Guest Lecture & other Admin Issues

Update: Homework stress
Got some informal feedback today saying the every-class homeworks thing is making MKTR out to be a rather heavy workload and stressful class than expected.

First off, let me clarify, no intent to stress anybody out too much was intended. Shall tone down homeworks in the quant phase to some practice Questions based on methods we cover in class.

Update: For all groups
Each group should nominate 1 person who can receive the 30 day trial license of SPSS. Thus, even after the 15 day license expires for the class, each group will have one person who can continue analysis work of Phase III.
Some considerations each group may want to take into account:
(i) Ensure nominated person is comfortable with the idea of data analysis in general
(ii) does not have too many end-term cluttered up so that can focus on analysis work in the week before Term 6 begins (Note: Phase III submission is the day before Term 6 begins)
(iii) is well-klnown and easily accessible in the group.

Pls write your group's nominee to receive the 30 day license in the same excel sheet we have made for the guest lecture. Link is below in this post itself. Also, email the nominee's name to the AAs for the record. The IT dept will send separate instructions ofr these chosen 30 people.

Thanks. Regards.
Sudhir

Hi MKTR class,

Ms Usha Kavan of ORG-MARG has kindly agreed to give students of MKTR @ ISB an overview of how things actually work in practice in the Indian Marketing research industry.

The guest lecture will be held in AC2 LT from 3.10 pm to 4.45 pm on 3-Nov, (this Thursday).

Much as this is a good opportunity to learn the tricks and terms of the MKTR trade from a seasoned practitioner, space is limited. So I'm asking project group to nominate two people who will attend the guest lecture. In case there are more people willing to attend, you can trade places with groups that are not able to rustle up even 2 nominees. I have made a google spreadhseet to help you keep track of who is nominated by whom:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AiXdfyuoSD-ZdGQ4RXY3OXBGakVsV3p2Vm9pTTl4ZXc

Each group should have 2 people attending on its behalf. Attendance will be taken by group and form part of the Phase I project evaluation grade.

Other MKTR admin issues:
1. Pls bring your laptops to class, session 6 onwards. Pls ensure you have downloaded and kept ready any datasets etc that are uploaded on LMS for each session.

2. If you're interested in learning R, download and install R on your machines. R is entirely optional for the course. Feel free to ignore it if its not of interest to you. R can be found at:
http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/

3. SPSS should be installed and ready on or the day before session 7 (Nov 7 for sections A & B) starts. Not before that since we only have a 15 day trial license. I'd rather the trial license see you through from session 7 through to 10.

4. CP scores will not be putup on LMS owing to technical difficulties. Students can individually contact their AA to find out where they stand etc on CP.

5. I notice that the general quality of phase I submissions this year is much higher than in the past 2. I reckon this is at least partly because of the questionnaire document release from previous years. Will do likewise in phase III too so you can learn from past mistakes.

6. Am getting some votes on the polls but not much in feedback terms from folks who vote  particular session 'below par' or worse. Would really appreciate constructive criticism with specifics thrown in.

Regards,

Sudhir

Project Discussions - Open Thread

Update: Evening Saturday 29-oct

Sir,
There are some demographics questions that I was planning to use from the previous surveys (not reinventing the wheel). Will that be a problem for turnitin?
Regards
M

My response:

Hi M,

We're not using turnitin to check similarities across submissions. Its just that LMS doesn;t seem to have an electronic dropbox facility. Go ahead and borrow from external sources as appropriate. No problem.

Sudhir

Hi All,

Shall compile project related Q&A here. Pls feel free to shoot away.

Meanwhile, spied a rather pertinent piece in the Economic Times yesterday that seems quite relevant to the project and also to some of the topics we've covered in MKTR - notably demand estimation & market sizing.

The Age of low cost

The idea is that low cost computing and connectivity devices have come of age both in terms of installed base and in terms of critical support to break through the chicken-and-egg cycle of "enough-apps to excite market development  versus enough market to excite apps development". I strongly recommend a thorough read from the project and also the course POV.

Here are some nice excerpts:

It took three decades for computing devices in India to reach the 50 million installed mark. The next 50 million will take a tenth of that time. Even then,India with a base of 50 million personal computers now would lag behind China (300 million) and the US (394 million).There is still plenty for room to grow.

Hmmm. Think of the structural breaks and trend upheavels in the sales curve from 1980 to 2015. The growth will likely slow and plateu now but still...

Yet, he's visibly excited about the 1,750 tablet,recently launched by the government and the slew of new computing devices Asus,Samsung,HCL,Reliance and others have rolled out in the last two months.Almost all of them are available around the 10,000 price point."They are good for a web based lifestyle,"he says.Sonali Garg,19,a Chandigarh based Commerce student who shares a laptop with two other siblings is also eyeing these new devices."We can buy tablets with saved up pocket money,"she says.At far away Agartala,20-year-old Bishnesh Das fancies them too."These gadgets will do to computing what sub 3,000 phones did to mobile communications,"he says.

The app side is no less exciting. From obvious uses in the education space to less obvious ones like agriculture. Here are some teasers...

Netbooks for text books - that's the switch technology training company NIIT has done in the last six months for all students in its premier GNIIT course.In the next six months it will migrate all its courseware onto netbooks and tablets."Students won't carry books,but tablets to class,"says Vijay Thadani,CEO,NIIT. [...]
S Sivakumar,chief executive,agri business,says crop management advice can be personalized to individual farmers,if they can video or photo shoot the field conditions and transmit to experts via tablets."Through use of video/photo transmission,price negotiation process can be instant and more effective.Order aggregation for farm inputs will help in streamlining logistics and reduce costs,"he adds.Mass adoption,says Tuli of Datawind,will happen when such devices help users generate business."Today a phone is a commerce tool for all segments of users.Same will happen with computers.When mobile phones hit the market no one thought your neighbourhood small merchant or a rickshaw puller will buy them.Today they all do."

More on how costs have fallen in real terms (the supply curve shifts rightwards bigtime) and the stellar effect that's having on sales and thereby, demand:

More applications and content will make low-cost computing more relevant to consumers.But cost is crucial too.Many expect Mukesh Ambani to be a game changer.ET recently reported that Reliance Industries will unveil a new range of 4G-enabled tablets at 3,000.Such a price point would have been ridiculously low even one year ago.But prices of components like the hard disk,RAM etc have come down enabling manufacturers to come out with innovative offerings.Says NIIT's Thadani: "The real breakthrough has come from Moore's Law: processor power doubles every 18 months and costs come down.There's more power packed in each new generation of computers."Alok Bharadwaj,the president of,Manufacturers Association of Information Technology (MAIT) attributes low cost computers to economies of scale and an average decline of 15% a year in component prices.Adds Apratim Sharma,country product manager,Asus India: "We observe 15-20 % yearly drop in cost of same hardware'.You can get a hard disk that went into high end laptops 2-3 years back at lower costs in netbooks or tablets now,he adds.Asus just launched a 10 inch net book at 9,999 with a 250 GB hard disk,1GB RAM,web cam,WiFi and Bluetooth."Three years ago a similar device would have cost double,"he adds.NIIT's Thadani still remembers the first PC they bought back in the 1990s.It cost 1.5 lakh.It had 10 MB hard disk and 5 MB RAM."Now,you get a far more richer device for less than 10,000,"he adds.

That's enough for now I guess. Read it all. Shall add updates in chronological order at the top of this thread (more recent on top).

Sudhir

Some feedback and the way forward

Hi All,

The AA Ms. Chandana has been kind enough to collect informal feedback from students regarding the course, compile it and send it in. I'm sharing the same on the blog alongwith thoughts on the way forward.

1. "Time management has been overly loose. The 10 minute break is stretching into 13-14 minutes. The quickfire questions time limit of 30 seconds needs to be more strictly maintained. Sometimes these stretch for much longer."
My response: Agreed. I'm of mind to cut short the break duration to 5 minutes. That way, we will be able to restart within 10 minutes as originally planned. Also, will take more care about keeping the quickfire Questions on time.

2. "Restrict Q&A time to <1 minute per question in the readings. Will help more people interact and raise questions. Currently some reading questions drag on for 1-2 minutes."
My response: Well, some reading questions have more substance than others and hence should get a little more time. That said, getting more folk to interact would be great. I'm consciously trying to have people yet to speak in a given session the first preference to raise or answer questions in that session.

3."4) No need to sign Submission sheet for every HW, eating lot of time before the class starts, causes a delay of 5 mins….Can it be cross checked without signing on daily basis."
My response: Good idea. I agree that HW submission at the class beginning is cumbersome, takes time, eats into a precious 1-2 classtime minutes and can be streamlined much more. Henceforth, I'll ask the AA to simply tickmark the PGID concerned at the time of homework submission. The check is needed to avoid confusions regarding lost or misplaced homeworks etc.

4. "Why insist the homeworks be handwritten? What is the point if the homeworks may never be graded?"
My response: There are two types of homework exercises in this course - that in the first 5 sessions and those in the second half of the course.

In the first 5 sessions, I want folks to merely give thought on how to approach to a big-picture problem such as 'Develop a research design for the Aakas tablet" or "Estimate market size for the Aakash". That's all. What would you do if you are confronted with such a task? How would you go about it? Would you let some reference, some structure, some logic and principles from MKTR guide you? That is all I want to emphasize in these first 5 sessions.

The second 5 sessions are SPSS analysis-tools based. Here, some basic practice with some datasets is key. The point here is to ensure familiarity, grounding and a bird's eye-view of the issues involved. That's all.

I insist on 'handwritten' for two reasons: One, the lack of easy editing in handwritten homeworks ensures people take seriously the task of managing scarce resources that are not renewable. First, make an outline of the solution and then construct the features of the solution in a more planned way.


Two, it also helps to know that handwritten implies nothing can be lifted off somewhere on the web etc without the student first assessing the content of the material and taking the trouble to adapt it to the problem at hand, by hand.
A third (bonus?) advantage is that within-group discussion allows groups to meet and bond more often. Will help when the stress of the project's phase III starts to show, I reckon.
Hope that helped clarify. Thanks again for the feedback.

Sudhir

Session Timing & other Admin Issues

Hi All,

1. Am finding that am able to cover the full deck of slides and readings in some sections but not so in other sections. Have received some informal feedback also in this regard and am working on it.

For sections A and C, shall take an extra few minute (~3-4 minutes) of session 5's break time to go over the 'Errors in the research process' slide deck. Pls bring your session 4 reading alongwith.

2. In the interest of time-management, it may so happen occasionally that we speed along some sections of the slide deck and some Q&A interactions are perforce cut short. Pls know that there is no attempt or intent to duck or divert student Qs and comments on my part.

3. Admittedly, this is the first time I am attempting the use of CP and interactivity on this scale through both readings and CP-grading. Hence, there mayhap some missteps and stumbles. I think the AAs are doing a swell job. Every 3 sessions, CP instances will be released so that folks can see and know where they are at different points in the course. Invited and contributed material of substantive nature from students to the blog can also be counted as a CP-instance on some occasions.

4. Group formation remains locked now. Will not be revisited. I found commendable one group's decision to voluntarily disband rather than insist on opening up that process this late in the day.

5. There will be no Qualtrics tutorial session. Am happy to see that not one request for a tutorial l;anded at in my inbox. So I'm assuming all groups have this aspect under control.

Thanks and regards,

Sudhir

Student Mailbag - Week 2

Update: received evening today (28-Oct)

Dear Chandana,
Can we mention our assumptions while making the questionnaire? We feel that the rural market is an important target to be studied. However, since this is a web survey in English, this segment will be completely ignored. Hence we are assuming that the survey is targeted towards the urban market.
Please advise.
Regards,
S

My response:

Yes.
I will make a mention on the blog as well.
Our survey targets the urban SEC A only because of accessability issues. hence, we define our target population as Urban SEC 'A' people skewed towards the younger (20s and early 30s) side.
We will further make the assumption that the snowball sampling method that we will use will produce a probability sample representative of the target population.
In this light, all our results etc are valid and applicable only in the context of this target population we have defined.
Hope that clarifies.
Sudhir

----------------------------------------------------

Hi Prof. Sudhir,
Pardon my ignorance but there is a case to be read for Monday’s class.
Bank of America (Stanford GSB case M213)
I don’t think we have that in the course pack.
Is it available somewhere or I am missing something?
Really sorry if the query was too silly.
Regards,
Kalyan

My Response:

Not at all.
Pls ignore that case. It has been taken out but apparently I missed it while updating the syllabus.
Sorry about the confusion.
Sudhir

Update: received morning today (28-oct)

Sir,

Is there a website or report through which I can get statewise/UT wise SEC classification of the population? To be more specific, I was seeking out the population in Chandigarh & Gurgaon/NCR which would fall under A1 & A2 SEC segment. Any help would be much appreciated

My response:

Hi Harsimran,

No website directly that I know of comes to mind.

However, overall population stats are easily available and I believe the urban SEC-wise population distribution can be overlaid on the total populn of these regions to get some systematic idea of what the sizes are.

In any case, I'd first try contacting LRC staff with this query. Their extensive databases might have something I'm not aware of.
Hope that helps.

_______________________________________________________________________________
I received this email:

Prof. Sudhir,

This is with regards to the question on whether a cross-sectional or longitudinal design is a better fit when response bias is the evaluation criteria. As opposed to what was mentioned in class, I feel longitudinal designs are better for response bias because we can carry out validation or observe any biases by recording a particular respondent’s responses to the same or similar questions at different points in time.
Thanks,
Rangasayee Chandrasekaran

And this was my response:

Thanks, Rangasayee.


Shall put this up on the blog under 'Student contributions'.

I'd say the answer 'depends' on the research questions. Some issues may be quite sensitive to whether the panel was previously quizzed on it and may reflect bias. However, in most cases, I do agree, your point makes sense.

Sudhir

Received this email from 'R' :

Dear Chandana/Pankaj

While taking the survey, I unknowingly skipped over 1 page of questions and the survey did not give me any reminder to complete the questions on that page.

Hope there will be no penalty in marks for skipping(PS:- I am not able to take the survey again)
Pls confirm and provide alternate solution to the issue.

Regards
R

And this was my response:

Don't worry about it, R.


What worries me is that the survey allows folks to skip over entire pages without any problem. perhaps it makes sense to have 1 (easy) question forced (as in, 'answer required for survey to proceed forward') to confront this problem.

Sudhir

More mailbag emails will be putup in the order in which I receive them:

Session 3 related announcements and Updates

Update: Forgot to put this there. This is a short 4-minute video on how wikis work. IMHO, it'll greatly enhance project group productivity when co-ordinating over the phase I questionnaire design task. Pls view and consider signing up for a free wiki.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY

I'm open to conducting a tutorial sometime friday on how to use qualtrics if there is sufficient demand for the same. Though I doubt such need will arise as the qualtrics web survey software is not overly complicated. 

Sudhir


Hi all,

1. Pls find below the web-survey link for the homework of session 3.

https://isb.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_2n0Q4vYSImVxurq

This is the 2009 car-survey that was administered as part of the MKTR project for the class of 2010. The questions relating to this homework can be found in the slide handouts.

2. Re group-formation, by today (24-oct) evening, we will freeze and finalize groups. Those currently not assigned groups will be randomly assigned groups. The said assignment will be final.

3. Re the session 2 homeworks that were submitted today, we'll go through a few of them and putup scanned copies of a few among those we've seen that seem logical, well-structured and thought-out.

4. Pls start project phase II (data collection) prep alongside phase I prep (web-survey design). Call, mail or otherwise intimate your friends, former colleagues, relatives etc about this coming survey. 10 responses per person or 60 per group would be an 'at par' performance, IMHO. More the merrier and more phase II grades as well.

 5. Shall henceforth assume that whatever is putup on the blog is common knowledge among the MKTR class. I'd recomment people check up the blog for updates periodically.

6. Shall putup the word docs of the questionnaires used for projects in 2009 and 2010 after homework-session 3 is in. Pls feel free to borrow content for your web-survey as appropriate. Admittedly phase I is quite a bit rushed. The new and irrevocable deadline for phase I submission is Sunday (30-oct) noon.

7. There'll be a guest lecture by Ms Usha Kadva of ORG-MARG on 3-Nov in AC2 from 4-5.30 pm. Every group is expectd to nominate (at least) 2 people to attend. The attendance here will be graded.

8. Will putup a new poll concerning session 3. Shall henceforth putup polls for every session to collect quick comments and feedback. Thanks for your participation in the poll on session 2.

9. Will keep office hours 5.30-8 pm weekdays. Pls email me in advance and  feel free to drop by during this time regarding any queries you may have.

Regards,

Sudhir

Student Contributions - Week 1

Update: 24-Oct
Thanks to Ramesh Raman who has sent in a link to a 'yes Minister' episode on how surveys can be manipulated.

Dear Professor,


This is a link to the Yes Minister video on survey manipulation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMub4rbiOzg

I hope you enjoy it.

Cheers

Ramesh

Hi All,

There've been several instances of interesting examples, counter-points and facts thrown up by students during class discussions. I make it a point to invite folks to send small write-ups that I'd be happy to putup on the blog for a wider audience. Am happy to see one such student, Pranjal Pathak has been kind enough to take the trouble and write back. This point was made during the discussion on Rural consumption in session 2 and how products designed for the Rural masses could show success.

Dear Prof. Voleti,


Wanted to send you the information on LG Sampoorna TV as you mentioned in the class:

Sampoorna TV was launched by LG in 1998. Through Sampoorna LG probably became the first MNC to target region specific branding in India. It was priced at a premium of Rs. 2000 over competing products but offered on-screen display options in Hindi, Tamil and Bengali. LG spent Rs. 21 Lakhs ($50,000) developing the product and 100,000 units in the first year of launch (development cost of Rs 21 per unit considering just first year sales). Most first year sales were in towns with population of around 10,000. According to one the references below in 1998-99 in Rajkot Gujarat more Sampoorna sets were sold than all competitors combined.

I learnt about this when researching for a case study and have so far not found anyone (most of the contacts are people from urban regions) who had heard about Sampoorna TV. Yet by end of 1999 Sampoorna accounted for 12% of LG`s 950 crore turnover and LG has since established a 500 crore plant at Nodia and another one at Pune to meet demand.

It is probably the biggest success story from rural markets that is not known at all in urban India.

(references: "Rural Marketing: Concepts and Practices" by Balram DOgra and Karminder Ghuman; and Accenture research report: "Masters of Rural Market", 2010)

Regards,
Pranjal

I'd be happy to putup more such contributions in this thread as updates (more recent above).
 
Sudhir

Article Relevant to Session 2

Am posting an article which should ideally have been a session 2 reading but which I dropped owing to time-reasons.

P&G, Unilever search for rural entrepreneurs to attract lower-income consumers (ET, Sep 2111)

MUMBAI: If you are a global giant, you need to find some small fish to help you do business with other small fish - that is the new strategy adopted by consumer product multinationals Procter & Gamble and Unilever. The duo are hunting out, incubating and investing in small, rural entrepreneurs who can help them start selling to lower-income consumers in India and other emerging markets. MNCs have the money, brands and networks, but they need breakthrough ideas for new businesses. And they need to target the next set of customers as they face a downturn in developed markets.

P&G FutureWorks, the MNC's entrepreneurial engine that incubates start-ups around the world, is sending a team led by its head Nathan Estruth to Punjab next month. The subsidiary recently funded Indian start-up Healthpoint Services, a for-profit social enterprise that runs rural clinics providing potable water and affordable primary healthcare. It is also understood to be in touch with other start-ups in India in order to reach consumers through unconventional and innovative distribution models, a top company official said. More investments in start-ups are likely.

Unilever, which runs an in-house corporate venture capital fund since 2001, is finally zooming in on India and China. "We will strategically increase our investment activity in emerging markets," Martin Grieve, MD of Unilever Corporate Ventures, told ET. Unilever is looking to invest in early-stage companies in areas such as health and vitality, personal care, digital marketing and novel foods in India. "We are currently in discussions with a number of organisations," a Hindustan Unilever spokesperson added.

The FMCG biggies, true to form are leading the innovation charge on reaching out to the excluded bottom rungs. Wish them success. And here's more juice on what P&G is upto:

P&G, the maker of Tide detergent, Pantene shampoo and Gillette razors, hopes to leverage its alliance with Healthpoint to reach rural consumers who earn less than 100 (roughly $2) a day. Healthpoint offers 22,000 medical consultations and serves over 50,000 people daily with drinking water. Top officials close to the development said P&G is tapping the start-up's access to these consumers to test-launch some of its water, energy, health and beauty products. P&G markets Puro water purifiers through a non-profit model in some developing markets, and top officials say the brand is likely to be piloted in India soon.


"This is a business relationship where P&G provides investment and technical support and in turn learns about rural services markets by participating with us," said Dr Al Hammond, co-founder of Healthpoint Services India. "It is quite unique for a global corporation to partner with an early-stage social enterprise," he added.

A P&G spokesperson confirmed the partnership with Healthpoint, but declined to share any more details. P&G Futureworks is also understood to be in touch with other start-ups in India for reaching consumers through unconventional and innovative distribution models. "P&G will have to approach the market differently and seek such tie-ups to move faster," says Himani Singh, analyst at Elara Capital. "It has to tackle the lag factor in India in terms of competing with the massive market distribution network created by HUL."

Pls send in MKTR-relevant articles excerpted and highlighted. I'll be more than happy to post them on the blog.

Sudhir

Admin Issues and Updates (Post Session 2)

Hi All,

First off, welcome to the course to all final registrants. The project group formation exercise must kickoff ASAP and complete by midnight 23-24 Oct.

UPDATE 1: Quite a few groups have used group names that aren't consistint with the group naming policy. Pls use names of Indian small towns only, folks. Anything from Kargil to Kanyakumari is fine.

UPDATE 2: Section C's names weren't putp last time. That's been rectified in the google spreadhseet now.

Pls find below a link to a googe doc where you can write your group name next to that of yours and of your group-mates.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AiXdfyuoSD-ZdHB1VlNRaUFKR1F6eFJVRDBsX24wTEE&hl=en_US

Pls elect one person as contat-person for your team. The contact person should email the AAs the list of members in his/her team (names, PGIDs, sections) and copy all the team members, for the record.

There are two small McKinsey reports (about a dozen pages each) uploaded on LMS, following session 2 and which may be useful in your homeworks.

Pls go through the Project scope document below and let me know if anything is unclear, missing, can be easily improved etc. Pls feel free to use the comments space in the blog for feedback.

I'll later also put up a poll for session 2 after Section C's class is done (and likewise for every session thereafter) to collect feedback about each session. I'd appreciate your constructive critique and inputs.

Pls feel free to email me any queries, comments or suggestions.

Thanks and regards,

Sudhir

2011 Project Scope Document (Frozen, Final Version)

Context: XYZ Corp, a large domestic conglomerate is contemplating revamping its Indian telecom carrier business. With the advent of rapid technological advances both in the hardware (Tablets, iProducts) as well as, concurrently, on the application side - 3G, GPS, gaming, MMS etc., the market is in flux.

The idea is to divine out where the market is going in terms of trends, customer tastes and preferences etc and thereby pre-position XYZ to take advantage of these trends and movements in the near future in the form of strategic stakes in incipient firms, alliances with established upstream or downstream players, re-positioning and re-branding exercises and so on.

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, usage patterns, habits, attitudes and perceptions of current and prospective Indian customers on the other.

You are a team of B2C India experts within a large, global management consultancy. XYZ Corp seeks your inputs and insights on the customer side of its study.

Scope: XYZ wants to know (among other things, perhaps) about the habits and preferences of current and prospective customers that can be used to forecast the shape and direction of the mobile carrier market for the next few years.

A few indicative examples are listed below (not necessarily in any order of importance):

1. Mobile Usage patterns among consumers. These may include:

(i)the intensity of mobile use (For example - how many minutes per day, local or long distance, personal or work related etc),

(ii) mode of use (E.g., Voice/Text/Data/Web) etc. Work or personal etc.

(iii) Average spends on different modes.

(iv) ease and comfort with m-commerce or its older cousin e-commerce

2. Mobile handset and carrier particulars. These may include:

(a) Which handset? (For example -Basic phone, smartphone, tablet, iPhone) etc. Which kind of service - prepaid, postpaid? Etc

(b) Which OS? Which applications most commonly accessed and used? Which games most popular?

(c) Preferences over particular handset - which features are considered essential, which nice to have and which are considered unimportant.

(d) Features or quality of service afforded by the telecom carrier

(e) some hint of what might delight customers - what apps would the customer like to see, etc.

3. Perceptions and Loyalty for current and prospective customers.

(i) How often are handsets changed? How often are carriers changed?

(ii) Which handset brands rated the best? On which dimensions?

(iii) Which telecom carriers rated highest? On which dimensions?

(iv) expectations of current and prospective customers

(v) feedback from current customers

4. Demographic and lifestyle information.
(i) size of social network, comfort with social media,
(ii) who influences purchase decisions in general - peers, opinion-leaders etc.
5. Etc.

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


Research the web for listings of handset features, technical specs, and carrier evaluation attributes, past research, secondary data etc. in the construction of your questionnaire.

Requirement: (1) Design a questionnaire for a web-based survey that can be administered to people in the target segment. The survey shouldn't take the typical respondent more than 20 minutes to answer. Please leverage the strengths of a web-survey - notably the ability to imbed IF-THEN loops within the questionnaire.

Hence for example, in a survey on car attribute preferences, 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.

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 session 3. Get a heads up with reading the summary portions of the relevant textbook chapter on the same. You DONT have to reinvent the wheel. So please feel free to look up readymade past questionnaires on the web. Cite sources if you took help. However, no outright plagiarism please!

(2) Please make a web-survey. Register for an ISB account on qualtrics (email ITCS for help on this one). I will also putup instructions on the blog. Use qualtrics tutorials etc to understand how to create your survey with the logical loops built in.

It is recommended to test the web-survey you have built by having your project group members take it and point out ambiguities, inconsistencies, skip-logic that isn't working etc. Do NOT administer the survey to anyone outside MKTR yet.

(3) E-mail the academic associate both (a) the link for the web-survey and (b) the word copy of the questionnaire. Please remember to mention group name and members list in both the web-survey and the offline questionnaire.

The deadline for the submission of survey is 12 noon on Sunday - 30 October.
 
(4) I and the AAs will provide you with a *final* version of a questionnaire which the entire class will then administer using the ISB account for qualtrics. That will come later and will be detailed at an appropriate time.

UPDATE:
Had put this project scope doc first up on the blog. Pls find released the full, formal and final version of this document above.

Hope that helps. Questions and comments welcome.

Sudhir.

Welcome Class of 2012

Hi All,

Hello and welcome to the informal blog for MKTR@ISB. This blog shall get more active as the course picks up pace.

Email queries, project related tips and FAQs, general feedback, polls on various topics and the like will be a regular feature here.

Regards,

Sudhir

Update:
ASA informs that the SPSS trial licenses shall only be available for 15 days. I've requested the license period start 7-Nov (coinciding with Session 7 through 10). FYI.