Overview: You work for Elsa, who is the vice president of marketing for Sears. Your role is a marketing researcher. At other times, you serve more as a marketing generalist than anything. You are now headed into a meeting with Elsa. Elsa: Before we go too far into our conversation, I want to remind you we managed to cut our revenue by more than 50% in the past 10 years. In fact, we only have 182 stores open today and, just 10 years ago, we had 3500 stores open. Manny: Sears performance is bad. Still, you know that I joined Sears because I believe in you and what the rest of the leadership are doing.

Instructions: Elsa: Please do your own research to understand the benefits of digital over traditional media. Our research will inform high-level Sears decisions and could even be the difference between the success or failure of the company. With this in mind, please be sure that your research only includes high-quality and reputable sources. We will meet each week to discuss the project and to talk about next steps. For now, it would be good to take the first step! Of course, this first step is a market research proposal that we put in front of our senior leadership. This market research proposal should include, at a minimum, these elements: Purpose and scope the marketing environment data sources methodology Key findings