Marketing Research Test September 13, 2011 CLOSED BOOK TEST TO BE ANSWERED IN TEAMS OF TWO Time Limit: 60 minutes

es Max Marks: 15

You are required to respond to any one of the two situations described below with a well-designed and structured research plan. Your response should be clear, thorough and of professional quality. The objectives, methodology, sampling plan, expected outcome, etc., should be clearly spelt out with proper reasoning. Any assumptions made should be stated upfront. The suggested checklist/questionnaire/survey instrument as appropriate, should also be included as part of your response. Situation 1: Advertising Research for Micromax X235 The Micromax X235 mobile phone handset has been launched recently. The company now wants to promote this model aggressively and has decided to use daily newspapers as the primary medium for extensive advertising across the country. The advertisement shown below has been designed and copytested, and is ready for release. On a trial basis, this advertisement is proposed to be published in a Saturday issue of the Bangalore edition of the Times of India. The advertisement has been designed to occupy a space of 3 columns x 12 cms (roughly the same size as shown below). It will be positioned on the right extreme of an odd numbered page of the newspaper, which will also be carrying other advertisements for various consumer products, retail outlets, etc. A research on the effectiveness of this advertisement is proposed to be carried out before releasing the advertisement across the country. This advertisement is planned to be published multiple number of times in more than 100 editions of around 50 newspapers in diverse languages (after translation) across the country, with a total budget running into crores of rupees. Hence the need for a research to test the advertisement, before going in for a nation-wide release.

Situation 2: Customer Satisfaction Survey for a 4-Star Hotel A four star hotel in Pune wants to put in place a system for tracking customer satisfaction on a regular/periodic basis, so that the results of the survey can serve as an objective measure of its performance from time to time. The idea is to come out with a system for calculating an aggregate customer satisfaction index (CSI) and also measures on important individual parameters. The results of the customer satisfaction measurement are also proposed to be used for guiding and improving the hotels performance in general, and also to motivate employees to achieve higher standards of service quality. It is also planned to integrate the customer complaints receipts and redressal system with the customer satisfaction measurement system. Pages 7 to 14 in the pdf file hotel-classification provide the checklist of facilities and services required in various categories of hotels, as specified by the Department of Tourism, Government of India. Here, N stands for Necessary and D stands for Desirable. The hotel under consideration meets all the required standards for a 4-star hotel and has received approval after meeting the same. Please note that in the normal course, a customer may not be prepared to spend more than two to three minutes to fill in a questionnaire or to provide verbal feedback. Only under exceptional situations would a customer be inclined spend more time on this.