Ramblings of an Insomniac

Lucknowites..here I come!

It was a field day for us today. As a part of our Economics group project, which incidentally is an Analysis of the soft drink industry, we went to "WAVE", the most happenening place in Lucknow. This was to get responses for our questionnaire. After watching a movie and having a pizza, we got down to business.

Our questionnaire involved getting responses from different segments of the population, based on its demography, like income and gender. We prepared the questionnaire keeping in view the different aspects of our Economics course. Obviously, IIML campus is grossly insufficient for our survey in terms of the above parameters. Hence we landed up in the only multiplex in Lucknow, the "WAVE".

One thing I have to admit is, Lucknow does have some very decent crowds (read as girls :D). Anyway, we targeted the fairer sex more, for obvious reasons. No, you pervert! IIML has a pathetic crowd in terms of number of girls. To get an unbiased estimate of the fairer sex's choices, we had to target more girls than boys :D.

Doing this survey helped us in more ways than one.

It helped us ease ourselves into talking to total strangers and asking them for favours. There is a general perception about filling questionnaires that it is extremely painful and is a total time waste. Our convincing abilities came to the fore. We had to convince our respondents that what we were doing was totally non commercial. Of course, saying that we were from IIML did help a lot :).

Some were not even ready to read the questionnaire. This taught us take rebuffs and refusals as a part of the game.

At the end of the day, we sort of developed a knack to identify potential respondents. This is very helpful, especially if we were to conduct a market research for a new product. BTW, our's was not a market research. It was just a small survey.

Finally, last but not the least, we found out the perspectives of general population. Campus life sure locks you out of the world. Though we put in a lot of effort in preparing the questionnaire, we found out today that some of the questions could have been better framed. Afterall, it is not always possible to think from the point of view from the customer (respondents in this case). But we were very close.

For those of you who want to know the movie we went to, it was IQBAL. A good movie, on the whole. Or you can say, a typical Nagesh Kukunoor movie (of the Hyderabad Blues fame). It is an inspirational movie of how a physically disabled person can, with the help of his talent and hard work, get selected in the Indian Cricket Team. OK, don't get put off by this cliched theme. I found the movie to be decent.

posted by Vamsee @ 10:10 PM