Introduction to business administration semester i (2020 2021) marketing research “should we open an iu book club

Graph 1: GenderGraph 2: Year of study Graph 3: Major Graph 4: Rate of book preference Graph 5: Books read per year Graph 6: Time of reading per week Graph 7: Favorite book genre Graph 8:

BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION DEPARTMENT

REPORT INTRODUCTION TO BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

SEMESTER I (2020 - 2021)

MARKETING RESEARCH: “SHOULD WE OPEN AN IU BOOK CLUB?”

Trương Lê Hoàng Nam BABAIU20084

Graph 1: Gender

Graph 2: Year of study

Graph 3: Major

Graph 4: Rate of book preference

Graph 5: Books read per year

Graph 6: Time of reading per week

Graph 7: Favorite book genre

Graph 8: Kinds of books spent time the most

Graph 9: Obstacles

Graph 10: Ways to know a book club

Graph 11: Do you know any book club?

Graph 12: Open book club?

Graph 13: Excited with IU Book Club?

Graph 14: Favorite activities

Graph 15: Are you willing to contribute to the club’s budget? Graph 16: Willingness to pay

1 Introduction

According to the Ministry of Education and Training statistics, the prevalence

of general Chronic Energy Deficiency (C.E.D) was nearly 21.8%; with the rate of female students’ was

double the rate of male students’ (27.4% and 15.6% respectively It means that one out of fivestudents does not have good health or good physical status It can be inferred thatVietnamese students in general and IU students, in particular, spend insignificanttime to do exercise One of the reasons for this alarming issue is that universitystudents are usually under pressure of a load of assignments and projects so they

do not have any time for exercising And we think that it can make a promisingdifference if International University (IU) has a gym Therefore, in order to gaininsights about IU students’ needs of doing workout and keeping fit, as well as tocreate an environment where everyone can communicate and share their fitnessand lifestyle tips, we decided to conduct a survey at International University to

answer the question: “Should we open a book club for International University

students?”

The book club for IU students is the place for people who love books or whoare finding the books suitable for them At first, members can choose to read booksindividually or in a group After finishing reading a book, people will make apresentation about the book, which has comments for those who have not read thebook The club will have frequent talk shows that invite the authors of some booksmembers in the group voted and offline meeting for members of the club to sharethe books they want to suggest to others The book club has two incomes, whichare donating money from members to arrange the offline meeting, building a minibookcase, and paying the prepaid fee, and the second is money from sale tickets oftalk-shows

2 Methodology

The research work uses both primary data and secondary data The primarydata is obtained using a structured questionnaire via Google Form andinvestigations at the International University - Vietnam National University, HoChi Minh City from January 1, 2021, to January 7, 2021 The secondary data iscollected from books, journals, the internet, and newspapers

The primary data was collected using the questionnaire method, which was acost-efficient and expeditious way of collecting large amounts of information from

a large number of sample units Prior to drafting the questionnaire, in-depthconsultations were conducted with some university lecturers and students to form aclear direction for the questionnaire The questionnaire was then modified based onthe feedback of students and teaching assistants at the International University -Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City The questionnaire consists of 19questions, divided into two sections with a total of one five-point Linkert scalequestion, five exploratory questions, and 13 multiple-choice questions, framed forevaluating reading habits of the respondents, time spent on reading, generalattitudes towards reading, and reading preferences of students at the InternationalUniversity and assessing the suitability of the book club's operational model whenofficially established at the International University The survey was conductedamong IU students ranging from year one to year three and from nine faculties by asixteen-question Google form alongside with direct interview Respondents wereselected using simple random sampling

The target group was limited to university students ranging from freshmen toseniors at the International University - Vietnam National University, Ho Chi MinhCity Presently approximately 9,000 students are studying under the aegis of the

University Hundreds of different courses are conducted in the faculties ofBusiness, Biotechnology, Computer Science and Engineering, ElectricalEngineering, Industrial and Systems Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering,and the departments of Civil Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, English, andEnvironment Engineering

The sample size for the study was 200 students at the University, 61 ofwhom were male, 137 of whom were female and the rest two preferred not to say,applying for undergraduate degree courses The Sample size selected for the studyincludes 128 freshmen, 43 sophomores, and 29 juniors from six different faculties.More specifically, 94 of whom majored in Business Administration, 24 majored in

Graph 1: Gender Graph 2: Year of Study

Graph 3: Major

Logistics and Supply Chain Management, 14 majored in Finance and Banking, 18majored in Biotechnology, nine majored in Information Technology, eight majored

in English Linguistics and the rest majored in Applied Mathematics, Data Science,Applied Chemistry, etc To understand the reading habits of the Universitystudents, 170 students were surveyed using the questionnaire via Google Form, and

30 students from classes of Introduction to Business Administration, FinancialAccounting, Microeconomics, Business Ethics, Principle of Management, andIntensive English of the first semester of the 2020-2021 academic year were

randomly investigated

The tools used for the analysis of data are tabular analysis and graphicalanalysis based on percentage, and simple averages The association betweenreading habits and the fondness of the students for the book club’s operationalmodel is analyzed The result is used to support the decision of establishing thebook club From the questionnaire distributed, 170 online forms were filled, and 30investigatory forms were returned, representing a response rate of 100%

3 Data analysis

After conducting surveys and interviewing plenty of students, the result will

be analyzed meticulously and precisely The first part of the survey reflects the

Graph 4: Rate of book preference

Graph 5: Book read per year

current situation of reading of IU students and the reason why they like or dislikereading books

The rate of book preference in the first graph was divided into five levels,namely Love, Like, Neutral, Not Like, and Hate The graph shows that just 5.5%

of undergraduates do not like books, whereas 15.5% enjoy reading Besides, thefigures of the neutral and like levels were 40.5% and 38.5%, respectively It can befigured out that the majority of IU students are fond of reading books The amount

of time spends on a reading of IU students, however, does not match the high rate

of book preference mentioned The total percentage of the undergraduates atInternational University, who read less than four hours a week and do not read, are63.5% In contrast, only 36.5% were presented for the students who read more thanfour hours a week It is predictable to see that the number of books read by theundergraduates per year is low, for spending such a trivial time on reading Thesurvey’s figure shows that just 13.5% read more than 15 books a year and theproportion of ones reading from five to fifteen books per year was 28.5% Besidesthat, the number of students having no time spent on reading is 13 out of 200

Graph 6: Time of reading per week

students, and that was rated at 6.5% Finally, 51.5%, which is the largest amount, isthe rate of undergraduates who just read from one to five books per year

The next two charts illustrate the differences between IU students' favoritebooks and the book genres that the students are reading most The proportion ofstudents who are interested in novels is the highest, at 17.5% while the lowestfigure in literature, which is only 4% Following the novels, the percentage of softskills books is slightly lower, about 16% The next majorities are material at 10%and detectives with 9.5% respectively Coincidentally, all comics, short stories,science books, and self-study books have the same figure, which is 5% Moreover,

IU students also like some other kinds of books: horror, comedy, biography…,overall, 5.5% for them

Graph 7: Favorite book genre

H

students of IU do not spend most of the time reading all categories they like.Textbooks and research papers, novels, soft skills, and comics are the top fourbook genres read by IU students The first position in the list belongs to textbooksand research papers with 38.5% The figure of the novel, which is also the top onefavorite books, accounts for 33.5% In addition, students spend a moderateproportion of time on reading soft skills books and comics, which are 20% and6.5% respectively

Regarding the reasons that the undergraduates like or do not like readingbooks, most of them found it is boring and lazy spending time settling at one placefor a long time to take in too many words Some of them always find it busy withtheir study and their work, but even when having free time, they prefer to spend it

on other activities such as playing games, watching movies, or hanging out, etc Itcan be easily understood that many people have interests in active activities, notstaying in one place for a long time

Besides some students have lack interest, most of the rest in the surveyunderstand books bring out many benefits so they enjoy reading time Some lovereading just because they are addicted to books’ smell and want to enjoy whileabsorbing every word through every page Besides that, a lot of students lovereading, the reason for this occurrence is they feel completely relaxed and calmwhile living in the stories’ world, it can help them to forget all the stress and

Graph 8: Kinds of books spent time the most

difficulties outside Nevertheless, almost understand that books can support theirstudy, evoke their imagination, help them to enhance their knowledge of othertopics such as experiences in life, social skills, or business information, etc.

Even though reading books bring out many advantages, the figures in thesurvey illustrate that undergraduates also have some obstacles There are manythings students have to complete such as their study, their job helps them inincreasing income as well as other duties, and this active illustrates that they haveless amount of time to read, it is illustrated through the figure in the survey that thelargest amount is 100 among 343 students do not have enough time to read Thefollowing figure is 92 students are not motivated to stay patient reading; they find

it a little difficult in staying focus on a book with hundreds of words Lastly, thenumber of students who cannot find a suitable book equals the number they are notinterested in the content

All in all, it can be speculated that there is a reasonably large number ofInternational University students who are fond of reading Up to 94.5% out of 200students being surveyed said they did form a reading habit; however, they did notspend the equivalent amount of time regarding their sayings Although nearly 40%

Graph 9: Obstacles

of the respondents spent the most time on textbooks, which is absolutelyunderstandable, their favorite kind of books varies among the listed genres,especially novels What is more, any of the surveyees can clearly decide thereasons for not spending time on books, mostly due to laziness, lack of motivationand time, all of which are resolvable using appropriate incentives Therefore, ourbook club has promising target groups, which is the first fundamental element out

of the two to find the club at the International University

The remaining part of the survey focuses on IU students’ willingness to open

a book club The graph provides information about the channel that helps students

to notice about clubs There are a lot of events to broadcast clubs especially tostudents such as Club Fair, Club Day; however, clubs are mainly known by peoplesurveyed through Facebook and recommendations of friends While Facebookaccounts for a half (101 over 200), friends occupy nearly a quarter (46 over 200) ofthe answers Those two ways of approach are expectedly dominant because of theirbeing common and fast speed spread of information

Graph 10: Ways to know a book club

Despitethe means of

information, the limited existence of book clubs itself also leads to the currentalarming situation of reading books According to the analysis of book readingstates in the survey, it is easy to infer that there are not many book clubs, and theirlevel of approaching people, especially students and youngsters is quite low.Among 200 IU students surveyed, only 35 students (nearly 20%) know at least onebook club, which also means that 8 per 10 students do not know any book club.Besides, book clubs mentioned by those who say yes are mainly clubs of their highschools It is such an issue to the university and Vietnamese academic environment

in general

Having

200 students at the International University, ranging from freshman to junior, it can

be explained that the outcome for the idea of a book club establishment isoutstanding Among the desires of students for books, particularly with the concept

of a book club at the university, as there has been no presence of a similar club,students have a clear propensity to have a book-based club, which occupies 93% ofstudents at the university, bringing in the overwhelming majority of students In acomparable way, approximately 9 out of 10 students in the IU can see the club as auseful place to engage in their reading habits In the opposite view, the studyshows that under one-tenth of students do not have any preference for the act ofproviding a book club to the challenges they face on their book journey

Conversely, when it comes to the events of this pre-assigned book club, theresponses appear to be somewhat cynical After following the above methodology

of the club's operation, the number of IU students giving no aim in the IU bookclub when the proposal is attached to the survey appears to surpass 14 to 31,accounting for 15.5% of the survey participants There is a substantial number ofstudents who still have a good interest in activities with 84.5% of IU students

Graph 13: Excited with IU Book Club?