By Brian Craddock
Students and faculty from Algonquin’s marketing and business intelligence research (MBIR) program and numerous Ontario-based marketing intelligence professionals came together to watch a presentation by the students about the MBIR program.
The students were invited to the Feb. 20 meeting of the Ottawa chapter of the Market Research and Intelligence Association (MRIA), a Canadian organization dedicated to representing the survey research industry, where the students explained what they’ve learned as part of the MBIR program’s curriculum.
The presentation, by the MBIR program co-coordinator Nancy Johanson, and MBIR students William Gibson, Kayla Evans, Amy Mullen, Sidrah Nadeem and Selina Zhang covered a series of wide-ranging marketing analysis elements. It touched on how students learn about creating “engaging and effective surveys” several different ways of gathering data such as quantitative and qualitative data collection through methods like surveys, statistical data analysis and both online and in-person focus groups. The students also explained how they were taught to analyze that data.
Tayo Olafimihan, a market research consultant with Harris Decima and MBIR graduate described the program as “An initial introduction to basic research methodologies, aspects of the business from client-side to supplier-side that will make us generate the best techniques to connect with consumers, and the best approaches to understanding what that data means.”
After the presentation, it was announced that Zhang was to be the recipient of the MBIR’s bursary, presented to her by Anda Carabineanu, the MRIA’s programs director and Nat Stone, one of the MBIR professors as well as the MRIA’s education director.
Also in attendance were, in addition to many other MBIR students who weren’t a part of the presentation, many members of the Ottawa chapter of the MRIA program including employees of Ipsos Reid, Harris Decima and Ramius.