solution as standing on 2 legs - customer identity and collaborative process. The third, missing leg is pricing variability.

Pricing always varies by solution.

Hence, a standard menu-style pricing scheme cannot be used for a solution, by definition. Hence, under the third rule, the services provided by the hairdresser and probably even the general medical practitioner would not really be ‘solutions’.

If you have any thoughts, comments, disagreements etc, let me know. Use the comments link below to generate discussion, make conversation and so on.

Sudhir

Preliminary Case questions on the Coop case

Hi all,

Some preliminary case questions on the Chicken Coop case:

1. Summarize in a paragraph the major visible symptoms contributing to the 'mess' part of messy reality.

2. What are the possible decision problems that could explain the symptom(s)?

3. State the research objective that best fits the facts in the case for each of the possible decision problems (make any assumptions as necessary).

4. What are the options the decision maker currently has on his menu?

5. Which one would you go with? Why?

The Coop is among the better cases around on MKTR. Should you come up with any new, refreshing or markedly 'different' case questions for this case, do pls lemme know. Use the comments link below. Pls be assured most if not all comments are read and will be addressed as appropriate.

Shall collect feedback if any, make a 'final copy' of case questions for discussion, and will email these case questions to class on Sunday.

Sudhir

P.S.
Got asked why cases are not being emphasized in MKTR much. Lemme first clarify that I've nothing against cases per se. In MKTR, I would say the 'dataset' is the case, whereas in subjects like, say, Strategy - the case is the dataset.
And lemme hurry to add that by 'dataset', I mean not just quant data but even qualitative 'data' like text/AV transcripts from interviews or focus groups. Check the 'Bank of America' case in the coursepack, for an illustration.

An email exchange

Thought it might bear a wider audience...

Hello Sir,



In the text book, it says that panels, scanners and audits are main means of data collection for syndicated services. What is meant by panels and audits and how is data collection done through them? Scanners, I suppose is the SKU scanner data from the stores. Is that right?



Thanks and regards,
xyz

Response:

Hi xyz,

A panel is longitudinal panel that ACNielsen recruits (20000 strong) who reportevery grocery purchase made to a machine installed at their homes. The machine sends the data to the ACN database.

Audits mean store audits. ACN folk sweep down on some store at random and physically audit stuff there to ensure their records are correct.

Yup, UPC scanners provide point of sale data directly to retailers who then resell the data to syndicated service providers.

rgds,
Sudhir

Case readings

Class,

The coop case will be discussed for about 10-15 minutes during lecture 3. Pls read the cases well.

Shall circulate a short list of discussion questions Sunday sometime.

The discussion needn't necessarily pertain to the discussion questions alone, they are more for structuring the case-discussion and general guidance.

Sudhir

R tutorial date change

Class,

Am told there is some pre-placement talk happening Monday evening that clashes with the proposed R tutorial.

Hence, have decided to have it on Tuesday 8 pm instead. Let me know if there is some issue with Tuesday, for most people.

Sudhir

Switching Matrix in the Longtudinal Panel example

Janta,

When discussing the switching matrix data that longitudinal panels can provide (textbook example), seems like I misspoke about the competitive effects of brands B and C on A. It seemed somewhat shaky in class and I later thought about it, it is now quite clear and quite simple, really.

Brand B is the bigger threat to brand A in the long run because A loses more customers (50) to B than gains from B (25). The opposite is true for brand C.

You can look this up later today after the lecture 2 slides are put up on blackboard. Alternatively lookup the same example in chapter 4 of the textbook.

Sudhir

'Choice' Model confusion

Hi Class,

Does seem like the term 'choice models' is generating confusion. Must take part of the blame for this state of affairs.

First off, what is an (economic)'model'?
In a nutshell (or 1 line) its a set of relations between any set of (economic) variables. All our models in marketing are essentially, economic models.

The term "Choice" models implies a model primarily about consumer choice. The way I envisage using marketing models based either on secondary or primary data, is much more general. So a simple linear relation (or linear model) between sales and (say) promotion, distribution and product attributes, based entirely on secondary sales data (like that in the beer dataset, for example) should find place in the course.

Hence, I propose to remove the term 'choice' in choice models and replace it with the term 'math'. This is just to clear up any potential for confusion. Thanks to the student who pointed this anomaly out.

Feedback welcome. The comments section below can be used for this purpose.

Sudhir

Project Scope Document (Preliminary and Tentative)

This is tentative, currently. Am looking to collect your thoughts and feedback first. Pls use the comments below to give feedback.

Project Scope Document

Context: A large foreign conglomerate (let's call it XYZ Corp) is contemplating an India foray, attracted by India's red hot passenger car market.
XYZ corp is currently engaged in a descriptive study of the structure and competition levels in the India market on the one hand and the preferences & habits of current & prospective Indian customers.

Scope: XYZ Corp has ruled out the high end luxury cars submarket (Rs 18 lakh and above, ex showroom) and is solely focussed on hatchbacks (including subcompacts), small sedans, mid-size sedans and large sedans (saloons).
They want to know (among other things, perhaps) about the habits and preferences of current and prospective customers. A few indicative examples are listed below (not necessarily in any order of importance):
(i) market characteristics such as current marketshares and trends in shares
(ii) regional preferences for particular vehicle types
(iii) car driving habits of current customers/car-owners [for example, average miles driven per week, in what driving conditions - city, rush hour city, highway, etc., primary use - daily commute, family use etc, average time between purchase of two cars, and so on]
(iv) expectations of current and prospective customers [e.g., total operating costs including fuel, servicing and spares; seating, engine and trunk capacity; parking ease, resale value, warranties, service levels from dealer and service station; price etc.]
(v) Attribute/feature preferences of current and prospective customers
(vi) feedback from current customers [e.g., level of satisfaction with current car, etc.]
(vii) brand perceptions of current and prospective customers for the top selling 5 brands in the market; whether there are gaps in the positioning that can be exploited by XYZ corp and so on.
(viii) demohgraphic and lifestyle information

Pls note, the above are indicative only. Groups are expected to come up with a better list of their own.

For car attributes etc, a good site to refer would be carazoo.com. Goto this site, type in any make and brand and explore the detailed listing of technical specifications and attributes available.

Requirement: Design a questionnaire for aweb-based survey that can be administered to people in the target segment. Pls leverage the strengths of a websurvey - notably the ability to imbed IF-THEN loops within the questionnaire. Hence for example, you could have a question that asks "Are you: (A) currently a car-owner (B) in the market to buy a car, (C) not looking to buy a car" and depending on whether the respondent checks (A), (B) or (C), irrelevant questions are skipped and only the relevant ones presented.

Pls make a websurvey.
First, brainstorm and come up with a questionnaire draft on a regular word editor. Make sure it has these IF-THEN loops readied. Refine the draft and ready it for submission. Questionnaire design will be covered in lecture 4. Get a heads up with reading the relevant textbook chapter on the same, and looking up readymade past questionnaires on the web. You DON"T have to reinvent the wheel! Cite sources if you took help. No outright PLAGIARISM please!
Second, register for a free account on surveymonkey.com. Use its tutorials etc to understand how to create your survey with the logical loops built in.
Third, fill it up and send the academic associate both (a) the link for the websurvey and (b) the word copy of the questionnaire. Pls remember to mention group name and members list in both the websurvey and the offline questionnaire.

The deadline for the questionnaire is 26-27 october (depending on when your section has its lecture).

Do NOT adminster the survey to anyone outside MKTR yet. I will provide you with a *final* version of a questionnaire which the entire class will then administer using the ISB account for surveymonkey. That will come later and will be detailed at an appropriate time.

Shall put this proj scope doc first up on the blog. Shall release the full, formal and final version of this document on blackboard after first collecting your preliminary comments/feedback and refining this document.

Hope that helps. Questions and comments welcome.

Sudhir.

After class participation stories.....

Might as well write this down before I forget etc.

So after lec 2 today, had a few interesting after class encounters.

One question I got was this: "xyz detergent says it works best with abc washing machine. Is that not a solution? What if consumers perceive it to be one? Who decides what is a solution or not?"

My response is that there are these distinctive characteristics of what a solution constitutes and its a straightfwd test to apply and see. If the characteristics are met, then it is a solution, else not. Somehow, I don't get the feeling the said gent was convinced.

Another rather interesting question I got was: "We're launching a medical device and need to collect data but its a competitive mkt and approaching doctors for a survey will surely tip-off competition. Can we go with a focus group or something like that done in a more controlled environment and use the results for a descriptive extrapolation onto the gen population?"

My response is yes. Often times, circumstances may rule out an MKTR tool that is otherwise appropriate for a given situation. What to do then? Its a call decision makers have to take. Conducting a "descriptive focus group", so to say, might just be better off than doing nothing at all and going to market on a wing and a prayer. If the focus group has specialists like doctors on it, then its more like an expert opinion survey than a regular rocus group, really.

Sudhir

More group confusion

Alrite, here's an email I received (suitably disguised for identities).

Dear Professor,

We had already formed a 6 member team (with all engineers and none having taken Marketing Services).
As advised in the blog, we have added one more member who’s not from engineering background and has also taken MKSV.

Just wanted to check whether that is OK.

Best Regards,
xyz

And here's my reply:

Hi xyz,

6 is the number that groups should go with. Pls do not add a 7th member yet.

The plan is that should folk get left over after group formation is done, I’ll randomly assign them as the 7th member to some group.

Hope that clarifies matters.

Sudhir

Using other software.

Hi all,

Some have asked if one could use other software such as MS Access instead of Excel to get to the same point.

Sure one can. Kindly feel free to use any software you are comfy with (as long as it is reliable) but make sure your methods are able to answer the sample questions raised. Often times, one may need to use a combination of software programs to get something done.

The tools are but means. We are interested in the ends here. Insights from the analysis are more important than the particular tools used.

If someone has used tools other than MS Excel and would like to show how it is done, pls writeup a half-page set of step wise instructions and let me know, shall post it here.

Keep this dataset safe. We'll return to it mighty soon. Lots of secondary data based advanced analysis (as opposed to the basic analysis we did in class) can be done. For example - some elementary choice models can be fitted to the data to answer questions like: "How much does sales change when promotion is changed by 1%? distribution changed by 1%? How much does my sales gets impacted when competition promotes 1% more in aggregate?" Etc.

We'll get there soon enough.

Take care and have a happy n' safe diwali

Sudhir

New google doc

Class,

Based on the new classlist, a new google doc has been created at this URL:

New google doc for group formation

A few new things:

1. Cross-sectional groups are now allowed.
2. At least 6 in each group. A few groups per section might go upto 7 perhaps.
3. When choosing group names, do not append section anymore because cross-sectional teams are now allowed.
4. Fillup group details including group name in the google spreadsheet AND email contact details to the Academic associates. Only after both are completed will your group be considered final.

Hope that helps clarify matters.

Sudhir

Excel Analysis Questions

Hi Class,

Based on feedback I received at the end of lecture 2 for section A, am sending the other sections beforehand the questions on which the excel analysis is based.

This is directly from the relevant slides:

Open the dataset given.

Study its structure and scan its contents.

Answer the following questions quickly and briefly.
1. Product level: Is the dataset at the brand level or the SKU level?
2. Time period aggregation: Is the data weekly, monthly or yearly?
3. Does the dataset allow one to distinguish between light and regular beer?
4 Does the dataset have price information available?
5. Does the dataset give any idea about how widely a product is distributed?
6. What is the distribution measure used?
7. Does the dataset give any idea about how widely a product is promoted?
8. What is the promotion metric used?
9. Does the dataset tell us what type of packaging is available?
10. Is brewery information available?
11. For what time periods is the dataset about?

The above were to understand the structure of the dataset. Some illumination on the contents, the terms used etc can be found below:

FDM stands for “Food, Drug and Mass” – the 3 main US retail formats.
‘ACV’ stands for ‘All Commodity Volume’.

Measure that weighs distribution or promotion of a product in any store with that store’s total revenue.

So 15% ACV distribution means the product was available to/exposed to 15% of the gross retail purchasing power in the US.

‘Feature’ means featured in the store magazine or print advertised locally.

‘Display’ means the product was put up on special display outside its regular place on the shop shelf.

The precise questions asked are:

Task (1) Find the top 5 brands by sales revenue for the entire time period? Draw a pie chart and a bar chart to represent this information.

One How-to procedure:
(i) Brand information is given on the ‘beer characteristics’ worksheet. Need to transfer it to the ‘US FDM’ worksheet.
(ii) Before doing anything, first create a leftmost ‘serial num’ column in both worksheets.
(iii) Now sort the PROD columns in both sheets.
(iv) Now use the VLOOKUP() function in excel and create a column called BRAND next to PROD in the ‘US FDM’ worksheet.
(v) Now switch on a PIVOT table, use FCT as page filter, and ensoi.

More questions:

Task (2) Plot marketshare for each of the top 5 brands for each of the years in the sample
Use a single line-chart.
Task (3) Can you obtain prices ? How about price per unit volume?
Do so for each of the top 5 brands for each year in the sample. Plot on a line-chart.
Task (4) Compute the Number of SKUs per brand for the top 5. How about revenue per SKU?
Task (5) Obtain info on which brands are most promoted. Which SKUs within the most promoted brands are most promoted?

And so on. What kind of questions can be answered by such secondary data analysis?

The point of doing this is that folk can work out a\beforehand perhaps what was covered in class, or go home from class and lookup the same dataset and work on the same exercise.

Excel skills are critical for everyday functioning in the business world aajkal. If any particular function is new or unfamiliar, ask around, lookup help and so on. But make sure end of the day you know you are good to go with any similar exercise.

Let me know if there are any questions or comments. Tks for all those who gave me this feedback.

Sudhir

Group formation

Hi all,

Am creating a google doc (spreadsheet) with Edit access to all of you to facilitate group formation. This is the first time I'm trying out google docs for project this large, so bear with any hiccups that may occur and notify me about them. TIA.

Google spreadsheet for group formation tracking

Am not sure if the final registration list is covered. If your registration is confirmed but name is not there in the spreadsheet, pls add your name and UID at the bottom of your section list.

Some points to keep in mind when forming groups -

1. Diversity is a strength.
Pls don't all engineers gang up in one group, etc. Having multiple perspectives will help when designing the questionnaire and in assuring a more diverse, representative quality and quantity to survey responses.

You'll be called upon to call upon your contacts outside the ISB for survey responses; its a good idea if your group's respondent catchment area, so to say, is diverse and more representative of the Indian middle and upper middle classes than just a bunch of respondents all from Infosys, for example.

2. Marketing Services elective synergy
Would be nice to have at least 1 person per group also taking the marketing Services elective. Spoke with Prof. V S Mahesh and there seem to be synergies wherein both courses could benefit.

3. Group formation deadline
Will close the spreadsheet to editing at midnight sunday. Anyone not having a group at that time will randomly be assigned to some group and that decision will be final.

In the interest of data privacy, pls do NOT share this spreadsheet link with anyone outside MKTR or ISB.

After midnight sunday, pls collect your finalized group composition and email the Academic associates in the manner Sreenath has prescribed.

4. Group names
Pls pick the name of any Indian small town (easy to spell and remember, preferably) as your group name. Append your section to the group name, e.g. Palampur_A.

5. Proj details coming
Project scope doc will come up soon. Over this weekend sometime I surmise.

More later.

Sudhir

Blackboard access issues

Updated:

ALrite, just heard from IT that blackboard access will be restored at midnight. Kindly download the dataset and bring to class.


Hi all,

Am getting email saying blackboard is not accessible for some reason.

Maybe its because registrations have not closed yet and chances are it could start working tomorrow before 8.

If it does not, pls bring your pen drives with you to class so that by repeating the copy-paste op a few times, the entire class can be set with the dataset within a few minutes.

Sudhir

R tutorial, Monday 8 pm tentatively

Class,

Am glad to note that some among you are seriously considering using R for this course and beyond.

Had a conversation today with Rahul Garg which got me thinking that a quick, simple 'get-started' tutorial on R for this group of interested folk would be a good idea. Have asked for a large room to be booked for Monday 8pm.

The hope is once janta take to some basics on R - input-output, basic math operators and get the logic of how R does its stuff, the rest should be peaceful only.

Will let you know the venue as soon as i hear about it.

Sudhir

About the lecture slides

Alright, one question coming up is about prior distribution of slide hard copies in the classroom.

I have no plan to do this for MKTR.

The lectures follow a plan and the plan relies on having janta apply their mind and take a stand on conceptual questions in the course of the lecture.

So there is this sequence in which concepts and questions occur, and prior distribution of slides effectively gives the answers away.

Sorry if this wasn't the answer you wanted to hear, but its not something I can do something about without disrupting the course plan.

Sudhir