Part A - Up to 2250 words

You are the new Head of Marketing and Research at Private Media Pty Ltd, the publishers of Crikey, an Australian electronic news service that operates primarily on a subscription basis, supplemented with some advertising revenue.

Crikey's website is www.crikey.com.au. Crikey publishes a newsletter to its subscribers each weekday and makes some of its content publically available, as a means of generating more subscriptions.

Although Private Media has other businesses, your main focus is Crikey. You have persuaded the owners of the business that, in order for you to be effective in your role, some marketing research needs to be done, and you have been allocated a budget of $60,000 + GST. This is a considerable amount of money for a relatively small business and you will need to spend it wisely.

You are under pressure to conduct the research in a way that will directly assist in increasing subscription revenue. There is no dedicated Research Manager to assist you. Also, because funds are scarce, the business' owners have suggested that the research outputs should not only assist you in marketing Crikey to potential new subscribers, but it should, if possible, also provide information that will help the Advertising Sales Manager promote Crikey to potential advertisers.

Please prepare a research brief and request for proposals, setting out the key pieces of information that a marketing research firm would need in order to prepare a proposal.

Part B - Up to 750 words

Now, you are a very junior staff member working in a marketing research firm that has just received the briefing document prepared at Part A. Your boss, an experienced but very busy researcher, will be responsible for the proposal and, if it is accepted, will manage the research project.

She has asked you to prepare a recommendation on the best methodological approach to address the Crikey brief. You want to impress her, so you will need to provide not just your recommendations but also your reasons.

In answering Part A and Part B, you may use any publically-available information in preparing the research brief but you MUST NOT contact Crikey, Private Media or any of its staff or associates. If you believe that you need information about Crikey's business that you cannot access (for example: details of any past research or a breakdown of sources of revenue), then you should state in the brief that it will be made available to the successful tenderer or, if you wish, simply invent it, providing a footnote to make it clear that you have done so.

Harvard 9 references