Scenario You are the Marketing Manager for Mad Mex Australia Fresh Mexican Grill. http://www.madmex.com.au/ You are wanting to commission research to gain a better understanding of the customers you have and the market you operate in. You write a brief to help shape the research. Task In this brief: 1. State three specific research objectives that would be useful to give you this better understanding of your customers and market. Explain and justify why these are useful. Be sure to show your understanding of marketing and buyer behaviour learnt from prior courses. 2. Broadly outline the key questions that will need to be answered for each research objective. This is not about writing a questionnaire, but rather about giving enough detail that it can be understood what information each research objectives will cover. 3. Indicate whether you think qualitative or quantitative data (or both) will be needed to meet the each research objective. Be sure to justify your selection. 4. Detail any information you expect the company to have available to it internally that may assist in answering the research objectives or shaping the research; and 5. Broadly outline what respondent groups will need to be researched for each research objective. You do not need to specify budgets, research methods to be used or timelines. The following criteria will be used to assess your work. Marking Criteria for Assignment 1 and Weighting Ability to apply answer to the industry in question (15%) Understanding of the role of an external market research provider and the questions they can answer (10%) Objectives - explanation and justification showing prior learning (20%) Research key questions for each objective(20%) Discussion of what broad approach (qual or quant) is needed (10%) Discussion of information available internally (10%) Identification of respondent groups (10%) Presentation [structure, spell checked etc]; clarity, correct referencing [if used] 5% Assignment Guidelines You need to think from the perspective of a company's marketing manager. Think about the decisions a marketing manager would need to make and the information you would want before doing so. Write the assignment as thought you were the manager compiling a report for senior management (clear, professional & concise). You can write in the first person and use words like "I", "we", "our product". This assignment is testing your understanding of the role of market research and your ability to apply it to a situation – can you demonstrate how research objectives should flow from a management problem and can you think about research design at a very broad level. It also tests your understanding of prior knowledge and ability to identify relevant secondary research. To answer this assignment you will need to use your course readings, lectures, textbook, and tutorials. However, this is an applied assignment so you will not find the answer to the assignment written anywhere. Remember that you are not required to specify budgets, timelines or give specific method recommendations. Headings and dot points are encouraged. A key objective of this assignment is expressing yourself clearly and concisely so please stay within the page limit. Penalties will apply if you exceed 1000 words The assignment states you are the marketing manager. Please answer from this perspective. The thing to focus on is answering the five assignment questions and demonstrating understanding of the concepts. You do not need to contact the organisation directly to complete this assignment, but you will need to show you have done some basic research on the organisation and thought about the industry the company is in. Q1. This discussion should demonstrate your prior knowledge from pre-requisite courses as to what are appropriate key marketing objectives marketing managers might have when they want to know about their customers and market. Q2. This discussion should show your ability to break down a broad research objective into smaller research questions, without writing a questionnaire. It shows what issues need to be addressed for you to meet the research objective. Q3. This shows your ability to know what broad research approaches are suited to a particular context/set of research objectives. Q4. This shows your knowledge of the sorts of internal information typically available to assist a research project. Q5. This demonstrates your knowledge to think about respondents who might be most appropriate for particular research objectives. For example, if you have objectives around customer service, then your respondent group will obviously have to be existing customers who are actually in a position to give feedback from having experienced the service. Some tips: DO NOT write a questionnaire. We are interested in the research objectives, NOT the specific questions to put in the questionnaire. DO NOT actually write a brief, this is an essay/question parts assignment. Make sure you address all parts of the task in your answer. Each has some weight You are expected to use the Harvard reference system. In your answer make sure you reference all sources of information. Please show that you know the difference between a bibliography and reference list.