Case 8.

1 Solution:

Answer 1:
The objectives of the research study could emerge as follows
 To find out the shopping behavior of customers with reference to shopping behavior of
customers (construct : shopping behavior)
 To investigate the awareness of the customers towards malls. (construct: customer awareness)
 To find out what is the attitude and perception of the customers towards mall purchase
(constructs: customer attitude and perception)
 To find out their level of satisfaction with mall purchase (construct: customer satisfaction)
 To profile the consumers who prefer to purchase at a Mall. (construct: profiling of customer)
For designing the hierarchical tree structure, you have to expand all the constructs from the research
objectives. For example, for the last objective that is for profiling the customers, we should expand on
what information/ factors should be questioned for profiling. Research papers enlist both
psychographic and demographic questions/ factors. Because if the attitude towards mall buying is to
be studied then the overall attitudes and beliefs as well as lifestyle variables become important. Thus
psychographic questions must be asked.
In the demographic questions the instructor must evaluate and illustrate how all demographic
information may not be important. For example important ones are:
 gender
 Age group
 Occupation
but
 Nature of job
 house ownership
 native place
are not variables of significance.
Answer 2:
Even though the questionnaire has addressed the stated objectives it has not covered the objectives
comprehensively. As exemplified with demographic profiling, and as stated in the earlier question
with reference to customer profile, the questionnaire does not ask questions related to psychographics
at all. Similarly, you have to see for the other factors of constructs whether the questions are there or
not.
Answer 3 and 4:
The two questions may be discussed together because as you evaluate and identify the errors
in designing the suggested modifications for the questionnaire would automatically surface.
For evaluating the designed questionnaire, one should see:
  questionnaire structure and sequencing
 the clarity and content of the questions asked
 the type of question format
 The physical characteristics of the questionnaire.
Some key points for suggestions and modification which could be discussed for each one of
these could be
1. The questionnaire does not begin with any salutations or greetings.
2. Considering that this is a mail questionnaire, the purpose has to be more clearly
explained, along with introduction of the investigator(s).
3. The demographic details must come at the end of the questionnaire
4. More demographic questions need to be added
5. There should be a qualifying question in case the questionnaire is to filled up only by
buyers (Q.1. could serve this purpose)
6. The next set of questions have to relate to shopping behavior- Q. 1a& b and 2 are
exploring this but are again inadequate and more questions related to mode of
payment, planned/with shopping list/ home delivery etc. need to be asked.
7. Q. 3 measures aided recall of malls, one may argue for unaided recall as well. Also
even in case of aided, the list of mall is not exhaustive thus either it should be made
exhaustive or there must be a response category- Any other, that puts forth more
options.
8. Q.4 would give answer to the objective on perception towards malls, but more
options can be given.

Solution of Case 8.2

The way of answering will be the same. Just Some key points for suggestions and modification
which could be discussed for each one of questions can be (according to me):
1. The questionnaire does not begin with any salutations or greetings.
2. The questionnaire must start by giving an introduction of the investigator(s) alongside
the purpose of the study.
3. The demographic details must come at the end of the questionnaire
4. More demographic questions like age, educational qualification, and occupation can
have response categories given as class intervals which the respondent can
appropriately tick to answer.
5. There needs to be a qualifying question about whether he/she is a reader of general
interest magazines. Q. 1-4 cover this adequately.
6. Q. 5 is serving no purpose and can be deleted.
7. Q. 6 is an extremely confused effort at measuring perception about India today and
Outlook as well as measuring the satisfaction on various criteria.
8. Aim is to segregate and design questions related to perception about the general
interest magazines, especially India Today and Outlook. These would result in the
criteria used while reading general interest magazines. Next, the criteria can be
phrased in question form either on a likert scale or a semantic differential scale.
9. Next question must measure the reader’s satisfaction with reference to each of the
identified criteria for the two magazines in the form of sub statements of the main
question. This question can be on an interval scale.
10. Then this question should be followed by an overall satisfaction with magazine
question
(As designed in Q.9).
11. Q. 8 is presumably a rough attempt at psychographic and establishing the lifestyle, this
question lacks face validity and is inadequate to attempt lifestyle profiling of the
reader. Gap is in formulating appropriate psychographic questions.
12. Q. 10 which is supposed to be measuring brand image of the two magazines can be
supported by more questions.

**************************************