Marketing research??

From last week, I thought we are having a clear direction of our next step. In order to develop these programs for our organization, we believed it is very necessary to do marketing research like “interviewing with people from signage industry” first, for us to gain a better understanding of the signage industry. So we have been contacting many signage companies in Cincinnati, to request some guidance from them. Since none of us really know about this field, we believed this would be the most effective way for us to learn, then we can decide what to do next. Luckily, we did hear back from some companies who are willing to talk to us about the signage industry. 

However, after Mariah sent an email to Patty (who’s the contact from our client), we found they are uncomfortable to have us to interview with other people. Now I am kind of annoyed by our current situation. Firstly, we did not get much information from our organization, especially the part to help us to understand the industry they are in. Secondly, our client does not want us to interview with others. What Patty replied to us: “What is the purpose of the interviews?  How are they related to the charter of work for AACSRE?  What types of questions would you be asking?  How will be information help you with the mission of developing a comprehensive marketing plan for AACSRE?  I am very uncomfortable with providing names for a 30 minute interview using the AACSRE brand without fully vetting the questions/survey, purpose, how the information will be used, etc. as Dr. Dixon and I certainly did not foresee this as part of the scope of work.” Thirdly, without understanding the industry and the company, it would be really hard for us to continue our project for now. We can do some works, but nothing meaningful. 

We were planning to talk to a signage company tomorrow, but now we have to schedule it to next Tuesday (We might not be able to talk to them if our client still does not want us to do it after we talk to them). The phone conference with our client will be next Monday, and our current problem is that we have time and passionate to do things for our project, but we cannot really do anything meaningful now.