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Business English for Chinese Students: Launching a Product or Service

New Horizon

Learning Module

Abstract

In this module participants learn about the basics of marketing a product and creating business surveys. They also refine their English language skills in order to evaluate a business opportunity, design and conduct a market survey, and write a report on their findings.

Keywords

Market Survey Consumer Opoortunity Questionnaire Products Design Business End-User Langauge Grammar

1. Overview: Surveying

For the Participant

By studying this unit, you will be able to learn about the basics of marketing a product, including business surveys. You will learn how to evaluate a business opportunity, design a questionnaire for a survey, and develop your English langauge skills. This will involve reading, speaking, listening, and writing in order to develop your communication skills, and then write a Product Launch Report.

Through a process of peer review, you will be able to provide and receive feedback from your peers, and improve the quality of your own report before submitting it for assessment.

To get started, think about your own experiences of participating in surveys. Business surveys may be conducted as:

  • questionnaires (e.g., paper questionnaires, online questionnaires, face-to-face interviews, and telephone interviews)
  • focus groups
  • experiments and field trials
  • observations

Comment: Think about a time when you participated in a business survey and what the survey was about. Comment on your preference for how a survey is conducted, describing the advantages and disadvantages of that preference. Post your comment into Community and comment on the comments of other students, explaining why you agree or disagree with them. To respond to a specific student, start your comment with @Name (inserting the name of the person).

Fig. 1: Survey

For the Instructor

Through an online writing project, participants develop their reading, writing and communication skills. They learn about designing a questionnaire for a survey and how to write a Product Launch Report. Then, through the writing process, they draft, provide and receive peer feedback, revise, and submit their own Product Launch Report for publication.

The activities that follow may be delivered totally as an online course, with participants interacting only in online environments. Video and audio recordings will be included so participants hear the English language in use. These may be complemented by live/real time sessions in which participants develop their listening and speaking skills. They may also post recordings of themselves speaking English to the Community and/or submit them to their instructor in "Submissions". In this way the course is truly multimodal and ubiquitous.

Alternatively, the course may be delivered as a combination of online and face-to-face teaching. In this case, participants may discuss their ideas with a peer before posting a comment to Community. This discussion will scaffold their thinking and writing. It will also develop participants' confidence in using English language. While participants work collaboratively and independently on completing Community Updates, the instructor can support participants who require extra help to think about the topic and compose their responses.

In both cases, participants will require individual access to a computer and to the internet. Access to an online dictionary will also be valuable.

This initial activity aims to:

  • Engage participants in the topic by valuing their experiences of participating in surveys.
  • Develop their confidence to post to the Scholar learning community, interact with others, and express their thoughts in full sentences in blog-like interactions.
  • Establish working collaboratively, using their collective intelligence in an online learning community.

Posting comments is a form of accountability, promotes reflection, and develops participants’ language skills. Encourage participants to read others' posts and extend and build on the ideas presented in them.

Each of the activities on the Instructor's side is tagged with a knowledge process of the Learning by Design framework, developed by Cope and Kalantzis. This learning module was designed using this pedagogical framework. More information about Learning by Design and the Learning Module is available.

2. Releasing a New Product: Lily's Choice

For the Participant

Setting: Lily’s Choice, a hair product company, is planning to design and launch a new hair care product. The following information will enable you to understand the basics for successful market surveys and the steps to release a new product.

Fig. 2: Lily's Choice - Existing Hair Products

Before releasing a new product/service, the market or business opportunity is evaluated. Firstly, a business survey is completed with data analysis of:

  • Need for the product/service
  • Market audience - targeted consumers/end-users
  • Market gap - number of competing products/services
  • Cost of development and production

This is followed by the steps of product design and production.

Table 1: The Steps in Releasing a New Product
STEP ACTIVITIES DOS and DON'TS
Business Survey
  • Questionnaire
  • Interview
  • Data analysis
  • Do reach the right interviewer/target (e.g. end-users,or sales personnel)
  • Do be polite and ensure privacy
  • Do be aware of some unrelated responses and don't take them seriously
  • Don't be too aggressive and do be spontaneous
Product Design
  • Scope of use
  • Functional description
  • Product specification
  • Parameter description
  • Packing of products
  • Do follow the survey findings while at the same time, dare to break routines
  • Do make it user-friendly
  • Do be specific and concrete
  • Don't miss or ignore any details
  • Don't omit any problems you've found out during the designing process
Production
  • Materials sourcing
  • Cost calculation
  • Price estimation
  • Sample production
  • Product testing
  • Market try-out
  • Mass production
  • Do stick to the budget
  • Do conduct the product testing and market try-out before effecting the mass production
  • Do maintain the quality
  • Do keep an eye on the market and guard any copycats
  • Don't launch the product too soon, and wait until you are ready
  • Don t be too late or hesitant, otherwise others may cut in and fill the market gap

Read through the information. You can also listen to the audio recording (insert link). Use an online dictionary (insert link) to help you check the meaning of any words.

Comment: What would be the easiest step for you and what would be the hardest step? Explain why. Add your explanation to the Comment in Community. Comment on the ideas of other students, stating why you agree or disagree with them.

For the Instructor

This activity provides information on:

  • A market/business opportunity
  • Three major steps before the release of a new product

An audio recording (to be created) is provided that participants may listen to as they read. This will help them to improve their English listening skills.

In a classroom context, the participants may read through and discuss the information in pairs.

By explaining the easiest and hardest steps, participants must read and think about the information in the table carefully. While the table presents three steps, participants will focus mainly on the first two steps in the activities that follow.

This activity presents information they will be able to draw upon when they write their product launch reports. It also develops participants’ writing skills and continues to build the collaborative learning community.

3. Reading A: Business Surveys Before Product Release

For the Participant

Read the following text and then complete the survey: Business Surveys Before Product Release. You may also listen to an audio version of the text (insert link).

Business Surveys: Before Product Release

The launch of new products is not an easy task for marketing professionals. Without research, there will be a lot of uncertainty about how consumers will respond to the product. This is why companies do market surveys before they design and launch a new product.

Market surveys are usually conducted by the R&D Department of a company. Surveys are usually done by means of questionnaires on paper or online or in face-to-face or telephone interviews.The aim of carrying out market surveys is to collect information from the targeted consumers, that is, the people who the company expects to buy and use their products or services. A market survey will collect information about preferences, expectations concerning functions, and complaints about current products or services. Surveys may also ask about existing products to find out how they could be improved. The people surveyed usually include end-users and sales personnel.

Once the data has been gathered, it will be analyzed and the relevant departments will start work developing new products or improving current products. Raw materials and factory machinery will be sourced, production costs calculated and selling prices estimated. Then a report will be submitted to the senior management for approval.

Upon approval, some sample products will probably be produced, allowing for further modifications to be made and perhaps new functions to be added, ensuring that the new product is user-friendly and effective. The samples will be thoroughly tested before being subjected to a further market survey. The results will be analyzed, checked against the original findings, and further changes will be made before the product is mass-produced.

Business Surveys: Before Product Release

Comment: Identify two or three examples of new vocabulary that you learnt from this text.

For the Instructor

This survey focuses on comprehension of the text, Business Surveys Before Product Release. It also includes questions to develop vocabulary, language and grammar skills.

To provide extra support to participants, an audio version of the text is also available. This is useful to develop participants' listening skills. Also the comment reinforces new vocabulary learnt by students as they read the text and complete the survey. Encourage students to refer to an online dictionary so the activity has a focus on learning rather than testing.

* Important vocabulary may also be highlighted in the text with hyperlinks to definitions and/or translation in Chinese.

4. Listening Activity and Survey

For the Participant

Setting: After discussion, Lily’s Choice has decided to use a paper questionnaire as a major means for a market survey. Andy is a salesperson in Lily s Choice. He is now conducting a street survey on the hair care products using a questionnaire.

Listen to the conversation (insert link to audio). Complete the survey: Questionnaire on Hair Products according to what you hear.

Comment: What do you think are the strengths of the survey? What question/s would you add to improve it? Comment on the comments of other students. You could extend and reword any questions they suggest.

For the Instructor

As participants listen to the audio recording, they complete the Questionnaire on Hair Products. The survey results will enable you to ascertain if participants have understood and followed the recording.

This questionnaire also provides a model that participants may refer to when they design their own questionnaire. The comment asks them to reflect on the strengths of the survey so build their metacognition of what makes an effective survey.

participants will also need to refer to the survey in the role play activity that follows.

5. Role Play Activity

For the Participant

Refer to the Questionnaire on Hair Products below. Then with a partner, role play the interview. One person can ask the questions and the other can respond. If you are working in a totally online course, perhaps a friend or colleague could take on one of the roles of interviewer or interviewee.

Both the interviewer and the interviewee may elaborate on the questions and responses. Here is an example of an elaboration of the beginning of the interview:

Interviewer: Good afternoon, sir. I’m from P & G, and we intend to design and launch a new shampoo product. Would you spare a few minutes for our market survey?

Interviewee: Ok.

Interviewer: Thank you. What brand of shampoo do you usually use?

Interviewee: I love your brand, but from time to time, I would also try some other brands,even though they are not as famous or popular as yours.

Interviewer: Thank you. And how did you hear about our shampoo brand?

Present your role play to another pair of participants. Then observe as they present their role play. Discuss similarities and differences in your role plays. If you are working in a totally online course, you may prepare a video or audio recording of the role play and post it to the Community or submit it to your teacher/instructor through 'Submissions' in Community.

Comment: What do you think is the key to a successful interview. Comment on the comments of other students, stating whether you agree or disagree and why.

For the Instructor

This activity enables participants to practice their language skills through a role play. The questionnaire provides a scaffold for participants to extend their language skills, according to their language proficiency.

Presenting to another pair of participants provides an audience as well as being a form of accountability. For participants in a totally online course, they may prepare a video or audio recording of the role play and post it to the Community or submit it through 'Submissions' in Community.

The reflection in the Comment is important for participants to synthesize the experience of the role play and use the experience to inform the design of the questionnaire in their communication projects.

6. Reading B: Designing a Questionnaire

For the Participant

When to use a questionnaire?

The choice of when to use a questionnaire will be made on a variety of factors including the type of information to be gathered and the available resources. A questionnaire should be considered in the following circumstances:

1. Type of Information to be gathered.

A questionnaire collects information on the targeted consumers/end-users. This might include:

  • background information (age, gender, occupation etc)
  • preferences
  • expectations
  • functions they would like
  • complaints and suggested improvements

2. When resources and money are limited.

A questionnaire can be quite inexpensive to administer. Although preparation may be costly, any data collection scheme will have similar preparation expenses. The administration cost per person of a questionnaire can be as low as postage and a few photocopies. Time is also an important resource that questionnaires can maximize. If a questionnaire is self-administering, such as an email questionnaire, potentially several thousand people could respond in a few days. It would be impossible to get a similar number of usability tests completed in the same short time.

3. When it is necessary to protect the privacy of the participants.

Questionnaires are easy to administer confidentially. Often confidentiality is necessary to ensure participants will respond honestly if at all. Examples of such cases would include students that need to ask embarrassing questions about private or personal behavior.

4. When corroborating other findings.

In studies that have resources to pursue other data collection strategies, questionnaires can be useful confirmation tools. More costly schemes may turn up interesting trends, but occasionally there will not be resources to run these other tests on large enough participant groups to make the results statistically significant. A follow-up large scale questionnaire may be necessary to corroborate these earlier results.

5. Questions in a Questionnaire

Different types of questions may be used in a questionnaires. These include true/false, yes/no and multiple choice. These are closed-ended questions that generally have short or single word answers. An open-ended question asks a person to volunteer more information and can engage them in a conversation. Open-ended questions typically begin with words such as "Why" and "How", or phrases such as "Tell me about...". Open-ended questions are important to get new ideas and to delve deeply into the thinking of an interviewee.

A good questionnaire generally has a variety of types of questions. Interviewees also like to begin with easy questions such as true/false or yes/no or items like one’s gender, age, profession, address etc.

Some of the most annoying questions would be those closely attached to one’s privacy or those vague questions with little choices or even no choice at all, and requiring very long responses.

For example: What do you think of our shampoo? What is your cell phone number(for fear of being disturbed by phones or texts)? Or any other questions of a private or personal nature.

Comment: Suggest some of the most annoying and /or most successful questions that could be asked in a questionnaire? You can draw on your own experiences or new ideas you have for the questionnaire that you will be designing. Comment on other students' comments.

Fig. 3: Face-to-Face Questionnaire

For the Instructor

This activity provides information on the types of questions in questionnaires, privacy issues and when to use a questionnaire. It will support participants to design their questions for the questionnaire in the Communications project.

7. Communication Project: Project Information

For the Participant

Project Name: Product Launch Report

Description: Write a Product Launch Report in which you include a market opportunity, product/service, survey (questionnaire), and results/findings.

Decide on a product/service for a market audience of male and female college students. Include a detailed description of the product/service and the market audience you are targeting. It could be a new product/service or an existing product/service that you would like to improve. It could be a product/service which enjoys great popularity among college students but is not available on campus. Or it could be any product/service you think there is a market for.

Then, using a questionnaire, design a market survey about the product/service.

Conduct the survey.

Collate the results and write 1-2 paragraphs on your findings. Include graphics (graphs, charts or tables).

Check the Work Request in your Notifications. The link will take you to Creator where you can start your work. You should look in the About This Work => Project => Description tab for further information about the project.

For what you need to do in order to write a report for a product launch, go to Feedback => Reviews => Rubric. Keep the Rubric open and refer to it as you write.

Use the Structure tool to plan your work. Possible headings could be Product Description, Questionnaire and Results/Findings.

Comment: Do you have any questions about how Scholar works? Make a comment in this update. If you think you have an answer to another student's question, please answer it - be sure to name the student you are replying to in your comment by starting with @Name.

For the Instructor

In assigning the project, provide some indication of the minimum number of subjects that participants should interview, e.g.10-20. Students could use their peers and friends as subjects for the survey.

As participants begin to draft their work, encourage them to use the Structure tool to organize some of the key ideas. The Structure tool supports participants to plan by developing an initial structure for their text.

Participants should also refer to the rubric as a guide as they write in Creator.

Participants could also use an online survey tool such as Survey Monkey to create a survey that they can actually distribute to interviewee (The Survey tool in Scholar is not yet available to students/participants).

For first time users of Scholar, post updates from Getting Started in Scholar: An Introductory Guide for New Users. At this stage of the project, the following updates may be useful:

  • Working in Scholar's Creator Space
  • Starting a Work in Scholar

8. Tips for Writing Reports

For the Participant

Writing Tips

The following are some sample sentences that you can use in your report:

We sent out 30 samples and recalled 25 valid ones.

Female participants tended to …………………

Two thirds of the ………… are ………….

When choosing hair products, females are less price-sensitive.

Based on the survey results, we are planning …………………

Now refer to the rubric and read the following report on Lily's Choice Hair Products.

Our newly released shampoo series is called “Lavender Legend”. This adds a new fragrance to our original three—milk, vanilla and green tea. This new product is targeted at people between 18 and 25, most of whom are still single, so the bottle capacity will be no bigger than 200 mls. As the TV commercials have proved to be so successful, I suggest we invite the singer, Jolin, to introduce the new shampoo. We could also offer some free tickets, on our website, to some of Jolin’s concerts. We’d have to try to negotiate a discount on the prices though—it would be too expensive otherwise.

Comment: The sample sentences function as sentences that can include data and statistics to add evidence to your report. Which sentences in the paragraph above are most useful in providing evidence? You may also comment on the positives of this report and at least one idea that you have to improve it. Comment on the comments of other students.

Fig.4: Results/Findings

For the Instructor

This activity provides support for participants to write their reports, providing sentence stems and a model of a paragraph. The discussion is important to address both the positives and the limitations of the paragraph which is far from perfect. By referring to the rubric, participants will become more aware of what is expected in their Product Launch Reports. This will also provide them with ideas that they can add to the Community discussion.

9. Give Feedback and Revise

For the Participant

Check your Notifications for Review Requests: You have received a review request. Please find the draft in your contributor works list. Then from the Feedback toolgroup's Reviews tab to your right, you can provide feedback to the author. Submit your feedback once it is finished. If you don't find the work in your works list, refresh the page to reload its contents.

The next stage of the writing process is to revise your own work.

Check your Notifications for a Revision Request: You have received a revision request for this draft. While you revise your work, take account of any feedback that may have been provided in the Feedback toolgroup's Reviews, Results and Annotations tabs.

Once you have gone through all the feedback and revised your work, write a self-review.

Comment: Do you have any more questions about Scholar at this stage? Make a comment in this update. If you think you have an answer to another participant's question, please answer it - be sure to name the person you are replying to in your comment by starting with @Name.

For the Instructor

This update covers two stages of the writing process in Scholar: Review and Revision.

For first time users of Scholar, post updates from Getting Started in Scholar: An Introductory Guide for New Users. At this stage of the project, the following updates may be useful:

  • Giving Feedback in Scholar
  • Revising in Scholar
  • Writing a Self-Review

10. Publish and Reflect

For the Participant

The last phase of a project in Scholar is publication, or a decision by the publishing admin not to publish your work at this time. As soon as your work is published, you will receive a notification. Your published work will appear in your personal community page. It becomes part of a portfolio of your published works that can be shared in this community, or beyond.

Also check Notifications to see if works that you provided feedback on have been selected for publication.

Comment: Read two - three other people’s published market surveys. Write a comment about the most interesting thing you learned from reading them. This might be ideas you hadn’t thought of and how questions are structured. Mention the creator and title of the work, and make a link to that page so the person reading your comment can jump to the page quickly.

Fig. 5: Success!

For the Instructor

Notifications of publication are provided to the creator and all reviewers.

This reflection activity promotes metacognition about what makes quality writing by reading and reflecting on other projects. Ask participants to look over other people’s published works - have them read at least two or three works. Ask them to comment on something interesting they learned from reading other works.

11. Why are Business Surveys Important?

For the Participant

Think critically about the materials you have covered and the way you have studied the materials (online or blended learning). Consider the advantages and disadvantages of learning about business surveys from a range of perspectives. Complete the table and then add a comment to the Community discussion.

Advantages Disadvantages
Participant
Instructor
Consumer
Business Owner
Product Designer
Production Crew

Critical Reflection Chart

Comment: Share two or three ideas that you have included in your table. Comment on the comments of other students.

For the Instructor

This activity provides the opportunity for further reflection by participants, focusing on the relevance of the course materials from a range of perspectives. This will also make the learning more relevant for participants. It may also be followed up by a course survey.

12. Acknowledgements

Title: Data (Source) - License: CC0 Public Domain / FAQ; Fig. 1: (Source); Fig. 2: (Source); Fig. 3: (Source); Fig. 4: (Source); Fig. 5: Success (Source).