You own a marketing research firm. Your client operates a Taxi service from a commuter town to a busy city centre. The transport alternatives for this commute are limited (there is no Bus service). The client wants to make sure that he is offering the best service possible to his customers. He wants to understand better their views on the service and their experience of it. He has come to you for advice.
Prepare a proposal for him outlining the strengths and limitations of
(a) A cross-sectional study; and a longitudinal or panel study.
Note: the student has to link the strengths and limitations with respect to the case given. Examples should be given.
Answer:
Let us first understand what is the cross-sectional study and the longitudinal study and how do they differ and their application.
A cross-sectional study is the study of population or subset of the population at a specific point of time to understand the expectations and the behavior of the target customers or representative population. However, the longitudinal study is conducted over the same set of people over a long time horizon and multiple times to understand how the behavior and perception is changing. Therefore these two types of study differ in their selection of target and time period of execution as well as both have different objectives.
Now in the given case as we can see that the same customers are taking the services, therefore it would be better to propose a longitudinal or panel study to understand the perceptions and expectations of the customers from the service being rendered. The longitudinal study has unique strength to capture the change in perception with repeated exposure to the service and the company can bring a new different type of interventions to know what is working best and what is not working best for the customers and the level of satisfaction at different types of intervention and these insights can be used to decide the parameters to provide better service.
You own a marketing research firm. Your client operates a Taxi service from a commuter town...
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