Marketing: Custom Edition for Texas A&M University 17th Edition by William Pride,Ferrell

Exercise 27

You work as a marketing researcher for a manufacturer of energy drinks. Your company is designing a new product that will be targeted at college and university students. In order to learn more about their energy drink habits, the company plans to conduct a survey. After conducting some research, you determine that the best survey method that fits your firm's budget is a mail survey. You know from past experience that the response rate for mail surveys is approximately 10 percent. Your manager tells you that he wants at least 550 completed surveys in order to make an informed decision. You also know that approximately 14 percent of respondents who mail surveys back to you fail to answer certain questions. Given the low response rate and the rate of unfinished surveys, how large will the sample size need to be to comply with your manager's request? With this estimated response rate and the number of surveys that the company plans to distribute, do you feel that this sample will be representative of the entire population of college and university students?