Marketing

You are the marketing director for the school bookstore, charged with determining which book themes should be carried to appeal to students for the upcoming year. Your boss presented you with the results of a survey from a small group of students that your predecessor had gathered in the fall of the previous calendar year. Now eight months later, you have just submitted the same questionnaire to a small group of students who frequent the bookstore to gauge their reading interests for certain categories. In both cases, the survey was given to students buying coffee at an outlet near the store’s entry/exit. The cashier requested comments from alternating customers over the same two-hour period for two days in a row. Sometimes she was really busy. The population of the college that operates the bookstore is 14,000. There is also a small private college down the street with a population of 1,500 students. They sometimes frequent the bookstore.

You have been directed to prepare a marketing research report for your boss that summarizes some of the data from the questionnaire. Before writing the report, you should do the following:

First do a frequency test for questions 1-12 to help “cleanse” your data. After you cleanse your datasheet, include the before and after cleansed databases as well as the clean frequency tests (showing only corrected responses) in your Appendix for reference in your report. Construct them so that they contain the same first three columns as Table 16.2 in your text.

Prepare a cross-tab that shows men and women readers and nonreaders (“nonreaders” are those in Question #1 that read less than one a month or do not read at all; the remainder are ”readers”), and recode the new categories as necessary (show this latter process in your Appendix with related formulas). Do a separate cross-tab for University A & B showing the same male/female-reader/nonreader data.

Perform the necessary tests:

A one sample t-test for questions 3 -12
A test to determine whether there is a statistically significant difference between the number of men and women readers/ nonreaders
The necessary test to determine whether there is a statistically significant difference between men and women in their preference for the type of books they read (questions 7-12).

Your marketing research report to your supervisor should include the following:

A statement of the research problem/question
A brief explanation of your perceived population as well as the sampling method’s reliability and validity
A statement of the extent to which students read, if there is a gender difference in readership (i.e., who is you primary customer), and where they most frequently purchase their books (i.e., can the bookstore assume they can meet a reasonable portion of the overall demand)

Recommendations around the following:

Pricing
Product mix as it relates to total shelf space allocated for these topics
Whether a majority of the titles for a particular genre should be targeted to men or women

The tables (information) you will create (as noted above)

These can be included in the text if appropriate or referenced in the Appendix

A brief statement around the limitations of the questionnaire, including the questions asked and the sampling method

Any recommendations for additional information that might be helpful and sampling methods that might be considered. Make sure your recommendations are reasonable and realistic to the scope and scale of your assignment as the marketing director.