Across all B-Schools, the first exposure to Marketing Management happens through the MM1 course in Term 1. An integral part of this course is the Term Project, where the students, in groups, for the first time get to do some research related to a Brand (…some B-Schools might be doing this in Term 2 in the MM2 course nowadays).
The format of the Term Project generally goes this way:
- There are 3 distinct phases of the Project
- In the first phase the group does a “literature review” for a specific brand in a product category. Using this, in the second phase, the group prepares some hypotheses related to the brand. They would test these through a primary research and hence, the design and questionnaire for the primary research is also prepared in the second phase. In the final phase, they collect data using the questionnaire, analyze the data and present the findings.
The first phase has become much easier nowadays with the plethora of information one can get on the Internet. In earlier days one had to surf through several “hard copies” of magazines and annual reports of companies to get relevant information for this phase.
The fun starts with the second phase. Only when you start writing your first questionnaire to understand the consumer, you realize how difficult the task is! It cannot be too long, yet you need to collect all the relevant information. Given the time that you get for this research, it has to be a structured questionnaire with mostly closed-ended responses… yet you need to collect some subjective information too! Tools like “Surveymonkey” or “Qualtrics” have eased the process of data collection. Social media can help in reaching your target group quickly to meet the required sample size. However, the flow and structure of the questionnaire is something where no tool or technique can help. It requires serious “human intervention” and the structured thought-process of the B-School student is the only “tool” that can be useful here.
Over the years, we have noticed, it is the questionnaire design stage of the Term Project where students mess things up the most. This also has a high bearing on the overall quality of the project as the information you finally present will only be as good as the information you have collected.
Some of the most glaring errors that we have noticed over the years are the following:
1. Incorrect or no screening questions: You must be having a specific target group for your research. The first few questions should ensure that only those belonging to the specific target group could answer the questionnaire. In other words, you should “recruit” correct respondents for your survey and “terminate” the interview for others. For example, if you are studying “Thums Up” as a brand, your first few questions should ensure that you are “recruiting” people of a certain age group (e.g. 15 – 45yrs) who consume any carbonated soft drinks (or any Cola or any cold beverage) with a certain frequency (e.g. at least once a fortnight).
2. Incorrect flow of questions: Students often tend to ask questions in the order in which they have framed the hypotheses. However, one should note that a questionnaire is an instrument for data collection… and an interaction with the consumer is happening using this instrument. So, it should start with more general questions related to the product category followed by ones on awareness, buying behaviour of brands and finally move to specifics like product perception or imagery of brands.
3. Tendency to ask “leading” questions: If you have a hypothesis, it does not mean that you have to re-frame it as a question! For example, if your hypothesis is “The recent ad campaign of Brand X has been successful”, asking one question like “Do you think the recent ad of Brand X has been successful? YES/NO” will be the most incorrect one to ask. These are called “leading questions”, where the wording of the question is biased and you are indirectly forcing the consumer to answer it in a way that can be favourable to you. [There will be more on this topic later, in a different article]
4. Use of Rating Scales vs Simple Association Questions: Rating scales like “Likert Scale” can be used, but not for all questions. Many students use rating scales for measuring product perception / brand imagery. Now imagine a grid with 10 attributes on product perception / brand imagery, to be asked for 5 brands, in a “Likert Scale”. It actually means asking 10 X 5 = 50 questions to the consumer! In such cases, asking simple brand associations (a Nominal Scale of YES/NO) with attributes can be more sensible.
5. Incorrect use of “stimulus”: If you are prompting the consumer with “stimulus” like videos or photos of advertisements or tag-lines to test awareness, it should be done at the end of the questionnaire. Else, these promptings would “aid” the consumer on certain features of the brand and tamper the responses to other questions.
Making the questionnaire and getting enough number of valid responses is a time-consuming affair. Typically, in the hectic Term 1 of a B-School, by the time the spreadsheet with all consumer responses is ready, the final presentation deadline would be in the next 24hrs. The group would meet with the spreadsheet, each member gazing at his / her own laptop screen with utter suspicion... and somebody would say “Ab karna kya hai?”! Not that anyone has a convincing answer to that in the group... but someone would say “Question-by-Question charts bana detey hai?”!!!
[To be continued...]
- By Prof. PD Purkayastha
(The 2nd Part of this article on “Making Sense of Data” will be uploaded at 11:59pm, Sep 18)
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