Survey from Cornell Hotel School
 

My name is Justin Wai and I am a student at the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University. I am representing the school's Department of Marketing to ask for your help in participating in a research that studies vacation preferences - your choice and demand for vacation destinations, resorts, activities, etc.

Your responses will only be used for the purposes of this marketing study.

Simply click on the following hyperlink to start the online survey.

http://atcdb.cit.cornell.edu/survey/.../marketing.htm

Thank you in advance for your help! Please direct all inquires to [email protected].

Hi Justin,

I went through your questionnaire. This is a study being conducted for a commercial enterprise.

Focus group participants get paid for this sort of study.

It is not appropriate for you to ask us to do this for free.

Dear Ira,

First of all, thank you so much for providing us with your opinion in our study.

However, I am dissappointed to hear that you are doubting the integrity of our research. As stated in my previous post, information collected in the survey will only be used for academic research purposes. I am unsure what element of the survey prompts your inaccurate accusation. Should you doubt the integrity of our study, I encourage you to contact the Cornell Hotel School administration to verify our claim.

In any case, thank you for your help. Should you continue to doubt our integrity, I would be more than happy to provide you with a copy of our study results.

Dear Justin,

Question No 26.

"The proposed concept is a small and intimate resort located at a destination similar to Ayvalik, Turkey. "

I have over 40 years experience in the professor business. This is not academic research. It is marketing research.

I do not question your integrity, only your methodology. This is the sort of marketing research for which the participants are usually paid.

Agreed - this research looks commercial and is the type that should be compensated for. I can;t imagine a reputable university would attempt to do this type of project without funding from a sponsor - which would involve compensating participants.

And I don;t have any years in the professor business - but I do have a significant number in the market resarch business.

As a retired professor, I think this looks like a student project because the poll questions are amateurish and not done to the level of a professional pollster. That's to be expected of a student, but you should have pre-tested the questions and adjusted them. For example, the question: do you have children? I answered "yes"--but they are in their 30s. The question should be: do you have children under 18? You didn't have "retired" as an occupation, which skews your results, and when you ask about hotels/resorts, it sounds like you assume people go to one place and stay there, rather than traveling from day to day. Also, please use a spell checker. It's "separated," not "seperated." Finally, the purpose of the poll is unclear. I think you're gathering a smattering of data but when you're done you'll find that you missed asking some important questions. Did your professor approve this questionnaire? Is there any way you can start over on this? Fodorites are a helpful group and we'd like to help you, but you've got to put forth a better effort.

COMPANIES order marketing research and they pay very well for it. Justin, get your own website and stop freeloading on somebody's else.

I have to agree with happytourist-- this looks like a student project for a marketing student. I suspect that we're being asked to help out with Justin's term paper in Resort Marketing 101. This seems to be NOT some highfalutin' piece of academic research, but neither a genuine piece of commercial work.

And while it's true that participants in focus groups are often compensated, that's due to their much higher respondent burden -- it's not common to compensate respondents to a 5-minute questionnaire.

I was going to be a good guy and complete the survey, but like others, I was very unimpressed with the quality of the questions. I ended up signing off after answering a few questions.

ditto to Howaard R

Thank you for all your responses! I have to admit that my teammates and I are impressed by the enthusiasm among fodorites!

In response to your concerns, I will explain the purpose and nature of this study in greater detail. This is a survey conducted for a student-run research on Hospitality Marketing. My teammates and I formulated a resort concept based on Baby Boomers' wants and needs. To investigate if the assumptions we made regarding Baby Boomers' purchasing behaviors were accurate, we formulated the simple survey in question to identify the difference in opinions toward our concept among different age and socioeconomic groups. We hope that the results will show that Baby Boomers display stronger interest in the concept than other age groups.

I apologize for the poor quality of the questions. This is our first time composing a questionnaire. We thank Ira and HappyTourist for the constructive feedback. We will reevaluate our questions and make changes accordingly.

Once again, thank you for your help!

Hello Justin,

Now that we have cleared up the question of whether this is a marketing survey.

I would be happy to help you improve your questionnaire.

ira, you are one nice guy - a real ray of bright sunshine so badly needed in today's gloomy world.

That's really good of you ira.

Justin, I did try to take your questionnaire as well. I'm no professor and can't assist with proper academic research. I'm just a traveler on the younger side of your baby boomer demographic.

If this helps you reformulate at all, I found myself answering your questions in a way that almost felt adversarial as the questions progressed. Why? Because I'm not someone who would go to an exotic destination and then stay at a resort. Now, that's not to say that it's not a good idea, or that there isn't a good market for that product. But when you came here, you qualified this as a study in "vacation preferences". Once I was there, and you got further into the specifics of resort facilities, I honestly had no good answers. They didn't apply, as the first more general questions already stated I stayed in small guesthouses, B&Bs and inns. So, I checked a number of "not importants" and "not very likelys". Your results from those sort of respondants who should have already been eliminated as a target audience will skew your results. (ie - I'm a traveler, but not a potential resort guest)

Would you really say that if it turns out that 50% of random travelers would not stay in a resort, that it's not a suitable undertaking? Or would you just sift those answers out... if so, why would you ask that group (my group) to participate? No grumbling from me, obviously I was not majorly busy. But I think my input and others like it aren't what you're looking for and you could save yourself and others some time if you pre-qualify your target audience.

Thank you CB.

Very good suggestion from Clifton, but maybe Justin and company do want to query people who wouldn't go to their resort to test their hypotheses regarding baby boomers of a certain age.

ira, agreed that is what it sounds like the goal was> They may want a "skip to question X, based on the input of something like "would you consider this resort experience", before they begin trying to tailor the amenities. If you were to give any weight to my answers, it would seem like a certain percentage of visitors would not be interested in a pool, when in fact, many of those respondants wouldn't be there at all. It seemed like it was trying to be both a feasibility study as well as trying to lay out a direction for just the "yes" answers. That's why I felt the decision tree should "branch".

Clifton - what you are referring to as a branch in the decision tree is called a "skip pattern". And since Justin seems not to know what a skip
pattrn is or how to construct one he really shouldn't be doing market research. In fact what he is doing doesn;t really qualify as market research - more just a sereis of Q&A.

Justin - if you want this resarch to have any meaning at all - even directrionally, never mind statistical significance - you will need to completely recast the questionnaire with a proper skip pattern allowing for all the possible answer options - not just direct responders to the answers you prefer or assume they will want. You also need to determine up front how it must be powered in order to achieve p<.5 or p<.1 - whatever your profs standards are.

Is it time for someone to say, "Don't they teach these kids anything, anymore? Cornell was a lot better when I was there". :)

Yes! In my day, when we had to walk 14 miles through the snow to get from the dorm to class, and used extra chickens from the farm to pay our tuition - honest I think the standards were a lot higher.

Not to get off the topic - but not only are SAT scores falling off the edge of the earth - but I understand it has been made easier TWICE since I took it (in 1492) and it wasn't any too difficult then. But such are the disadvantages of great age - living to see the falling standards of the younger gnerations!

>In my day, when we had to walk 14 miles through the snow to get from the dorm to class, .... <

Me too. It was uphill both ways.