Ashland MultiComm Services (AMS) provides high-quality telecommunications services in the Greater Ashland area. AMS traces its roots to a small company that redistributed the broadcast television signals from nearby major metropolitan areas but has evolved into a provider of a wide range of broadband services for residential customers. AMS offers subscription-based services for digital cable television, local and long-distance telephone services, and high-speed Internet access. Recently, AMS has faced competition from other service providers as well as Internet-based, on demand streaming services that have caused many customers to “cut the cable” and drop their subscription to cable video services. AMS management believes that a combination of increased promotional expenditures, adjustment in subscription fees, and improved customer service will allow AMS to successfully face these challenges. To help determine the proper mix of strategies to be taken, AMS management has decided to organize a research team to undertake a study. The managers suggest that the research team examine the company’s own historical data for number of subscribers, revenues, and subscription renewal rates for the past few years. They direct the team to examine year-to-date data as well, as the managers suspect that some of the changes they have seen have been a relatively recent phenomena.

1. What type of data source would the company’s own historical data be? Identify other possible data sources that the research team might use to examine the current marketplace for residential broadband services in a city such as Ashland.

2. What type of data collection techniques might the team employ?

3. In their suggestions and directions, the AMS managers have named a number of possible variables to study, but offered no operational definitions for those variables. What types of possible misunderstandings could arise if the team and managers do not first properly define each variable cited?