Hi ‘Team Product Management’!

I hope that you are having a great week?

I am sending a quick update in response to email questions I have received. I hope that the
following helps to clarify what is required.

These are the questions that I set at the end of class relating to our Social Enterprise Residential
Retreat case study:

In your groups, discuss how you will conduct a concept test for Krama Retreat:

Kinds of information you will need?

From whom, and about who?

How will you collect the data for each stakeholder group?

What obstacles do you anticipate?

Your questions:

1. Which ‘group’: As discussed in class, you are working on this in the group you’re assigned to
for assessment 2/3 – your major assessment.
2. Business reports: You will need to research how to write a business report. Just look up
‘how to write a business report’ on the internet. You are used to looking up information
every day – try it for your studies. You can use Google Scholar or just a general search.
You’ll find millions of hits for business report guidelines. Study two or three and as a group
you can figure out a structure and style for your report. Here’s one example of about 39
million hits I got! You don’t need to follow this exactly but make decisions about what
sections and content are important. You will not lose marks for trying but you will lose
marks for not trying to investigate!

On a general note – part of the learning goal here is to get you to develop your skills in critical
enquiry. As scholars and future business leaders, you need will need to be confident in problem
solving. For this you will need to be able to search for and analyse information. Your active
participation in this kind of process is the most important aspect of your degree studies. None of us
have all the answers – but some of us are better than others and finding them. You need to do the
latter.

So…..for next weeks classes (and the questions I have set above) I will be more specific about what
your teams needs to present if I ask you to:

Kinds of information you will need.

For step 5 of the NPD process, you will need to start developing a marketing plan. These are the key
elements - we will discuss these in class. What information will you need to complete this and
where will you obtain it for the Social Enterprise?
From whom, and about who?

Who will you be gathering data from (source of data). About whom (e.g. the target segments)

Do some background work. Use the internet / Google Scholar to find a academic or industry reports
on the international yoga retreat industry. There is a stack of material available. As product
managers, you need to learn how to find it…

How will you collect the data for each stakeholder group?

What methods will you choose to collect data for your concept test. We will discuss further in class
but I just want you to think about the pros and cons of different approaches to collecting data. For
example research instruments (surveys – online/face to face, or interviews, focus groups etc).

What obstacles do you anticipate?

Research is not easy! What problems do you anticipate and how will you overcome these.

I hope that this helps.

This case study will be important as it will give you ideas about how to conduct your Concept Test
and more broadly, how to think about conducting marketing research in general. This part of the
course is NOT intended to train you to be researchers but to equip you with basic concepts for use in
Product Management.