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City and County Credit Union has established a goal to increase the use of services in member households and expand products offered to the teen market. How would teens react to CCCU's planned services and more importantly, what would the parents say if CCCU began offering checking, debit and credit cards to teens? A focus group seemed the perfect place to start.

Students from the College of St. Catherine's sales and marketing fraternity who are members of Pi Sigma Epsilon Fraternity, working with the Credit Union, designed and implemented market research using focus groups to explore these questions separately with teen boys, teen girls, and parents. Twenty-two teens ages 13 - 16 and one of their parents were phoned and invited to participate. The College of St. Catherine sales and marketing undergraduate majors, only a few years out of high school themselves, were uniquely qualified, to assist the Credit Union in exploring the needs of the teen market.

The focus group format used a discover process to obtain insights obtain insights about teen perceptions and attitudes concerning money, spending, and saving. Key areas of inquiry included identifying the influences shaping perceptions about spending and saving, the roles of parents and peers, and where is the Credit Union on the young person's radar screen and what financial solutions might the Credit Union offer?

"Our Credit Union has utilized professional focus group facilitators in the past, and I am pleased to say the students from St. Catherine's were equally professional in their approach to the project. Besides developing the questions and conducting the sessions, they presented the results and their recommendations to our staff."

PSE is the only national, professional, coeducational fraternity in marketing, sales management and selling. The mission of PSE is to develop the sales and marketing skills of its members through lifelong opportunities. On the collegiate level, PSE offers practical experience to members through active involvement in sales and marketing projects, marketing research, professional programs, community service and general chapter operation. Founded in 1952, PSE
has 60 student run chapters.

The College of St. Catherine PSE colony is two years old and this is their first revenue-generating project. The process to become a chapter of PSE involves four phases and one component is to research, plan and implement a profitable marketing research project. The students are actively seeking additional marketing, sales or research projects to gain real-world experience. Please consider hiring PSE students for a project in your organization. Contact academic advisors Greg DiNovis, 651-690-8873 or Lynn Schleeter, 651-690-8762 directly to discuss projects.