Question

The CEO of a retail store wants to know if customers are happy with the way they are treated by sales associates in one of the local stores. To find out, the CEO teamed up with his senior managers to come up with five questions to ask 15 customers who come in the store this week. The CEO asked two of his managers to randomly approach customers and ask them these questions. Which research method is the CEO using to collect this information?

1) An experiment
2) Selection bias
3) An observational study
4) A survey

Answer 1

The CEO is using a survey as the research method to assess customer satisfaction with sales associates by asking a set of pre-determined questions to 15 customers. The correct answer is option 4.

Step-by-step explanation:

The CEO of a retail store is using a survey to collect information on customer satisfaction with sales associates. By approaching customers and asking them a set of five questions, the CEO is employing one of the most common methods in business research to gather self-reported data. Surveys are a powerful tool as they can provide large amounts of information in a relatively short amount of time and can be administered to a wide range of respondents.

However, the data quality depends heavily on the respondents' willingness to participate and provide honest answers. The method chosen by the CEO allows for a structured form of data collection with set questions to ensure consistency across all interviews. This direct interaction with the customers also provides an opportunity for explanations or clarifications where necessary, which is more difficult to achieve with other forms of data gathering such as observational studies or experiments.

Therefore, the correct option for the research method used by the CEO to collect this information is option 4, a survey.