Some Project Guidelines

Hi all,

I have met with some project groups to informally discuss their approach to the project etc. Here are some of my notes from those meetings which I think all groups can benefit from.

• Pls feel free to update, revise and edit your management problem, decision problems and R.O.s at any stage in the project.
• The R.O.s shouldn't be overly ambitious as that leads to last minute rush and compromises on quality. They shouldn't be overly narrow to the point of being trivial either. Make them 'reasonable' so that you get scope enough to plan and think through the process, to showcase various MKTR tools, etc.
• Its OK to piggyback on existing projects - e.g. in Pricing or ENDM for which you may have done some ground work and data collection. However, these should be suitably adapted for MKTR requirements, use of MKTR tools as discussed in class etc.
• Projects can focus either on an exploratory or a confirmatory research design. If your project involves a bit of both of them, pls ensure it is not overly burdensome in terms of resource commitments.
• Its OK to go confirmatory on well established or 'traditional' product categories such as many FMCG ones we see around. However, for new and emerging categories, pls rethink going the confirmatory route. Ask if you have enough clarity about consumer perspectives on that category to go confirmatory on it.
• Be creative in using some of the extended analysis tools we discussed in the classroom - e.g. text analysis, collocation dendograms for a variety of objects etc. Scour the web for source material for text analysis (e.g., customer or movie reviews, articles from the popular press, etc.)
• What is important is that your project should have a coherent 'storyline' running through it - the mgmt problem -> the decision problems -> the ROs -> the tools mapped -> the data collected -> analysis done -> findings and conclusions.
• Ensure that whatever ROs you choose are 'covered' by your analysis, that your DP is covered by the ROs and so on. Coherence, storyline, conclusion.
• Don't worry overly about 'representativeness' of sample at this stage. However I would advise that folks choose product/service categories to focus on that would have your peer group at ISB as their primary target audience. This helps in getting access to a large and ready pool of subjects/respondents.
• If you want to bring particular tools into play and showcase them (e.g. perceptual maps) then you can revise the ROs such that scope for this is created.
• The submission is set for the day before the first day of term 6. So time is not that compressed, however plan it well.
• In an earlier blogpost I had laid out an indicative list of grading criteria for the project. Pls go through them. Th project after all carries the largest chunk of grading weight in this course.

That's it from me for now. Pls use the comments box to reach me fast.

Sudhir