PLEASE RETURN THE ORIGINALS WITH MY COMMENTS TO ME.

General comments on the SA Store Atmospherics Assessment:

1. In the analysis, avoid making recommendations. Just present your observations and what are the expected outcomes or what these indicate with regard to being desirable / undesirable.
   
   

2. The Conclusions section should just be a summary of what is learned from your observations - it should be a lead-in to your recommendations.
   
   

3. Your Recommendations section should be related to issues that were in your observations; it should not be a long list of “stuff” that does not follow from your observations.
   
   

4. The Recommendations section should focus on discussing what needs to be done to improve store atmospherics, now how to do it. Some reports discussed issues of advertising, recruitment of volunteers, and such: these might be related to how to get more store traffic, how to improve the quantity and quality of donations, and how to find the labor to implement your recommendations, but these issues should be given no more focus than just a passing remark. The focus of your report is on what, not how.
   
   

5. Group together your observations and recommendations. Don't just make a laundry list of “stuff” - categorize and label these into related groupings. College term papers must be thorough and written in a formal style. Formal business writing is generally more brief and is easier for busy people to read and interpret if you have a lot of bullet points and labels / headings.
   
   

6. Social surroundings, task definition, time issues, antecedent states: Some reports included discussions of these issues without any reference to observations that are made of this particular store. If you have no observations, then it is best to say nothing. Don't say, “ time is important to people” -- the reader's reaction is going to be “so what”. For example, if we would expect that potential customers have certain kinds of time constraints that affect the way that we should organize the layout of the store or of items on a shelf, then this is an issue, but you need to relate it specifically to this particular store. Again, avoid talking about “theory” just for the sake of talking about it; nobody wants to hear it.
   
   

7. Don't use terminology that would not be known to people outside of our class. When you visit a physician, s/he uses specialized knowledge to make a diagnosis, but the instructions to you must be in terms that you understand. When someone mentions this store and I pinch my nose, I know that classical conditioning is more than just a stuffy theory in a book. However, I don't have to use such terms in explaining to the client that an unpleasant smell chases customers away forever. The notion of “involuntary attention” guides me into noting the distractions of such stimuli, but my report does not have to reference knowledge.
   
   

8. Don't put the course name, etc. on a formal consulting report.