(1) If you wanted to study how consumers decide which brand of perfume to buy, what research method would

you use Explain.

Survey research can be used to study how consumers decide which brand of perfume to buy. It is preferred because it is possible to obtain information about the opinion, behavior and decisions of the consumers using surveys. Moreover, surveys are preferred over any other research method because; surveys are a form of primary data source. Existing secondary data sources cannot be used for this study in particular because understanding the consumer behavior in deciding between products varies from one product type to another and hence it requires designing a survey dedicated to study how consumers decide between perfume brands. Also, though observation and experimentation are also forms of primary data sources, they cannot effectively help study the consumer behavior in this study as both observation and experimentation are limited by size, moreover observation may not be able to provide accurate first hand views on the consumer behavior and experimentation might have the inability of not being able to achieve realism in lab. In addition, since surveys can be reached out to a large number of people, the analysis of survey results might be able to provide a clearer picture for it has advantage of large amount of data being collected and hence project the views of majority of people.

(2) Go to www.designyourowneyewear.com. This web site allows you to design your own eyewear. Play around with the web site and provide suggestions of how this web site can be used to gather marketing intelligence. Market intelligence' is the information relevant to a companys markets, gathered and analyzed specifically for the purpose of accurate and confident decisionmaking in determining market opportunity, market penetration strategy, and market development metrics(1). The functionality of this website provides the website with a great potential to gather valuable market intelligence data in the eye wear industry. Since the website allows users to design creative eyewear frame designs online, the creators of the website can use this data to understand the current eyewear frame trends and tastes of the users. The five step procedure that is available in the website

helps users design the eye wear frame design they desire and moreover, since it is also possible to upload a photo of themselves, the website actually serves as a virtual eye wear showroom, where they can try different frames on them and chose the one that is most suitable to their face. Hence, the frame design decisions the users take on the website are actually a highly accurate representation of their individual tastes and decision patterns. As a result, this data has a good potential to be used for descriptive research purposes to understand the tastes, attitudes, demographics and potential of the market. This kind of market intelligence is also better than surveys as the users are not aware that they are contributing to data gathering and they are not forced to contribute as in surveys. Hence, the website can analyze the data of the various shapes, size and the color of the frames being chosen by the public to find the most popular or the most sought after frame styles and this data can be used by eye wear frame manufacturing firms to manufacture those frame styles that are popular among the public.

(3) Design an online question survey on what consumers think of Kinokuniya versus Prologue. There are online research resources like SurveyMonkey. Analyze the results. What did you think of this online survey method? Do you think it encourages more objective or more biased responses? What are the strengths and weaknesses of online surveys?

The survey designed questioned people on the bookstore they are currently using and their opinion about the differences between Kinokuniya and Prologue on various aspects such as their collection of books, variety, prices of books, discounts, offers, services etc. and their overall preference between Kinokuniya and Prologue. In summary out of the total 43 people who took the survey around 69% chose Kinokuniya over Prologue as their overall preference for a bookstore. This survey produced some insights about the differences in the service and value proposition offered by Kinokuniya and Prologue. Though the data collected, appeared to reason the public preference of Kinokuniya over Prologue, however on a detailed analysis there seemed to be few contradictions among certain parts of the result.

This type of survey cannot be entirely depended upon to understand the relation between public preference and the value proposition added, as there appears to be plethora of other factors affecting peoples overall decision. Factors such as reference, lifestyle, personality and self-concept, culture believes etc. play an important role in their decision-making. In addition, it was also seen that people who had been using Kinokuniya appeared more inclined towards voting for Kinokuniya despite being aware of certain benefits offered by prologue. Thus online survey methods, particularly for studies like this encourages more of a biased response than an objective response. In addition, there is also another short coming of people filling up surveys without even reading the questions and only with a sole aim of completing the survey.

STRENGTHS OF ONLINE SURVEYS:

1. Does not take much time to develop compared to other data collection methods. 2. Cost effective and easier to administrate compared to other methods. 3. Online surveys can easily be administrated online or through mobile devices. 4. Since the surveys can be conducted online, it helps overcome the limitation of geographical dependence and can be reached to people in any part of the world. 5. Data can be collected from a large number of people. 6. With online advanced survey softwares it is easier to analyze data, determine statistical significance, reliability and multiple variable analysis is also possible. 7. Flexibility in data analysis because it is possible to ask a variety of questions about any subject. 8. Cheapest and easiest form of primary data source.

WEAKNESS OF ONLINE SURVEYS:

1. It is not possible to obtain certain kinds of information through survey like feelings, emotions, behavior etc. 2. Online surveys lack validity 3. It is not possible to determine if the person participating in the survey is being truthful. 4. The respondent may read and interpret questions differently and hence there is a level of subjectivity in the response 5. The participants of the survey might answer the survey superficially especially when the survey is too long or complicated.

REFERENCES:

1. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_intelligence

2. http://libweb.surrey.ac.uk/library/skills/Introduction%20to%20Research%20a nd%20Managing%20Information%20Leicester/page_51.htm