three posts are required for this International Business discussion. Your first post to should be made by Thursday and your next two posts (which are responses to other students’ posts) should be done on two separate days between your first post and Sunday.

Please have complete and well thought out responses. I am looking for original input so please share your thoughts and experiences so we can all learn from them. Please make sure that you back up the posts with factual information from the book, work/life experiences, etc.

To make a post, please click on Week 4: Discussion above and then you can click Create Thread to make your first response.

Market Research
What are some of the benefits of “soft” market research data gathered using techniques such as focus groups and observation? What are the benefits of using “hard” data such as statistics on consumers’ buying habits and figures on market size? When might each kind of data be preferred and why?

Discussion assignments will be graded as follows:

Thoroughly answered all of the questions: 40

Original post by Thursday: 10

Quality of responses to two classmates: 20

References to text and/or other sources: 10

Spelling/Grammar at college level: 10

Posted on 3 separate days: 10

TOTAL: 100 points