The importance of surveys.

Surveys are helpful when gathering options about a topic. The more in depth a survey is the more information can be gathered. When a store wants to better understand how customers feel about shopping in their store a more in depth survey about the positive and negative happing’s during the customers shopping would be more useful that a basic store survey. While in school at WVWC I have done several course evaluations on my classes at the school. The course surveys have questions about the course and the instructor and there is even a place to write any other comments or thoughts the student may have. I honestly do not know if except to the induvial professor if these surveys have any impact, but I’ve always attempted to put thought in my responses. I like the fact that my school offers these surveys it gives a chance for the students to possibly shape their school. I’ve never administered a survey in any capacity, but I’m working on a class project in my Business Communications course where we are making and collecting data with a survey. Writing the questions can be tricky one needs to put thought into their questions. While making our survey we’ve had to find what information we are looking to gather and what questions to ask to get information we can use. While writing these questions one major thing that we have had to work hard to avoid is question bias. While we would like to gain support for what we are trying to do at the same time we do not want to gather incorrect data. I enjoy taking surveys personally, because they allow me to give my option on the topic. One thing to remember though is when taking surveys it is important to give your honest and real opinion because you do not know just how much your opinion will impact the research being done.

_Kay Phillips

Focus groups

In this video tips for running a focus group were given. There are a few steps to getting a group together and then having the meeting. The first step is set up. The two moderators should arrive early and check to make sure the area for the group is up to standers. Then they should set up microphones, name tags and place settings as wanted. After any recording equipment is set up a sound check in normal voices should be done to make sure that you will be able to hear what is said. Once the participants arrive the moderators should welcome people and offer food if available. When welcoming the people one should make sure they are there for the right reason. When staring the focus group one should be short and to the point. A good opening should have four points; welcome and introduction, background on product, ground rules for the group, and the opening question. Concluding, after the group has had their discussions the moderator will end the session. There are many ways to end a group. One way is to ask each group member what is the most important thing said in the group discussion. At the end of the group the moderator will turn to the assistant moderator and see if they have any questions or points they want to bring up one last time and then have them give a summery on what the group’s discussion. The assistant moderator will also make sure they have heard the people in the group correctly. As the group starts the group members will talk to the moderator but the moderator should try to get the group to talk to each other in a conversational type way. Pausing after asking a question will let a group member speak up. Handing a rambler, when someone is going too far into detail or gets off topic, stop writing what their saying and look at others in the group. You may need to interrupt them, wait for a pause then ask someone else the question directly. Getting someone to talk, ask the person directly a question and maybe some follow up questions. If the group is discussing well the moderator should allow them to talk as long as the talk stays on topic. One thing a moderator can do is role playing to help get the group talking. Using list, is a good way to get information from the group. The moderator will ask for each member to make a small list of items and then the moderator will make a large list of all the items. The group will then analyze the list to see which items are the most importance. Ways to get rapid feedback, ask questions and get the members of the group to answer by raising their hand and you could use a rating of one through five, fingers on the hand, as to the amount of times a certain thing has happened or id liked. It is important to go deeper into these numbers to see how the feelings behind them are. Another way to use this is thumbs up or thumbs down and this is a way to get a quick yay or nay on ideas. With both ways the moderator should say each rating out loud at get it on the recording. Focus groups are a good method for gathering information. I like the idea of having a group talk about the things they like and dislike, and it is a good method for customer feedback. One thing to remember though is that the options gathered are options this means that people will be swayed by personal things that happened to them. Also with my focus groups they are small and therefore only represent a small number of how people are feeling. –Kay.

A look at “Big Data Revolution” a P.B.S. Documentray

Big Data is important to the way we live our lives today. Data is collected from the actions humans do every day. Simply owning a cell phone means you add to big data. In the PBS Documentary I watched in my marketing class talked about the fact that more data has been collected in past two years than in the past thirty thousand years. Many people think of human’s relation with technology as a straight upwards curve, but it isn’t it wasn’t until about the seventeen hundreds when humans truly started having major technological breakthroughs. This would explain how different our lives are today verses anytime in the past. Big dad is like a microscope that can be used to examine how and possibly why people do the everyday activates they do. Big data is helpful to businesses to see trends in people’s choices. In the documentary they talk about how stores are able to look at their big data on trends of what people buy at certain times in their lives; such as things expecting mother’s buy in early stages of their pregnancy. If a company sees these trends and then sends coupons for items that other mothers have bought in the past, then the expecting mother will be more likely to shop at the store that they have coupons at. This will help increase business. Another way big data is useful to stores is that when they see that in certain times of year people buy more items then the store can stock better for what customers want. In times of a snow storm big data could show that people are more likely to buy the essentials such as bottled water, it would be smart for the store to buy and excess of water when they know a storm is coming to help make more sells. Big data isn’t just or stores to use. The documentary talks about when a child is learning words and how they learn the words. Most of my life my family has used repetition to teach little ones how to speak. In the documentary the big data that was collected shows that it is not necessarily repetition as much as context; when, where, and how the child hears the world used. The documentary uses the word water and maps in the child’s home it hears the word verses when the child says the word to get this data. This could be comparable to advertising. Big data focused on questions like ‘where did you hear about our company’ or ‘ where have you seen our adds’ are good ways to see when and where people see your adds and which ones are effective. This is an extremely handy tool and I hope to be able to use data to make my life easier in the future. At times this data may seem invasive, but overall the feedback will be helpful to researchers.

My first blog post.

My name is Kailey Phillips but most people call me Kay. I have lived in West Virginia all my life. My Mother and Father divorced when I was in the first grade and I have lived with both my Father in French Creek and Mother in Buckhannon from then on. I attended three schools in the past; French Creek Elementary, Buckhannon-Upshur Middle school, and Buckhannon-Upshur High School. Now I go to school at West Virginia Wesleyan College in Buckhannon and commute to school from home. At Wesleyan I’m getting my business bachelor degree. Many people want to know my plans after college with my degree, and the truth is in this moment I have no set in stone plans. I’d like to stay close to my family. My Father owns his own business and I think I would like to step up in the business. I work there now as a low level office worker. Working in the office has helped me relate real world business with my degree. It is nice to be able to go to college and still be with my family. I have a small family and we spend a fair amount of time together. When I am not with my family I will either be at school, or with friends. My friends and I play video games, cook, and just spend time together. In my alone time I draw, read, write, and play video games. Writing short stories is a favorite hobby of mine and I like to draw pictures to go along with my stories. Reading has always been something I enjoyed. My Mother read to my when I was younger and has always encouraged me to read, also at the moment I’m working my way through her Stephen King books. Fiction and Comic books are my favorite kind of books, but I enjoy most books. Another thing I enjoy is cooking and it brings people together and if the cook is good brings good food. I have several people in my life that I enjoy cooking with. Something I have only come into in recent years is video games. I play games on all kinds of platforms from the PlayStation to the computer. Video games is something my friends enjoy together. We will play fighting games for hours while laughing and yelling at each other. Outside of that I don’t like talking about myself. I have never written a blog or even a bio on any of my social media. I normally come up with something witty line about how I don’t know what to say or a quote I like, but in this case a one liner will not cut it. Many people would think that since I like to write writing about myself would be easier, but for me it is not. I mainly write purely made up stories that have nothing to do with me or my life. In the realm of social media I have an account on most sites. When I was in high school I was on top of everything and posted often. Now I barely post on sites such as Facebook, but I do share things I like such a funny videos. I do have two fur babies, or pets, Piper and Alice and they are both female cats. They are always with me when I’m home. I love animals and enjoy spending time with them. My family has always had pets around. Growing up with a dog was good for me and allowed me to learn many lessons about life. Leaving pets behind at home has always been hard, but family vacations have been something fun. My Father’s family went to Disney World the spring of 2015. This was a fun trip and was a good way to bond with my family. My Father also took the family to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, that trip was much smaller but just as much fun. I have also been able to spend some time in Kentucky with my youth group. I haven’t travel much, but the few places I have been have allowed me to experience new things and people. I hope to get better about summing myself up, but for now this is me. I have linked my Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kailey.phillips.587

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kayssickpics/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kaylovesbobby