| dc.description.abstract | The purposes of the study were to measure change in knowledge, adoption of
practices, and economic impact, and to investigate relationships between selected
personal and business parameters, and satisfaction, knowledge, adoption of practices,
and economic impact of the Master Marketer program and marketing clubs.
A census was attempted to collect data from the 520 Master Marketer graduates
and 1,058 marketing club members. Using recommendations from Dillman (2000), data
from participants were collected using two mail questionnaires. This process yielded
326 usable responses from Master Marketer graduates for a return rate of 62.7%, and 407
usable responses from marketing club members for a response rate of 38.4%.
Master Marketer respondents had a statistically significant increase in selfperceived
knowledge with a change in mean score of 2.06 (pre-knowledge mean = 3.33,
post-knowledge mean = 5.40, where 1 = low, and 7 = excellent). Using a paired samples
t-test, the 2-tail level of significance was beyond the .05 level of significance. Marketing
club respondents also showed a statistically significant increase in self-perceived
knowledge.
Adoption of price risk management practices was measured with an adjusted
response scale ranging from 0 to 12. Master Marketer respondents showed a pre-mean
score of 3.15, a post-mean score of 6.61, and a change of 3.46. The 2-tailed level of
significance for the overall adoption scale was less than 0.01. Marketing club
respondents also showed a statistically significant increase in adoption of these practices.
Economic impact in terms of change in net income was derived using
respondents?? self-reported changes in commodity price received for each commodity
produced, and each respondent??s typical level of production. The total farm impact had a
mean of $32,288. The 2-tailed level of significance for the total farm impact was less
than 0.01. The mean impact per farm of $12,361 for marketing club respondents was
also statistically significant.
For Master Marketer respondents, notable findings with respect to the correlation
of independent variable with dependent variables was total gross revenue was negatively
correlated with knowledge change. Participants who reported a large change in
knowledge tended to also report a large change (increase) in time spent on marketing. | en |
