Business Spanish: Marketing Research Course Project

by Ann Abbott


My business Spanish students are working on a marketing survey related to University of Illinois students and their habits (if any) of going out to bars and restaurants in downtown Champaign.

We're at the very beginning stages, and we'll document our results on our project wiki as we go. On the wiki, you can see the set of questions, and students have to get answers from five University of Illinois students. The results will be shared with owners of bars and restaurants in downtown Champaign.

Today we compiled the data from the 68 surveys that had been turned in so far.  In the end, we should have completed 130 surveys.

But before we began compiling the data, I put students in pairs and asked them to use their first impressions and their intuitions and write down the following:  What do you think are going to be the three most important results that come out of this marketing research?  When we're done with the project, I want them to look back and see if their intuitions and first impressions were correct.  I imagine they will be.  After all, they belong to the niche market that we're studying.

Here are some of their answers:

  • Word of mouth is very important when students decide which bars or restaurants to go to.
  • Many students do not want to go far off campus.
  • Students communicate by text when deciding where to go.
  • Many people use the Facebook pages of their friends and the bars and restaurants when deciding where to go.
  • Most students don't read university publications.
  • Students like to go to busy places.
  • Students spend about $20 per weekend.
  • Students value most their friends' opinions of good places to go to.
  • Many people use apps on their telephones when making decisions.
  • The "Black Sheep" is a popular newspaper.
  • Students do want to go to downtown Champaign because they have hear good things about it.
  • Students will go wherever their group of friends wants to go.
As we analyze the data and make related marketing suggestions, we'll see if their instincts were right.

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