Abstract

The case study represents the dilemma that Mr Sandeep Agarwal, owner of Apna Market, when faced with the declining footfall at his departmental store. Since the inception of the departmental store in 1982, Agarwal had been convinced that Indian consumers would always opt for those stores which provided value for money. However, he realized that of late, this strategy did not seem to be working. Besides, Apna Market was also facing stiff competition from other organized retail stores like Big Bazaar, Spencer’s, etc. Based on the suggestions of a new recruit Sudhanshu Roy, Agarwal employed the services of a reputed research firm in east India called RBMI to carry out market research for Apna Market. Agarwal was specifically interested in knowing about the important factors or attributes that could be employed in Apna Market to increase footfall and thereby sales. Surajit Ghosh, the representative of RBMI who conducted the study, came out with some startling revelations. Agarwal said he wanted a thorough analysis done of the collected data which would be reported in the Final report so that he could introduce major policy changes in Apna Market. This case study is meant for a discussion of the questionnaire design process undertaken by Ghosh and the Discriminant Analysis technique that is to be used for suitably analyzing the data given.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Designing a questionnaire and understanding the basics of a good questionnaire.
• Discriminant Analysis involving both continuous and categorical variables.
• Issues in sampling — which the faculty member can discuss, based on the case.

Keywords

Marketing Research, Questionnaire Design, Sampling, Discriminant Analysis, Issues in Sampling, Survey Method, Data Collection, Analysis, Decision Making, Business Dilemma