Boston Fights Drugs

Americans had spent over $125 billion on heroin, cocaine, marijuana and other synthetic drugs in 1986. In 1987, Boston began to see a large increase in the amount of drug use among school-goers where there were 1000 drug trafficking arrests that resulted in 80 kg of cocaine, 6.4kg of heroin, and 47 tons of marijuana being confiscated. The city was able to seize $250,000,000 worth of drugs and the worst has yet to come as the drugs seized only constituted about 5-10% of the total drug volume. The mayor had predicted that a crack epidemic was expected to spread in Boston as cocaine is relatively cheap at $10 a piece being a very potent drug. Teenagers are at a high risk of trafficking, as profits were very attracting thus trafficking arrests have doubled prior to 1985. The mayor had the Boston fights drug team perform a research with a $20,000 budget to combat drug abuse. Now the goal of our company is to convert the research plan into an action plan that combats and controls drug abuse. In addition, analyses of the impact of advertisements need to be made through administering a pilot study that targets the audience, ages 10-18. In devising a communication program, can it then produce the most effective messages to the targeted audience which enables, curtailing the drug use among youth in the Boston area. In understanding whether the market research works it is required of the company to evaluate its credibility so that proper recommendations can be given to the mayor.

There are 4 primary research options the first research options is quantitative surveys which produced a low response rate of 5-20% as expected. This option takes very little time to complete as respondents are solely asked for their opinions on drug use and drug related questions. The results are unbiased as interviewers will have less of an impact on results, but when filling surveys and answering these questions not all respondents will tell the truth. The cost to perform these surveys is around $10,000 to $15,000 which is quite costly. Quantitative surveys allow for objective and realistic data. The surveys are able to cover a large spectrum of the demographics. Phone surveys are very common and are quite easy to perform but are also quite costly. This option would also need testing runs in order to perfect the survey for proper use. The second research option is focus group discussions that have a group of 8-10 respondents and an interviewer. This method would be quite time consuming but quick to start and would cost about $500-$1500 per session. This qualitative study would require for a psychologist to interpret the focus group’s data. With the data received from the focus groups, it could act as a brainstorming exercise to provide insight to researchers. Respondents could provide biased answers and this option would prove to be a difficult screening process. The last disadvantage is that it would be very costly. The next research option is One to One interviews