Assignment task:
Boon's survey did not target the right people. By administering the survey at a mall during mid-afternoon on a weekday, Boon excluded most office workers. But that's exactly who would want office productivity software! Way more than 10% of them might have jumped at the chance for a free trial, but Boon never found that out.
One of the most common mistakes in surveying is to survey the wrong people. For example, it's often more useful to survey people who are not your customers but conceivably could be. They might be in the market for what you sell but they haven't decided yet whose product to buy. Or they might be your competitor's customers, in which case they obviously want the kind of thing you sell, but they don't think you're offering them the best value. (Or perhaps they don't know your company or your product exists.) You want to find out how to please them. As for the people who have already bought your product-you have already pleased them, so there might not be much more to learn from them.
Now that you know more about surveys as a tool for eliciting WTP, can you help Jim Holzman design a survey that would inform him on how best to price the playoff tickets? Try to design a survey that would use the strengths of the survey method while avoiding the pitfalls we have discussed.
Question 1: Who will be in your sample? When, where, and how will you survey those people? Describe the procedure you will use to target respondents.
Question 2: You have one question to ask your respondents. What will it be?