Case Study 3: Part 1 - Email Critique
99 unread replies.99 replies.
Background
You are the Director of Marketing for Yakima Properties, a real-estate company that employs 18 agents and advertises approximately 100 residential properties at any one time. The company advertises in the Saturday real-estate supplement in the local newspaper and on its own website, presenting photographs and a description of each of the properties. In addition, for properties that are advertised at a price of $750,000 and above, the company presents virtual 360° tours on the website. When Yakima Properties began offering the virtual tours on its website two years ago, it contracted with Edelson Custom Photography, a high-end photographic supplier, to provide both the virtual tours and the traditional photographs of all the company’s properties. Yakima’s contract with Edelson is about to expire.
In an attempt to determine if it is possible to cut costs, you have asked one of your agents, Rachel Stevens, to research whether it would be possible to have the real-estate agents take their own photographs of the properties they list. You ask Rachel to sketch out how she would research the topic: “Write me an email listing the questions we need to answer to know whether this idea would work, and how you’d answer them.” Two days later, she sends you an email (Document 3.1
Actions)
After reading the email, you decide it might be best to talk to Rachel directly and call her, leaving the following message:
“Thanks, Rachel. Good to know that the hardware is available and cheap. What I’d like you to think about now, however, is what our agents would think about being asked to take their own pictures. How many of the agents are experienced with taking digital photos? Do they have any preferences about the kind of camera to get? Would they consider it an imposition to have to take their own photos, or do they think the ability to shoot just what they want—and have the photos available right away—outweighs the extra work we’d be asking them to do? And keep in mind that, with 18 agents, you’re going to want to choose types of questions that let us quantify the responses effectively.”
Rachel sends you an email saying that she’ll get on it, and the next day you receive her response (Document 3.2
Actions). After studying it, you realize that you are going to need to become more involved in carrying out this research. You know that Rachel is a good worker who has a bright future with Yakima Properties, but she has little experience writing questionnaires. You ask her if she would like you to critique her five questions. She says yes.
In reviewing and analyzing Rachel's questions, you will want to refer to theQuestionnaire Overview
Actionsdocument to determine where each question went wrong.
Once you’ve familiarized yourself with the case background and documents complete the following:
Write an email response to Rachel in which you thank her for her work but explain the major flaw in each of the five questions. Attach your email response below as a Microsoft Word document or PDF.
Keep in mind, in this part of the Case Study, you are only stating the flaws in the questions.