Inquiring Minds Want to Know - Now Case - Coursework Example

The other research question could be, should the company retain the reader services cards in it future advertisement services? Investigative questions: How does the current trend in the number of reader service card subscribers compare with the recent past? What are the alternative services being used by the clients and how can the alternative methods be implemented in Penton Media to enhance its advertising revenue returns? 2. Ethical issues relevant to this case study. The ethical principles of confidentiality, privacy and individual autonomy emerge as the most relevant issues in this case study.

Since the company investigates individual customer behaviors and views, it is therefore, ethically obliged to ensure that its finding remain confidential and are not exposed to other people other than for the company’s use only. In this case, the company committed itself to respect the principles of confidentiality and privacy in handling the participants’ responses (Cooper & Schindler, 2010). On the other hand, the company must seek the consent of the participants before sharing its findings with the rest of the company stakeholders.

The findings should remains anonymous from the point of collection to its analysis in which no identification should be given for responses provided. Researchers must present the research findings without any form of biasness or manipulation of the results to suite certain expectations. 3. Describe the sampling plan. Analyze its strengths and weaknesses? Researchers in this study applied the unrestrictive random sampling plan in which different sample were drawn from the company’s database of 1.

7million subscribers. A small sample of 300 subscribers was then used for the mail survey pretest. Researchers are also used the stratified disproportionate random sampling to draw another sample of 4,000 participants including executives, managers, purchasing agents and engineers from the company’s database(Cooper & Schindler, 2010). Some weaknesses can identified with sampling plan including the possibility of locking out some participants that could provide important information about the problem faced by the company.

The use of self-reporting questionnaires provides participants with the freedom to present their views although resulted in significant reduction of the targeted sample. The use of mail surveys in form of questionnaires made the collection data less costly and time consuming. 4. Describe the research design? The research design involved in this study was the multistage design in which different samples and different phenomena were studied in the same study. The study entailed the pretests and the main study.

The first study established the views of subscribers through questionnaires and phone surveys, then a selected sample of 300 subscribers and finally a sample of 4000 participants selected from the company’s leadership (Cooper & Schindler, 2010). 5. Critique the survey used for the study The survey did not reflect the actual situation in the publication market segment because the sample was drawn from the company’s database comprising of its clients rather than obtain information about the market.

Therefore, segmentation of the sample population limited the information obtained from the study. The study also had a significantly high error margin of +- 4% which raises issues of reliability and validity of the data obtained (Cooper & Schindle