Professor Stanton

Research Project and Paper

Imagine that you work in the marketing department of Tim Hortons. Your company views Dunkin Donuts as your chief competition.

Objective: Tim Hortons wants to better understand how consumers view your products and your competition's products.

For this project, you will collect some data to address this objective. Draw on all relevant information from class that can enhance your research design and conclusions that you draw from your research.

1) Data Collection: Survey of Consumer Attitudes

a. Create a multi attribute attitude matrix (MAAM) comparing your brand versus the competition on whichever 5 attributes you think are most important.

b. Create additional survey questions (at least 5) regarding consumer attitudes that you believe to be important in understanding why and how consumers purchase your product. The better your additional questions, the more informed your conclusions will be.

c. Survey at least 5 but no more than 10 adults.

d. Create tables using Excel to summarize your findings. Please include tabs for the data of each individual surveyed and the summary data (averages). Your data collection methods and data summary can be uploaded as an appendix (separate files) that will not count toward the page limit, if needed.

2) Summary Report:

a. In a paper no longer than 3 pages, 12-point Times New Roman, double-spaced, please address the following points:

i. What is the question or issue that you are addressing? Why is this question being asked?

ii. How did you address the question? Briefly describe the methods and survey questions that you used and report the summary of the data.

iii. Describe the insights that emerge from the data that you have collected. How do consumers perceive your company versus the competition? How are you performing on certain attributes versus others? Where should you focus your efforts moving forward? How can you change consumers' attitudes about your product or your product's attributes? How can you use your information in terms of strategic planning?

iv. Write this as if it were an internal report to be submitted to your marketing manager.