Boeing - Taking Flight

Case Study- Boeing: Taking Flight

Ch 1

1. Discuss the role that marketing research can play in helping McNerney build a strong Boeing sales force.

Marketing research, as the process of gathering information about target markets, customers, market trends and similar is an important part in any business. In this case, it can be very helpful to CEO in building a strong and loyal salesforce. In other words, it can identify the characteristics of the strong sales people and differentiate it from the weaker ones. Moreover, it is able to screen all important factors that are basis for creating a strong sales team and factors that help build salesforce satisfaction, commitment and loyalty to the organization.  

1. Discuss the role that marketing research can play in enabling strong sales for the 787 Dreamliner.

Marketing research is inevitable part in providing the company with the information about customers’ buying process. They find out the decision process of airline companies when purchasing new airplanes. Here, marketing research does not just explore customers in the market place, but competition and their action as well, which is very important due to the fact that it helps Boeing to evaluate how customers view competitive offering and how they perceive 787 Dreamliner at the market.

Ch 2

1. McNerney wants the 787 Dreamliner to be a strong success. Define the management-decision problem.

The management decision problem is: What should CEO MyNerney do to build a strong salesforce so that the 7E7 Dreamliner is a strong success?          

1. Define the corresponding marketing research problem.

The aim of marketing research problem is to identify the factors that lead to salesforce satisfactionand loyalty.  More specifically; what factors influence salespeople’s loyalty and satisfaction? ; The profile of salespeople that is demographic characteristics? ; Who is the most loyal and who is the least loyal to the organization? ; What is the size of target market and similar?.

1. Develop two research questions with two hypotheses corresponding to each.

A possible research question and hypotheses are:  

Research question: Is job satisfaction related to the challenges experienced on the job?

H1: Salespeople who do not experience challenges are dissatisfied.

H2:  Salespeople who are over-challenged are dissatisfied.

A second possible research question and hypothesis are:

Research question: is salespeople commitment to the organization related to the organization’s commitment to the sales people?

H1: The higher the organization’s commitment to the sales people, the higher the commitment of the salespeople to the organization.

H2:  Salespeople who have been with the organization longer tend to be more committed.

Ch 3

1. Do you think that the research design adopted by TNS was appropriate? Why or why not?

The research design adopted by TNS was appropriate in this case. TNS conducted explorative research analyzing secondary data first. Both academic and trade sources were examined and this was followed by eight focus groups with B2B field salespersons from variety of industries. Taking these facts in consideration, we can say that research was done with experienced and knowledgeable respondents who are making great contribution to it. The findings of the exploratory phase were used to design a descriptive survey which included telephone survey. The final sample size was 1000 and it assured sampling error less then 3 percent. However, the telephone survey is expensive procedure and some respondents refuse to take the part in it, mainly because of its duration. The primary duration of survey was 30 minutes, but it was lowered to 10 minutes. Maybe this would lead to some important questions being omitted because of lack of time and respondents’ patience. In this particular case, more appropriate research procedure would be Internet survey (e-mail survey) or face-to-face survey. Face-to-face survey would consider smaller sample size than telephone or Internet survey, but researcher would get better picture of the problem and identify the body language and the way respondent answers to the questions.

Ch 4 and Ch 5

1. Search the Internet to determine the demand by a major airline for new planes in the next 5 years.

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1. Search the Internet to determine the total number of passengers that traveled by air in the past years.

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1. What type of internal database will help Boeing in forecasting the demand for new planes by its customers?

Secondary data may be very helpful and gathered from different sources. Internal records of Boeing could be assessed to forecast the demand for various types of aircrafts. This information includes company records such as sales records, new orders from airlines and other customers, reports on trends from company researchers and economic forecasts. Each of these can be analyzed by geographic region or type of industry. Also, Internet, print media and census and governmental records could be assessed for more information.