Basic Marketing Research 7th Edition by Gilbert Churchill,Tom Brown,Tracy Suter

تمرين 8

Feather-Tote Luggage is a producer of cloth-covered luggage, one of the primary advantages of which is its light weight. The company distributes its luggage through major department stores, mail-order houses, clothing retailers, and other retail outlets such as stationery stores, leather good stores, and so on. The company advertises rather heavily, but it also supplements this promotional effort with a large field staff of sales representatives, numbering around 400. The number of sales representatives varies, and one of the historical problems confronting Feather-Tote Luggage has been the large number of sales representatives' resignations. It is not unusual for 10 to 20% of the sales force to turn over every year. Since the cost of training a new sales representative is estimated at $15,000 to $20,000, not including the lost sales that might result because of a personnel switch, Mr. Harvey, the sales manager, is concerned. He has been concerned for some time and thus has been conducting exit interviews with each departing sales representative. On the basis of these interviews, he has formulated the opinion that the major reason for this high turnover is general sales representatives' dissatisfaction with company policies, promotional opportunities, and pay. But top management has not been sympathetic to Harvey's pleas regarding the changes needed in these areas of corporate policy. Rather, it has tended to counter Harvey's pleas with arguments that too much of what he is suggesting is based on his gut reactions and little hard data. Before it would be willing to change things, top management desires more systematic evidence that job satisfaction, in general, and these dimensions of job satisfaction, in particular, are the real reasons for the high turnover.
Describe the procedures you would use in developing a measure by which the job satisfaction of Feather-Tote Luggage sales representatives could be assessed. Indicate the type of scale you would use and why, and detail the specific steps you would undertake to assure the validity and reliability of this measure.