•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• •• •• •• Meeting Customer Needs
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he buyers for the Ultimate Boutique, a fashion-forward schoolbased enterprise that sells upscale apparel and accessories for men and women, wanted the opinion of its customers on a new product being considered as an addition to its fall product mix. Before ordering the three-piece leisure suits, the buyers randomly selected four spreads from the company's catalog, photocopied the leisure suits, and asked the school staff to vote on one item per spread. A Likert scale was developed so that survey participants could identify a response that most closely represented how they felt about each item. For example, on Spread 1, five leisure suits appear on the page. If participants were responding to Item C, a black velour suit, then they would check the scale as follows: • I strongly dislike this item . • I dislike this item. • I have no strong feelings either way about this item. • I like this item. • I strongly like this item. To reward participants for sharing their opinions, their names will be entered into a drawing to win the leisure suit that they liked or a $100 gift certificate to be used in the store. In addition, a 15-percentoff coupon was attached to the survey to be used during the grand re-opening of the school store. The data that is collected is a marketing research tool that allows the store to manage marketing information to make a retail decision. THINK CRITICALLY 1. How can marketing research contribute to the success of the Ultimate Boutique? 2. Identify other ways that the school store could employ marketing research to decide what to buy.
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