Anyone with good analytical skills? Help required!

Ok guys, I've got this job over summer and I'm a bit stuck with what to do.

Its basically market research - I have to design a questionnaire, use this to contact all the company's clients and then analyse the results.

It seems a simple enough project but having never done anything of the sort before I'm a bit stuck!

The eventual outcome should be that I can analyse which of the services my company offers that the clients are using, who the major competitors are and produce results comparing things such as business type, size and geographical area. Then judging from this data to reach a conclusion as to whether eliminate some of the services offered or expand on any of them.

Asking them to show me what to do is not an option as the reason I was employed was because they were too busy to do this themselves. So basically I've been given an office, a computer with their database on (they use ACT) and a phone and told to get on with it!

Does anyone have any suggestions of how to do this? If you do it would be wonderful!

x

Reply 1

Tatty

I've made quite a few questionnaires for psychology and I found them to be pretty easy - but that was just college work! Hmm, what I can suggest for you (and I could be wrong) is to use closed questions (i.e. what service do you use the most? Then list the services your company offers) that can produce quantitative data which you can analyse and compare the results and then eliminate the service which has the least number... maybe?

Sorry I couldn't be much help. :frown:

Reply 2

alastair

Quick tip before i go to bed! Be very careful of leading questions, its always difficult not to lead without noticing!

Al

Reply 3

Peach

I've used quantitative methodologies but only for social science subjects and the public sector. I could send you some notes but I don't know how much use they would be, as they are not specific to private sector market research. (So actually this part of the post is a bit useless :biggrin:

)

Anyway, I would suggest looking at the British Market Research Association website as a starting point. It gives an overview of data collection techniques etc. Might be of some use -

http://www.bmra.org.uk