Validity for Focus Groups:
I would actually think the focus group and projective techniques would be best. The combination can help define choice and why such choices are made. Focus groups can be asked the most general questions -i.e. What do you like to have for lunch?- to specific - i.e. What is your favorite sandwich for lunch? Focus groups are often used to get a lot of opinions in one sitting, with information from one feeding the information of others.
Projective techniques can help answer questions, but can also build in some subliminal references to guide the participant and the market researcher.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of your plan?
Finding a focus group is one disadvantage. For this type of research, choosing the participants from a specific group or wide range of potential participants is the first decision. Also with focus groups, one has to have a specific set of questions ready to be presented that will help, but also needs a strong facilitator to both get extraneous information without getting too far off track of the focus of the group. And group think can often occur, or people agreeing just others so they will be part of the group. However, getting information from a group that has a goal of helping the researcher understand the subject better often leads to unknown or not previously considered information.
Projective techniques are leading when used in both open ended questions and word associations. This helps researchers establish not only their needs, but understand how the marketing is currently working and how to "market" using words to advance the needs of the company, in this case getting people into the new location or supporting the expansion plans. However, projection techniques probably end up with a lot on data that is not usable, because humans thought and perception processes vary widely.
For the focus group or interview, what topics/questions would you explore (going from general to specific)? If you use the projective technique, how would you do it?
Where do people normally eat? Have they heard of the restaurant? What did they order? Did they like it? Have they visited more than once? How many times? What have they tried? What is their favorite? Why? Do they like the store appearance? What could be improved? Should there be additions for the menu after expansion?
I would use things that are specific to the restaurant and the area. Traffic is heaviest in the area of_________. New Orleans, New York, and Ryder have in common what besides they are cities _________. Pita bread is ______________. Word association: US 1 south:
Lunch sandwich: Traffic congestion:
QUESTION: What would be the dependent variable (the construct you are trying to predict or understand)? What would be the independent variables? If you need to use new or different data sources, what would you use?
How would you ensure the validity of the results?
What type of research design would you use? Why would this be the best choice for the research problem?