Marketing homework help.
BUAD 210: Assignment 03
Questionnaire Design
Client: Silver Star Mountain – http://www.skisilverstar.com Team: 3-5 consultants
Scenario:
Your research team has been asked by the Director of Marketing for Silver Star Mountain to develop the means for surveying customers regarding their satisfaction with the resort’s services. As Silver Star serves a diverse clientele, the Director has indicated that the research should focus only on families and their children. He believes that this is an important target market for several reasons:
- Since the 2010 Olympics in Whistler, affluent European and Asian families have been returning to B.C. to visit other winter resorts in the region. In fact, there may be a further market development opportunity for attracting these clients (family-oriented skiers and snowboarders) to Silver Star.
- Families are long-term guests, averaging stays of 7 days or longer, including the less popular “shoulder” days between Monday and Thursday, when the mountain is not as busy.
- Families use many of the resort’s services, including the ski school, Tube town, various on-hill activities, and restaurants.
- Families are potential investors in and purchasers of real estate.
In order to prepare for their promotional road trip in July, Silver Star wants the research conducted before the end of April, so that any findings can be implemented for the 2020/2021 season. Therefore, a sampling of families who are currently visiting, or have recently visited, the resort are necessary in order to collect and analyze the survey data over the next month.
Further discussions with the director have established the following desires for customer information:
- When did the family make its decision to take a ski vacation?
- Where did they go (or to whom did they speak) to seek information?
- How did they decide where to go and for how long to stay?
- How useful is the resort’s advertising program, in terms of awareness and recall?
- How satisfied are/were the various members of the family with their visit, in comparison to other trips/vacations they have taken as a family [ski or otherwise]?
- How much will/did they spend or budget for the entire visit?
- What is the demographic profile of the customers?
- What are people saying/hearing about their experience (word of mouth)?
- What did the children (as influencers of their parents) think about the trip and services offered?
- How do they (parents and/or children, where applicable) rate Silver Star in the following areas, and in comparison to their other choices/experiences/vacations:
- Price
- Convenience (Transportation)
- Activities
- Accommodation
- Ski Shop Services
- Ski Rental Services
- Restaurants (variety/price/service)
- Tour services
- Daycare
- Ski School
- Service Staff
- Ski Hill Maintenance /Grooming
- Other categories: desired services that may be missing from Silver Star
The Director understands that it’s not possible to deal with all of these questions in one survey. However, the Director felt that these issues are representative of what the resort would like to know.
Assignment:
Your team will prepare a research proposal for Silver Star Mountain that includes the research purpose, research objectives, sampling program, and survey design, as well as a pre-test of the survey.. Make sure that you justify the means used to collect the sample (i.e., its size and structure) and survey respondents, in order to ensure reliability and validity, and to minimize error.
- Prepare a self-administered survey for Adults/Parents that is fast, easy to answer, and interesting. The survey should take less than 5 minutes to complete. Furthermore, the survey should use a variety of question types, two of NOIR elements plus at least three different types of scaling techniques (i.e. scales shown between pages 285-292 of text).
- Prepare a fun and fast survey for children between the ages of 5 through 10. Decide how this survey should be delivered to children, in order to gain the maximum response rate.
- Pre-test your work with a test sample of ten (10) OC students. Discuss how the pre-test results would influence or change in your final survey.
Deliverables for this assignment include:
- A 4-5 page research proposal (plus appendices):
- key facts related to the research and the nature of the marketing problem (< 1 page)
- statement of the research problem, purpose, and properly formatted research objectives
- methodology: secondary sources used and questionnaire design, criteria, and rationale (about ½ page).
- methodology: sampling info (Target audience, sample frame, sampling method, sample size) and rationale
- pre-test results, limitations/considerations, potential errors/threats, and conclusion. How would your final survey change as a result of what you learned in the pre-test.
- two appendices: A) Adult/Parent Questionnaire and B) Children’s Questionnaire
- A 1-page detailed invoice for the billable time spent generating the research proposal. Each team member must document their tasks and the hours spent on this project. Student work is to be billed at $40/hr for 2nd year students and $50/hr for 3rd or 4th year students.
