Questions to ask bookstore customers

[SarcasticDwarf]

I'm doing a paper for an upper level college class and as part of it we have to interview members of a subgroup to gather data. Thee group I am interviewing is bookstore customers (both a large chain store and a medium sized independant store). The questions I have to ask are as follows:

Buy online or in a store? If online, which?
Are you a club member?
What is your occupation?
How much do you spend per year on books?
Who are the books for?
What are you purchasing?
Buy from the café?
Do you shop other bookstores? If so, which?
How often do you read?

These questions should lead the person to provide information. Can anyone think of anything else that I should ask?

 

[pontifex]

Originally posted by: SarcasticDwarf
I'm doing a paper for an upper level college class and as part of it we have to interview members of a subgroup to gather data. Thee group I am interviewing is bookstore customers (both a large chain store and a medium sized independant store). The questions I have to ask are as follows:

Buy online or in a store? If online, which?
Are you a club member?
What is your occupation?
How much do you spend per year on books?
Who are the books for?
What are you purchasing?
Buy from the café?
Do you shop other bookstores? If so, which?
How often do you read?

These questions should lead the person to provide information. Can anyone think of anything else that I should ask?

Favorite Genre?

 

[MikeyIs4Dcats]

Do you use the public library?

 

[jmcoreymv]

I don't think asking customers at a B&M bookstore if they shop for books at a store or on the internet is a statistically sound way of gathering data....

 

[SarcasticDwarf]

Originally posted by: jmcoreymv
I don't think asking customers at a B&M bookstore if they shop for books at a store or on the internet is a statistically sound way of gathering data....

The idea is not to generate valid or useful statistics. This is more of an ethnography than anything else. The idea is to get data to interpret/write about to get eight pages of length (yes, it is a VERY strange class).

 

[ahurtt]

Penthouse or Playboy?

 

[IronWing]

Does it piss you off that Borders keeps shrinking their book selection to make more room for crap and corruption?

Do you think that the folks working in the music department ever look at an atlas before they attempt to organize the international music?

Are you aware that they made the LOTR into a movie? How many different bindings of the LOTR have you purchased? Read?

I notice you are carrying a copy of The Idiot's Guide to Whatever. Don't you feel like an idiot?

What is your current CC balance? Why are you here and not at the library?

 

[Epic Fail]

When do you do your readings?

 

[IronWing]

Originally posted by: SarcasticDwarf

The idea is not to generate valid or useful statistics. This is more of an ethnography than anything else. The idea is to get data to interpret/write about to get eight pages of length (yes, it is a VERY strange class).

It that case you need to interview exactly two customers. If you interview one customer that is a random point and there isn't anything to wrote about. If you interview two customers you can draw a line between each set of points and fill eight pages explaining the relationships between the lines. If you interview three or more customers then you'll have variation about your lines which will require explanations which will require 1) more than eight pages and 2) that you understand anything about statistics. Avoid this.