Week 15 - Day 2

Marketing class. Monday (yesterday) the teacher drops in for 5 minutes to tell us that she has to go to the doctors again (more pain around her back) and we have to make up a survey for the marketing research section of the book. The subject is the contents of sugars and fats in Mcdonalds food. Then she left to go to the doctors.

Now I have spent about 15 months working as a survey interviewer during my early years here in Canada. So I have experience in knowing what sort of questions to ask. We were in teams of 4 and I appointed myself the secretary. I had to, because none of the 3 members of my team are native English speakers. One is from Bangladesh, one french speaking from Switzerland and one portugese speaking from Brazil.

Anyway I typed the questions while we discussed what we wanted. While I allowed age and gender questions to be on the survey, I refused to allow the income demographic to be on the survey, because income has no direct bearing on the sugar and fat content of McDonalds food. Most people buy Mcdonalds food because it is cheap.

I was rather proud of the finished survey. We asked for age and gender, and then how often the person visit McDonalds, what their top 5 meal choices are and why they liked those choices (price, healthy, tasty or other).

Then we got into details. Do you think the following items have too much sugar - yes or no, followed by a LONG list of Mcdonalds food items. Next was Do you think the following items have too much fat - yes or no, followed by a shorter list of Mcdonalds food items.

Next we asked if they could rate (from 1 to 5) the same items on the list for too much or too little sugar and then the same items for too much or too little fat. And lastly we asked for any comments or suggestions they may have to help reduce the sugar and fat content of McDonalds items.

Now I know sort of what goes into a survey. I think I would rather like to do a lot more of that too. Took us just under 2 hours to complete, and that was the end of the class.

The teacher was back in the class today, so we covered both chapters - the marketing research and the market demand chapters.