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What kind of questions I should include in my survey for campus bookstore run by student organization?

• I am currently doing a real business plan for the campus booksotre on the campus. the bookstore is about to open in a few months time and business club ( i am a member) is to run it. As part of the deal we need to come up with the business plan. After some brainstorming with the team we have decided to do a survey first to find out more information about customers. I have come up so far with questions like: 1) How much do yous spend in the bookstore per month 2) How often do you go to the bookstore 3) Which goods do you usually buy in the bookstore 4) How much do you think is reasonable to spen on the books/stationaires per semestre (3 months)? 5) What you did not like in the previous bookstore? 6) What goods would you like to see in the bookstore which were not available before? I believe the survey, if used right, can provide us with a lot of useful information which will help us to udnerstand our customers and their needs, also our financial projection will be looking more accurate with it. Hwoever, I as any other member of my team we have never done surveys before and we are really confused as to how many questions should we have, what kind of questions should we include in the survey? How to analyze it, ourselves (manually) or use software like SPSS? I would really apreaciate if industry expreters could tell us if we move into the right direction, and our questions (written above) are correct and relevant. and give us any other advices on how do it. Thank You from me and my team

• Answer:

  Rather than tell you which questions to ask, I prefer to provide a framework for you to develop your own questions. The best way to develop questions is to ask yourself a lot of questions. Let's start with: What are the bookstore's goals? To maximize revenue? To provide a place for students to hangout? To provide employment for other students? What kind of goods can you offer? Where does most of your revenue come from? Who are your competitors? Is there a local bookstore that competes with you on price/offerings? What do you believe your value-add is? What do your customers believe your value-add is? How can you best communicate with customers? What is the price-sensitivity of your customers? Do they care solely about price? How much does convenience matter to them? These questions should help you develop questions for your customer population. Also, treat your respondents like gold. Your respondents are your customers and you want them to be happy. Make the survey easy to use and the questions easy to understand. Paper survey? Bad idea. Nobody wants to take it. You've got 10-15 questions max, and most of your respondents are going to take it on their mobile phone or tablet. Force yourself and your team to take the survey a few times and ask, "What can we do better?" Also, use gamification. Gamification increases the respondent-friendliness of your survey. Rather than asking "What do you buy in the bookstore?" ask "What are the top three items you buy in the bookstore?" Questions like "How often do you go into the bookstore?" are ambiguous and hard to answer. Change this and similar questions to: "How often do you go into the bookstore in a month?" Hope this helps. Good luck to you and your team.