Week 9 Reading Reflection

1. Throughout reading this chapter, there were multiple different facts and ideas that stood out to me. The table that had a comparison of major survey techniques really surprised me because certain surveys were much more effective in certain areas than I would have expected. For example, door-to-door interviews have a slightly slower data collection speed than mall intercept personal interviews. I would not expect this because I would think that most people in malls would reject answering any questions.
2. The portion of the reading that was slightly confusing to me was the section that elaborated on competitive information. This section generally outlined certain techniques and key topics to focus on in when evaluating competitors in order to avoid having to hire a third party to do so. I thought that this section seemed very important, and I did not understand why a firm would not want to hire a separate company to assist in this type of tactic.
3. If I could ask the author two questions, I would ask whether or not he believed that a firm should hire a separate entity in regards to evaluating competitors and why the he thinks a firm should or should not. Personally, I am very interested when it comes to firms evaluating competitors and trying to always stay on top. I am always curious as to how firms are able to do this and how much effort is put towards this from certain firms.
4. Overall, I did not read anything that I necessarily disagreed with. I think that the author makes a lot of very clear, informative points. I did not notice anything that specifically jumped out at me that I would not agree with. I learned a lot from this reading as I do not have too much background knowledge in regards to these topics.