Consumer Research

Current Opportunity - FREE Consumer/Client Behaviour Analysis development by Goodman 4th Year Marketing Students available to area non-profits and small for-profits (under 10 employees) this Spring (May-July).

Teams of students (4-5) will be given the option to participate in a service-learning consulting project with area businesses for the purpose analyzing a problem or challenge that organizations are experiencing with their clients/consumers.

Example: An organization may be experiencing a drop off in attendance at its major fundraising event and want to know the reasons why and how to address the decline.

Example: A business might find customers only walk through the front half of the store and not walk to the back half and want to know why.

Example: An organization may have trouble keeping clients attending the program with regularity or to completion of the program.

Example: A business/organization may have a product/service that does not seem to be meeting its potential and want to know why more customers/ clients aren’t buying or participating.

How this works
The student team will meet with the community partner to determine the key issues/concerns that management has involving clients/consumers. The purpose of this interview is to uncover what management thinks is the best way to address the problem or how they’ve attempted to respond in the past. This interview will also get at managements’ view of who the target market is and how they think the program/product/event is perceived by the consumer.

In the second phase, the students will survey a limited number of consumers/clients and get their perspective of the event/product/service. 20 consumers will be surveyed (the students may be asked to sign information privacy agreements). The student team will analyze the results and apply the consumer behaviour theory they are learning to make recommendations to the organizations to address the issues uncovered, which may or may not match the managements’ perspective. Students will recommend changes to the existing tactics and suggest possible new tactics to employ.

Your Commitment
Projects are tied to a student’s overall course mark and must be completed within a 2-month time period, and must be managed around varying student schedules. We ask our partners to ensure timely transfer of information and flexibility in coordinating meetings to support project success.
• Management Interview (on campus): May 24 at 5:30pm in Taro Hall 405 (provide team with background information and contact information for 20 clients/customers)
• Recommendations Presentation (on campus): either June 24, 26, or July 3 (depending on students’ presentation date) at 5:30pm in Taro Hall 405 This is not absolutely required but will allow you to ask questions about the final reports recommendations. You will receive an e-report.

Interested?
Organizations interested in participating can submit an e-mail to:

Gillian Kemp, Relationship Manager: gillian.kemp@brocku.ca [1]

The e-mail should include one or two sentences to describe the organization or business and one or two sentences to describe the client/customer behaviour to be investigated. SPACE IS LIMITED.