PROGRESS REPORT HOMEWORK EXERCISE
Your market research firm, National Collegiate Solutions, Inc. (NCSI), was recently hired by Archway Publications, a publisher of teen magazines. Edgar Martin, Archway’s vice-president of marketing, wants you to analyze the market for a proposed monthly magazine geared toward college students. As director of research for NCSI, you agreed to submit a progress report at the end of each month. It’s April 30 (you started the project on April 5), so it’s time to tell Martin what your firm has accomplished so far. Use the information in the following paragraph to create the report. You can rewrite and restructure the sentences as you see fit, but the facts should remain the same. The most important elements here are how well you’re organizing things and following the conventions of a progress report.
First, you developed an interview form to gather data on what college students like and dislike about the magazines currently available. After testing this interview form on 35 students to be sure the questions were clearly phrased, you made appropriate revisions and obtained Archway’s approval of the final instrument. Then you began the lengthy process of conducting face-to-face interviews on each of 12 campuses across the country. By April 29, you had scheduled and completed the 50 interviews on 3 campuses; you expect to schedule and complete the remainder of the interviews by June 1. All interviews are going according to schedule. You plan to submit a brief synopsis of your findings by June 6, and by June 20 you will submit a full report including conclusions and recommendations.
Using a letter format, write a 1-2 page progress report to Martin, whose company is located at 1097 Dana Ave., Cincinnati, OH 45207.
You are allowed to invent minor specifics about the market analysis or its larger context if you wish, but you are not required to do so. Any such material will in no way raise your grade, and it should not replace the critical thinking in which the prompt is trying to engage you.