Exercise Background:

You're a newly hired middle manager in the marketing department of a large food manufacturer. Having just completed your formal study of marketing management, you're excited about the opportunity to apply some of the theories that you've read about to real situations faced by a real business. As luck would have it, you haven't been on the job very long when you're confronted by an intriguing problem. Your boss, the VP for marketing, has developed a survey to solicit customer feedback about the company's products. Unfortunately, the feedback varies considerably, with responses typically ranging from 2 to 5 on a scale of 1 to 5. Even you can see that such a wide range of data isn't very helpful in drawing conclusions about customer opinions. Moreover, sales have been slowly but steadily declining over time, and upper management has been putting pressure on the marketing department to figure out why.

Suspecting that the survey results are so broad because they reflect a broad range of customers, you make a suggestion to your boss: "To get a better idea of what their needs are, why don't we gather some information about our customers themselves? For example, our customers include individual consumers, schools, restaurants, and other organizations. Maybe each type of customer wants something different from our products." Your boss gives you a patronizing look and says, "Our products have been best-sellers for years, and do you want to know why? Because good quality is good qualityalways has been and always will be. Show me a 'customer' and I'll show you somebody who just wants good quality."

questions:

question 1) Go back to your office (or your dorm room, the library, or your kitchen table) and compose a written proposal for your boss in which you outline your position on developing a customer-needs survey. Be sure that your proposal accomplishes two goals: (1) It emphasizes your fundamental concernnamely, that in order to provide products that meet customer needs, the marketing department must better understand what those needs are. (2) It communicates some good reasons why the marketing department should follow through on your proposal. (Hint:Telling your boss bluntly that he's wrong probably won't get the job done.)

question 2) Now review what you've written. Do you think that your boss will change his mind? If yes, which of your reasons is most likely to persuade him? If no, what might be your next move in trying to get your proposal a fair hearing from management?

question 3) What, if any, resources would you consider using in developing both your response and written communication?