Supplier Capabilities: 

I found looking at the other marketing research firms interesting because it seems as though everyone has a slightly different approach to researching the markets for their clients, and yet, every one of them has the same goal. The one website that stood out to me the most was C + R Research. I specifically liked how the website was separated in different ways that explain the qualitative and quantitative data that they collect. In their quantitative section, there is a section specifically for the segmentation process of their research. In this segmentation process, C+R states that they will create displays, infographics and roadmaps that help their clients to understand where C+R’s research will take them. We have already discussed that our groups will need to create displays such as these for our customers. I am really looking forward to this part of our research because I love graphic design.  C+R’s segmentation process connects to our MARK311 class because much like market segmentation, each group was assigned a different vertical to work with.  Even though C+R goes much deeper into the research process than our class probably will, our process mirrors C+R’s process. Another interesting thing that I found was that C+R looks into how effective their client’s current advertising is, and runs tests through software called CopyIQ that delivers full reports on how people react to their advertisements. I think marketing research firms absolutely have to do this in order to stay on top of the products and the fads in advertising.  Furthermore, when our groups will go and collect research that represents our vertical via our Library resources, C+R uses many different ways to gather research. Some of the ways that C+R uses to gather information is through consumer panels, focus groups and online discussions. We will mirror this specifically when we go and ask attendees of the Lights Festival Parade to partake in our surveys. Hopefully if we make the correct marketing research decisions at this part of our project, we will see positive correlations between our research and the consumer’s reactions to it. 

RFP: 

Our team’s experience submitting the RFPs was a little nerve-wracking, at least for me. Our team was very good at looking at each other’s work and critiquing it so that we had the best possible RFPs. Carla and I mostly focused on perfecting the Epic Burger survey, and Patricia, Adriana and Livinia did the same for the Magnificent Mile Association’s survey. Then, when we switched and looked at each other’s surveys, we were looking at it through new eyes, and therefore could be a bit more critical. The feedback that we got from other groups was also incredibly helpful, and made writing our RFPs much easier. I think for the most part every aspect of constructing the RFPs went very well. For the Epic Burger RFP, we decided to use surveys as well as a focus group to get our data. Though conducting a focus group will be more work than conducting a survey, we think it will give us even more insight into Epic Burger’s customers. I also think that the questions that we chose to include in our focus group are open enough that our participants have the chance to really explain their answers so that we can gain more insight into the customer that a survey doesn’t. For our Magnificent Mile RFP, we decided to gather our information through survey only, but we think that is the most reasonable choice for this project. Lastly, for our Edgewater RFP, we decided to only use literature search for our MDOs. Unfortunately, our group made a mistake when sending our RFP to Edgewater; in the body of the email, we addressed the client as “the Magnificent Mile Association” rather than Edgewater. Though we got a nice response from Katrina at Edgewater, our group still feels embarrassed about our mishap. But I know that none of us never will let something like this happen again. I do however, think that we will need to impress Edgewater a bit more with our research and presentation to make up for our mishap—and hopefully we will be able to do so!

Other than that, I believe that our group did a good job at maintaining our definition of client readiness. We double and triple checked the information in the RFPs and made sure that everything in the surveys was as perfect as we could manage. I am very proud of the work that we put into every aspect of the RFPs for each client, and I hope that our clients are happy as well. I think that in the future, we will absolutely double and triple check the emails we send to clients and that will add a new dimension to our client readiness. I am motivated to submit an RFP that will help us be promoted to Senior Research Analyst because now I am completely interested in seeing how our research turns out, and we are also motivated to help our clients find solutions to their problems, because we feel a responsibility to our clients. 

Researcher Capabilities: 

After spending the semester conducting research on behalf of our clients, I realized that they are not the only people that benefit from my marketing research contribution, though they are the most obvious of the people that benefit. The customers of our clients also benefit from our research because they will be (hopefully) receiving better business from our clients, based on our research. I also I believe that I benefitted from our research, because I was able to learn so much about the various aspects of marketing research. I learned what it takes to do research on behalf of clients, which is something that I have never really had the chance to do. I also loved working directly with clients—up until this class, I had not ever worked directly with clients for my schoolwork before, and it has truly been an eye opening experience.

I think that my research can definitely be considered trustworthy because we learned about how to conduct our research ethically and correctly during the semester, as we were working on our projects. Not only was the way that we conducted our own research done in a trustworthy way, but any outside sources that we used, we made sure that their information was legitimate as well.

Yes, my purpose and motivation has changed dramatically over the semester. When I first began this course, I was very concerned with getting a good grade, and that was pretty much it. Now, don’t get me wrong—I love good grades, and I still want one, but I have become far more invested in the research for our clients and I found myself becoming more concerned with getting our clients insightful research rather than focusing solely on my grades. We were working to provide our clients with more than just “A” work, we wanted to prove to them that we could professionally conduct research and give them results that will help their businesses flourish.

My predictions from data analysis can be connected to personal perceptions because I have at least some prior experience with all of the clients. Before we began the process, I had eaten at Epic Burger, I was living in Edgewater and I had attended the Lights Festival. It was a little hard at first, for me to remove myself from my biases, because not only was I familiar with our clients, I was also familiar with our verticals—I am a pretty avid social media user and I have also volunteered with a hospice program, so I am somewhat familiar with the needs of senior citizens. However, removing my bias was easiest from Edgewater because we used secondary data for our research, whereas with Epic Burger and the Magnificent Mile, I had to actively ignore my biases when collecting data.