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