Evaluating market information
Bo has asked Kayla along to the festival so she can tell students what it’s like to work in market research. Discover how Kayla analysed market data to help a local winery promote their new sustainable wine…
The Salty Creek Community Festival’s budget and marketing advisor, Bo, is organising the Economics and Marketing Industry Booth for the festival, and has asked Kayla to come and talk about her work. Kayla is an Analyst Intern at a small market research firm and has recently finished a project with Gumtree Hill Wines, a vineyard and winery located outside of Salty Creek. Gumtree Hill was making a switch to sustainable growing and wine production practices, but they weren’t sure what they should do differently to advertise their new wines. Kayla investigated the data to help them decide how to best bring their new wine to market.
Read through the case study and the tips for evaluating information that Kayla plans to share with festival visitors.
“My firm started working with Gumtree Hill Wines last year, right around the start of my internship. Like many of us, the winery owners have been growing more concerned about climate change, so they set a goal to make their grape growing and wine production more sustainable. They also hoped to attract new customers interested in sustainable wine, but they weren’t sure how to market their new offerings. That’s where I came in.
Gumtree Hill didn’t have the budget to conduct their own market survey, so I needed to explore the market data that was already available and evaluate it with a critical eye. Whenever I’m evaluating information, I start with the CRAAP test, which means looking at the currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose of the information. I also ask the following questions, which are related to currency and accuracy and are specific to evaluating data and statistics:
This resource has been adapted from: Information Literacy in Action: Evaluating Statistics. Authored by: Marla Lobley. License: CC BY: Attribution 4.0
Expandable sections transcript
“To carry out the work for Gumtree Hill, I brainstormed some questions I wanted to answer: 
- Who is interested in or already buying organic and sustainably produced wine?
- What else is important to these wine drinkers, when it comes to selecting a wine?
- What kinds of packaging and advertising might attract the target audience?
I found several sources that might be useful, but I needed to think critically about each one to determine whether it would give me the insights I was looking for.”
Read the short excerpts from Kayla’s sources and consider how you would evaluate them based on her criteria and questions above. Then, turn each card to read Kayla’s thoughts about the source and how she used it in her research.
“Based on what I learnt from my research, I proposed a marketing plan for Gumtree Hill that focused on online marketing channels, creative packaging that tells the winery’s sustainability story, and the development and advertising of winery tours focusing on sustainability.”
We encounter data and statistics every day, and we use them to determine everything from which brands we should buy to who we should vote for. Kayla’s project with Gumtree Hill Wines shows that even data that is accurate and collected by a reputable source needs to be examined critically before it can be used to draw conclusions. Bo hopes that visitors to the booth will be inspired to learn more about analysing market research after hearing Kayla’s process.
Learn more on Learning Lab
- Interested in learning more about determining if information can be trusted? Check out the explanation (5 minutes) and video (2 minutes) on Evaluating information sources using the CRAAP test.
Critical thinking means examining (analysing) a situation in detail and using evidence to make a judgement (evaluating) from an objective point of view. Critical thinking doesn’t have to be negative all the time, nor does it mean always pointing out the faults in an issue. A good critical thinker asks good questions, recognises and challenges biases (including their own), doesn’t accept everything as true, finds credible sources, and reflects on their own understanding of ideas.
