Cereal Aisle Assignment

One of the popular types of qualitative research is observational research. For this assignment take a trip
to your local supermarket. Spend 10-15 minutes in the cereal aisle observing people shopping in the aisle. Try
to go when the store is fairly crowded. You may want to tell the store manager you are there and what you are
doing. When done write a 1-3 page paper addressing the issues below and be prepared to share your results with
your classmates on October 3. Be sure to discretely take notes while there.

 Describe the situation. What store did you visit? What time of the day was it? Approximately how many
shoppers were in the store? How many were in the cereal aisle?
 Describe the cereal aisle in the store. Where is it located within the store? How long is it? How many
shelves are there up and down?
 Who was shopping? (Gender, estimated age, dress, etc.) Were there children involved? How else would
you describe the shoppers in the cereal aisle?
 What did the shoppers do? How many different boxes did each shopper appear to look at, pick up, read
the information, etc.? Which ones did each shopper look at? Did he/she end up putting something in the
cart? If so which product?
 Where were the products located that were looked at? Did each shopper only look at products at eye
level or did look at different levels? Did each person walk back and forth in the aisle or stay in one
place?
 Based on your observations, what would you tell the cereal companies that have their products in this
store? Are there recommendations you could make to help any one of them or all them market cereal in
that store?