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The Coop

McMichael’s Proposal:

Taste Test Advantages

One of the most important benefits of McMichael’s proposal is that the taste tests conducted would provide objective information about the quality of the food and also target what McMichael believes to be the core of the recent sales slump – lower standards in the menu items.
The study itself would be done in The Coop’s unmarked research and development building so participants would not know that The Coop had any involvement, keeping the testing anonymous which is important if McMichael and her team want to achieve an authentic reaction from the chosen sample of customers.   Conducting the study in a room with one-way mirrors (Wallace’s suggestion), where Buckmeister, McMichael, and Wallace could see and hear the reactions of the customers in response to both menu items from The Coop and its competitors gives much more information than if the customers were simply asked to complete checklists.  
Furthermore, this would be an excellent opportunity for McMichael to test new options before putting them in actual restaurant menus which is always a risk since the company can never be too sure whether customers would like the new choices.   Testing these new items in a controlled environment first could potentially avoid further losses in the restaurants themselves since McMichael would be able to make any necessary modifications after hearing the responses of the customers involved in the study.

Taste Test Disadvantages

There are, however, some important issues that must be taken account when looking at this proposal as well. McMichael suggested that the customers for the study should be chosen in accordance with their loyalty to the Waltham branch (near where the research and development building is located) but to keep the study as objective as possible, the recruits should not be selected through a “convenience sample.”   Instead, Wallace proposed that the customers should be screened first, but this...