Current state of the industry segment

Case Introduction:

The St. Joseph’s Hospital Shop is looking for help. This NGO’s problem is that they have a good product by way of crafts, women’s clothing and gifts. However they are just barely making a profit. They have asked if we could do a marketing plan based on research to see if they can increase business. They have no money or very little so it is a challenge. A challenge faced by many small charities and NGO’s

The project will include the following sections:

• The purpose of the research, the management problem, and the research question or hypothesis,
• A brief description of the current state of the industry segment being studied
• Research method/methods chosen and why and how they will be used
• Conduct exploratory research using primary and/or secondary data based on the method(s) chosen
• Describe in detail how the data was analyzed (since samples may often be small statistical validity is not important but the students should indicate this as a problem and explain how it might be solved if more time and money were available)
• Analyze and describe the results you found in a professional manner including ethical considerations.
• Describe further research that might be useful in solving the problem or related problems
• Submit a properly formatted report (use Purdue Owl: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/ ) that either solves the problem or proves the hypothesis or if the problem is not solved that the hypothesis is rejected or why the research failed. Failed research is not bad … failed research that fails and you do not know why is bad.
• Make recommendations for how the problem might be approached in the future.