Inquiring Minds Want to Know

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

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Inquiring Minds Want to Know

Question 1:The Research Question Hierarchy

            After reading the case study on Penton Media, one can build the research question hierarchy. Management Dilemma: Is Penton Media going to experience lower sales from its advertising services if it uses alternative methods for stimulating inquiry considering that companies do not track where their leads come from? Management Question: Are there magazines or publications that are currently producing lesser leads than they did in the previous years? Research questions: Should the company continue to include reader service cards in its magazines to improve service to readers and advertisers? Are there alternative ways of using information technology that can help in enhancing the advertisement revenues as the reader service cards usage continues to decline? Investigative Questions: What is the percentage of subscribers using the reader service card today compared to two years earlier? What alternative methods are customers using to gather more information about a product? Is it possible to implement streamlining strategies for the alternatives within information technology to enhance and sustain the advertising revenues? Management Questions: is the firm going to experience declined revenues and profits resulting from alternative methods in information technology for customer inquiry simulation? Management Decision: drop the use of reader service cards and replace it with information technology alternative methods that most customers are relying on, which are capable of interacting with clients in real-timer.

Question 2: Ethical Issues

            The ethical issues presented in this case study whether the information is presented in a fair and just manner. The research uses questionnaires that are sent to the participants. One of the issues is whether the information reported is from the respondents or whether it was altered. The other issue is whether the power of the researcher has in constructing the case has diminished the perspectives of the participants (Kimmel, 2009).

Question 3: Sampling Plan

            The sampling plan was good for targeting people that use advertisements for their businesses especially considering there were 4,000 managers, engineers, and purchasing agents. The sampling plan was good for random selection except it eliminated some of the most important users, who include individual customers.   

Question 4: Research Design

            The research design used random selection of participants that were sent questionnaires through mails. The sampling used stratified disproportionate random sampling with the subscribers that were divided into 42 cells in terms seven industries and six job tittles. The strength of this research method, interview questionnaires, is the ability to generate comparable data considering all participants are responding to the same questions. Its weakness comes in the inability to generate deeper data as participants may not be able to raise more information that is not asked by the questionnaire (Kimmel, 2009).

Question 5: Survey used for the Study

            In this study, the survey used is questionnaire. Most often, questionnaires are used for gathering information from large number of people. It is important to have a plan for directing the questionnaire design, as well as its implementation. Generally, questionnaires are able to collect quantitative data easily especially where a summary of large amounts of information are needed. In this case, it helped gather such data in large amounts (Fowler, 2013). However, the survey is not able to gather qualitative data well, which is very important for delving into issues deeper. The best surveys should combine both qualitative and quantitative techniques. For this survey, it is not possible to achieve it.

Question 6: Data Analysis

            The data can be presented in a SPSS program with ease by entering each respondent against the items of the questions they answered. Considering there are 676 respondents, there should be the same number of rows. The columns should contain the categories of answers or questions that they answered. In this case, there should be 42 tables each representing a cell (Fowler, 2013).

Question 7: Reporting Statistical Data

            I would present the statistical information of this case to the Industry Week decision maker using three methods together. The first one would be textual reporting, where I would provide all the details of the results, include how I arrived at them. The text will be important in explaining the findings, outlining any trends and providing the contextual information. The other method would be verbal, where I explain the information provided in the written report (Beiske, 2007). Finally, I would use visual representation that includes graphs and other ways of presenting statistical data. This shall then be explained both verbally an in written form.

Question 8: Limitations of the Study

            One of the limitations of the study is that one cannot be certain that all the participants shall be willing to respond to the questionnaires. In addition, the participants are given the questionnaires to answer at their own time. One cannot be sure the questions were answered by the intended participant. The fact that there are no face-to-face interviews, it is hard to ascertain the credibility of the answers turned in (Beiske, 2007).

Question 9: Industry Week

            As the decision-maker for the Industry Week, I would consider further research before deciding on discontinuation of the reader response card. More research should be conducted to find out whether there is another way of presenting the reader response cards to the customers such as through information technology. Although the findings indicate that people favor websites to the reader response cards, it is important to research on the differences that make the internet more preferable.

References

Beiske, B. (2007). Research methods: Uses and limitations of questionnaires, interviews, and case studies. München: GRIN Verlag GmbH.

Fowler, F. J. (2013). Survey research methods. Los Angeles: SAGE.

Kimmel, A.J. (2009). Ethical Issues in Behavioral Research: Basic and Applied Perspectives. Hoboken N.J: John Willey & Sons.