Hello,

I have two questions that I am unsure about and would like your suggestions and thoughts. Please see below the questions an the assignment of what it is required. I am Team 5.

1. What do we know about the decision-making environment? This includes reviewing what is already known to the client regarding the problem as well as exploratory research (the "background").
2. Distinguish the symptoms of the problem from the problem itself. What are the symptoms? One example of a symptom is change in the level of a metric that gauges achievement of an objective. Another is, "we just don't know the answer."

All marketing research begins with a problem (or opportunity, which is the other side of the problem coin). Assignment 1 is about detining the problem in order to guide the research process For this assignment you will work in small teams (475 members each,- to nd your partners, look at the Groups column on the Participants page) to develop the problem denition statement. Note that members of this team will be the same as the team working on the course project. A Problem Denition Worksheet with some helpful guidance is linked below (the worksheet follows the outline in Chapter 2). You may use this as a template for your Assignment 1 submission Vour team needs to develop a Problem Denition Worksheet for the issue outlined below. The assignment is due May 19. Only one member ofthe team needs to upload the assignment. Teams should work together, discuss the issue, divide up any background research, write up the Worksheet and each member ofthe team should reviewlhe writeup before submission, With regard to length, the Worksheet should be as shon but as complete as possible. Think of it as a working document that can easily be referred to as you develop an actual research project. Vou want to he as brief as possible Without leaving anything out. You Will be referring to this sheet later; 1-2 pages is good; one page is better! The iue, for which you want to co nduct research: We have been limited in many ways over the past 15 months due to COVlDo'l'). One substantial limitation has been travel. Both business and leisure travel has been curtailed, reducing demand for hotels, airlines, and rental cars among other things Consumer have been developing a backlog of pentsup demand, Travel companies have taken actions such as laying off staff and reducing inventory. Now the restri ions are being removed (at least within the U.S.). Travel suppliers know that both supply and demand will be distorted in the shorts term but they don't know when demand will return to "normal.\" Yourteams have been contracted to assess the demand for rental cars by some of the key competitors in the rental car industry Specically, your clients are' . TeamA Mam . Team 5 tnterpriset.' - TwitHen: l'Vou may want to familiarize yourselves with the overall structure of the rental car industry, the brands, and the companies; priorto the pandemic these brands were estimated to have 94% ofthe total US. rental car market. This will also explain why a couple of the teams have two brands instead of ondJ The brands each have different target customers, different key competitors within the overall market, and different constraints With regard to getting back to normal. Organizationally, the eight brands only comprise three companies; these afliations affect the ability to compete but have relatively little inuence on consumer choice. Their differences make each brand's issues unique but overall, they have similar questions about the postsCOVID market for rental cars, The implication is that we will be doing a single syndicationatype study (one study for multipie clients). But for the purposes omssignment 'l, you need to be concerned about your client's issues. There are things all of the brands Will want to look ate market share of demand, intended usage (car rentals are generally categorized as business, leisure, and replacement), and customer demographics. But the questions that are unique at this moment in time are related to demand and the timeline for that demand. both of which affect pricing and inventory decisions. You will need to consider how COVID has changed demand (this will likely differ by brans, how quickly people are willing to return to conventional travel. their attitudes toward interacting with other people (and well as their own preparedness to interact, i.e. vaccination) and when/if they expectto travel in ways that will utilize rental cars. lwtll post a thread in the Virtual Classroom for questions you might have that Will inuence your team's problem denition Others will be able to see the questions and answers. At this point, we are working cooperatively r it isn't about competing for the best problem. Later on. you will get to compete for the best research analysis