This document discusses a marketing research project conducted for Nature Yoga, a small yoga studio in Chicago. It discusses how the research benefits various groups like the client, students, and respondents. It emphasizes the importance of conducting trustworthy, accurate research and considering various perceptions in the analysis to avoid biases. The student reflects on how the project helped with their learning and development of skills relevant to their future career in marketing.

2. Who benefits from my marketing research
contribution? Are my participants going to learn
anything, maybe about themselves?
 Marketing research is a vital part of the marketing process. For companies
to strive, they sometimes need to take some time to analyze what they are
doing right and what they aren’t. That’s where market research comes in.
 Market research is helpful at many different levels. First, it helps the
companies that the research is for. Our customer is Nature Yoga, a small
yoga studio in Chicago. It is great that we get to help a small business like
Nature Yoga continue to prosper. This is good for the entire community.
Not only do the owners benefit, but Nature Yoga’s customers and potential
customers do as well. It also helps us as students on another level
because we are gaining valuable experience with a real client. Even our
respondents benefit, for they are ultimately able to be proactive in changes
to companies that might affect them directly or indirectly. Even if it doesn’t
affect a respondent directly right now, being a research participant may
encourage them to get involved with whatever the topic is later on.

3. How can my research be considered trustworthy?
 My research has indeed been trustworthy as well. First off, my
individual world had been valid. It would be unfair to my team to
contribute work that isn’t accurate. This in turn leads to our work
being trustworthy as a group. Our group owes it to our client to
provide accurate and trustworthy information. We have done
extensive pretesting and analysis to make sure our results are correct.
Our clients will hopefully use this information, so it needs to be
accurate so they can use it for the best results. If we don’t, this can
hurt the industry of market research in general. If we provided
knowingly inaccurate results to our client, they would eventually find
out and that would reflect badly on the industry. In anything you do,
you should make sure your work is trustworthy because it is a
representation of you, your team & your industry.

4. Has my purpose and/or motivation for this research
project remained the same throughout the process?
 My motivation for this research project has changed throughout the
process. While at first it was just about getting my work done for the
class, it eventually turned into me caring about our team, our client
and the overall industry of market research. As I got more involved
and understood the project and market research in general better, I
started to see it as less of a “project” and more of an “experience” that
I could really learn and grow from.

5. How can my predictions from data analysis be
connected to personal perceptions? How apparent
or important are my biases?
 It is often hard to disconnect your personal perceptions from your data
analysis. As a 21-year-old female student, I have a different view than
a 33-year-old male teacher may have. For this project though, I have
done extensive research and feel that I am able to get a pretty
accurate perception of many different segments of consumers.
Having talked to the client, Nature Yoga, I now know their company
better and have taken their companies’ view into consideration along
with my own perception. It is good to have some personal perception
in the mix, because it is good to see things from a different point of
view than maybe just the company or other teammates. But you have
to consider other perceptions as well, as to not have too strong of a
bias in one direction. Your perception, your teammates perceptions,
the companies perceptions and the respondents perceptions must all
be taken into account. Yours matters, but in relation to a bigger
picture.

6. How does this relate to my development?
 While working on this project, I gained valuable skills to help me in my
future career. While working together as a team, I expanded my
teamwork abilities. In marketing, good teamwork ability is a valuable
skill to have. Being able to work directly with the client made the whole
experience very real. Better yet, the client was real! I learned how to
research and fully understand my client, their market, their strengths
and weaknesses and what we could do to help them. Marketing is
what I want to do with my future, so this is like getting a preview of
what I will be doing as a career one day. Learning how to conduct
market research has directly helped my development as a future
marketer.

7. How does this relate to Loyola’s mission?
 Loyola's mission is to "expand knowledge in the service of humanity
through learning, justice, and faith.” Through this project, I am
definitely expanding my knowledge of humanity through learning. I
learned a lot from this project that will help me in my future. I came to
Loyola to get a great education in the field of knowledge that I want to
encompass my life around: advertising and marketing. This
assignment and class in general is helping me further my knowledge
and get one step closer to my future goals! Hopefully by what I
learned from this, I can go on to help others through my career
(coworkers, clients, the public) as well.