The purpose of given miniproject is to familiarize you with marketing research techniques and to help you apply these techniques to managerial decision making.

1. With a group of three other students in your class, select a small retail business or fast-food restaurant to use as a "client" for your project. (Be sure to get the manager's permission before conducting your research.) Then choose a topic from among the following possibilities to develop a study problem:
• Employee-customer interactions
• The busiest periods of customer activity
• Customer perceptions of service
• Customer likes and dislikes about offerings
• Customer likes and dislikes about the environment in the place of business
• The benefits customers perceive to be important
• The age groups that frequent the place of business
• The buying habits of a particular age group
• How customer complaints are handled

2. Develop a plan for the research.

a. Define the problem as you will study it.

b. Choose the type of research you will use.

c. Select the techniques you will use to gather data.

d. Develop the mode and format for data collection.

3. Conduct the research.

4. Write a report (or develop a class presentation) that includes four parts:

a. Introduction: a brief overview of the business and the problem studied

b. Methods: the type of research used, the techniques used to gather data (and why they were chosen), the instruments and procedures used, the number of respondents, duration of the study, and other details that would allow someone to replicate your study

c. Results: a compilation of the results (perhaps in table form) and the conclusions drawn

d. Recommendations: a list of recommendations for actions management might take based on the conclusions drawn from the study.