Course Meeting Times
Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session
Text
Churchill, Gilbert A. Jr., and Dawn lacobucci. Marketing Research: Methodological Foundations. 8th ed. Chicago: The Dryden Press, 2002.
We will cover only a fraction of this 1K page book. Think of it as a comprehensive reference source, not as a textbook.
Software
The data analysis will be done with the JMP program. With respect to the software, there are three options:
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Buy the complete JMP 5 package. The website for ordering and other info is: http://www.jmp.com/software/.
You can download a free demo version of JMP 5, which is disabled in some ways (you can't save files for example).
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Compromise alternative - there is a baby JMP (called JMP-IN). It has most (90%) of the data analysis capability that we use in this class, but it lacks two critical modules. The first one is "cluster analysis" which is a key tool for discovering segments in survey data; the second is "design of experiments" module, which will be important to those projects that do a 'conjoint analysis' exercise.
More information on JMP-IN is available at: http://www.jmp.com/.
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If you are already familiar with a different package (e.g., SPSS, SYSTAT, SAS), feel free to use it (but make sure it has factor analysis and cluster analysis).
NOTE: Although we will distribute some notes indicating how to use the advanced features in JMP (for clustering and perceptual mapping), you will have to learn much of the basics of JMP on your own. We will schedule one session on JMP about half-way through the semester, but our advice is that you start exploring the software on your own right away.
Group Project (3-4 students per project)
This material is tough to learn from a textbook. Therefore, a major element of the course is a survey-based project, which comprises three assignments and a final presentation. The project is described more fully at the end of the syllabus.
Grading
Group Project: 50%
Class Participation: 30%
Conjoint Problem Set: 20%
Project reports are due in Lecture 12.