Background

You are the president of Harmony Music, a business that offers music instruction. You are a serious amateur pianist, but your company offers instruction in both piano and guitar. You purchase 10 new guitars every year to upgrade your inventory, and this year you want to purchase, for the first time, a model of electric guitar that can be used for digital recording. You have asked your director of guitar instruction, Helen Ferguson, to study the question for you.

Helen is amply qualified to carry out this investigation; she plays both acoustic and electric guitar and uses a home studio to record original music, which she mixes digitally and sells on her website. Helen has been keeping you up to date on her research. She is considering different models on the basis of four criteria: ease of use, sound quality/playability, MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) compatibility, and cost.

She emails you two tables showing her analysis so far (Document 13.1). You look them over and then send her an email that contains some questions. She replies (Document 13.2).

Download the documents below, and then begin your assignment.

Download a copy of Document 13.1.

Download a copy of Document 13.2.

Your Assignment

Once you’ve familiarized yourself with the case background and documents, complete the assignment below. Your instructor will tell you how he or she would like you to submit your work.

1. Email Helen, thanking her for getting back to you and explaining that you would like her to redo the research. Describe the methodological problems you see in the tables and in her explanations of them. Describe how to perform the research so that she will elicit more-objective information. Explain how to set up a decision matrix. Where appropriate, provide examples of how to present the data in her tables more effectively.

Reflecting on Your Work

Once you’ve completed your assignment, write a reflection about your work using the prompt below.

Question 13.4