Basic Marketing Research with Excel 3rd Edition by Alvin Burns,Ronald Bush

Exercise 8

ABR Marketing Research
The authors wish to thank Dr. Harriet Bettis-Outland, Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of West Florida, for revising this case. 62
It was late Friday evening in December, and Barbara Jefferson, a senior research analyst for ABR Marketing Research, was working furiously to complete the media plan portion of the Precision Grooming Products report. PGP was considering introducing a men's hair gel, which required demographic characteristics and media habits of male hair gel users. In addition, attitudinal information about product attributes such as oiliness, stickiness, masculinity, and fragrance was needed.
The findings were to be presented Monday afternoon, and a long series of problems and delays had forced Barbara to stay late on Friday evening to complete the report. Complicating matters, Barbara felt that her boss, Michelle Barry, expected the statistical analysis to be consistent with ABR's initial recommendations to Precision. Barbara, Michelle, and David Miller, from Precision's advertising agency, were to meet Monday morning to finalize ABR's presentation to Precision.
Back in September, Barbara had recommended that 250 users of men's hair gel products be surveyed from each of fifteen metropolitan areas. Phillip Parker from Precision's marketing department had argued that conclusions about local usage in each city would not be accurate unless each city's sample size was proportional to its population. In other words, sample sizes for larger cities should be larger than for smaller cities. Furthermore, Phillip feared that males in metropolitan areas differed from males in rural areas with regard to usage or other important characteristics. Barbara finally convinced Phillip that sample sizes proportional to population would mean only twenty-five to fifty interviews in some smaller cities, which would be too few to draw statistically valid conclusions. Furthermore, expanding the survey to include rural users would have required committing more money to the project-money Precision didn't want to spend.
In October, a Des Moines, Iowa, pretest revealed that the questionnaire's length was driving the cost per completed interview to about $18. Total expenses would be well over budget if that cost held for the fifteen metro areas. If the survey costs exceeded $65,000 (counting the pilot study), then precious little money would be left for the focus groups, advertising, and packaging pretesting in ABR's contract with Precision (see Table).
TABLE
Proposed Budget

Since Precision was a new account with big potential, a long-term relationship with them would be valuable. (Business at ABR had been slow this past year.) Feeling "under the gun," Barbara met with Michelle and Phillip, who agreed to reduce the sample to 200 men in only eleven metropolitan areas.
In early November, a new problem arose. After surveying eight metro areas, Barbara discovered that her assistant had accidentally deleted all questions on media habits from the questionnaire given to ABR's vendor for the phone interviews. When told of the missing questions problem, Michelle and Phillip became visibly angry at the vendor. After much discussion, they decided there was too little time to hire a new vendor and resample the eight areas. Therefore, they agreed to reinsert the media questions for the remaining three cities and just finish the survey.
Barbara's task now was to make the most of the data she had. Because responses from each of the three cities were reasonably similar, and each city was in a different region (East, West, and Midwest), Barbara felt confident that the three-city data were representative. Therefore, she decided to base the media plan on the large differences between her results and the national averages for adult men-making sports magazines and newspapers the primary vehicles for Precision's advertising (see Table).
TABLE
Comparison of Media Habits: Three-City Sample of Male Hair Gel Users Versus U.S. Adult Men

Barbara's confidence in the media plan was bolstered by a phone conversation with David Miller. Until a short time ago, his agency had handled the advertising for Village Toiletries, so he had valuable information about this competitor's possible responses to Precision's new product. David liked Barbara's recommendations, thought Phillip would also approve, and agreed to support the media plan in Monday's meeting. Indeed, Barbara thought, David had been a big help.
The Precision project had put a great deal of stress on Barbara, who hated spending evenings away from her family-especially near the holidays! If the presentation went well and more business was stirred up, then Barbara suspected that she would be spending even more evenings away from her family. But if the presentation went poorly or the data-collection errors became an issue, then Precision might look elsewhere for market research, thus jeopardizing Barbara's future with ABR. Either way, she was not feeling too comfortable.
After you have thoroughly read the case, list what you believe are the issues in the case.