marketing research

1. Critiquing the proposal and the feedback to Agency group 21
Client group 15 : Ventakesh(B18120) | Bharadwaja(B18149) | Ananth(B18130) |Pratamesh(B18157)
Problem Definition:
The decision area is clearly outlined covering most of the aspects we think are needed. However, there
are certain points that we felt are important and did not find them in the proposal as mentioned below:
1. It would be better to understand the consumer opinion for different levels of consumers like high
frequency users, regular users, rare users and new users. The perception in relation to their usage
levels would be of use.
2. The perception for returns for different types of products would be different. A return of a
perishable product cannot have the same impact as that of a durable. Given the operating
timeframes, perception can be looked across different product types being offered.
3. We appreciate you capturing the scope of fraudulent behaviour as an intention behind returns
through your decision tree approach. Further would suggest including the trigger for such
behaviour (like better prices at other stores, malafide intentions etc) along with scope to control
such behaviour.
4. Also, the knowledge levels of customers influence their perception. A technically competent
person can perceive a process to be easy which a non tech customer may perceive to be hard.
Therefore a sense of normality to be sought when we compare opinions of different pools of
customers.
Research Objectives:
The Research Objectives seem to be slightly offline the decided research problem.
Primarily, as we are seeking to find out the perception of product returns facility across different e-comm
platforms,
i. we feel the focus should be more on bringing out the factors that customer consider
important in the product return process.
ii. We further aim to understand what additional features/factors affect the relative perception
of ease or complexity among different platforms.
iii. Also, certain quantification with respect to the ease and complexity like the no. of steps in the
return process, time frames for returns and repayment, etc.
Secondary requirement to understand the reasons for returns and the factors influencing the returns
along with their impact on e-comm platforms appears to be well covered.
Research Design:
The use of FGD to do the exploratory research for the given problem statement is okay. Using FGD one
could only get the information on product returns and their insights; we need the perception of product

2. returns on different e-commerce platforms is not given by the research design. The FGD would not serve
us in giving the motives.
Sampling Plan:
We want to have variety of customers low use, medium use and high use customers of e-commerce
platforms and the data to be collected from diversified customers.
Here the sampling plan takes only digital literates, which is very good so that we are getting information
only from targeted customers and the plan of having sample from various professional and socio-
economic backgrounds is also a plus for the research to get best results.
However, there might be differences in people perceptions in returns of the products based on its utility,
type and the differences between customers would arise on frequency of the purchase, we don’t see the
sampling covering those.
The sampling plan talks majorly about the XLRI community which would give highly skewed data. The
analysis done by using this data wouldn’t be useful.
Time frame:
Time frame says by 17 days we would get our results, which would be fantastic to have the results in such
a short time. However, we hope the hurriedness would not result in any wrong research results.