Basically there are two kinds of research: secondary and primary. To conduct secondary research, you read up on the research already done on these topics regarding Cincinnati. Primary means you then conduct yourself to update or fill in the gaps as needed.

To get secondary research on selling Cincinnati, you can call or visit the website of any number of places: Downtown Cincinnati Inc., Chamber of Commerce, Cincinnati Convention &Visitors Bureau, the City of Cincinnati, State of Ohio, Business Courier, Cincinnati Enquirer, Cincinnati Magazine; any of these will either have it or tell you where to get it. It's public access in most cases where the client is the city or the state.

Call the business reference librarian at the main library.

I also recommend you do a little primary research. There are two kinds: quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative. tells you how many people think one thing or another (think quantitative/quantity); qualitative tells you the reasons or motivations underlying their behavior (think qualitative/quality).

Think of it this way: there are thousands of people in each of your segments; you can't communicate with them all, so you reach only that number that statistically can be considered representative of everyone in that segment. The difference between quantitative and qualitative works like this: our conversation now is qualitative (a discussion, we're listening to each other and responding to each other's questions and comments); but what happens to our conversation if I have to get answers from thousands of people? I reach the representative number but our conversation has lost depth. Therefore the two forms co-exist for completeness.

I doubt that you can do quantitative research for your project because you don't have access to a representative number of people in any segment. But if you have access to any of these segments - potential tourists are the most likely - you can do a little qualitative research.

If you don't talk to people who are truly in one of these segments but talk only to fellow residents of Cincinnati, your findings will be biased and unreliable...

Example. I'm looking at a swimming pool. I don't want to go in because I think the water's cold. Meanwhile, there are a couple of people already swimming who think the water's fine. To conduct your research on selling the benefits of swimming here, you interview only the people in the water, and you conclude - wrongly - that water temperature isn't a problem.

If you do some secondary research to give you broad and comprehensive information, and supplement that with some qualitative research on a broad general market segment such as potential tourists, you'll probably get enough information to make sure your campaign has some grounding in reality. I'd suggest email or chat room with a total of 20 people.

What questions would you ask? Let's do a quick practice session with your professor and myself as mock respondents. You can ask us indefinite questions such as those on the board as well as get our reactions to very specific questions (e.g. to multimedia channels and event sponsorships that would be persuasive).

Wrap up: these are the kinds of questions you may want to ask in conducting some primary qualitative research. Do you also have any questions or comments about the kinds of questions and answers you're apt to experience in doing this kind of research?

Remember these two points:

1. You need to probe - why, when, how, the respondent's concrete experience - to understand
2. Rather thank seek consensus, accept each view as representative of different attitudes within a segment. You won't know HOW MANY people think X or Y, but you will have identified what attitudes are out there¹.