Jason West, owner of the XL Cleaning, LLC, began his business in 2012. Jason's primary focus had been on cleaning offices for large corporations, but in recent months, Jason has seen a decline in demand for cleaning services. Surprisingly, the competitive environment appears relatively stable with no new major competitors. As Jason thought about his situation, he realized that he needed to better understand how customers assess service quality and what they were looking for in a superior cleaning service. Jason developed a detailed research plan. First, he gathered his competitors' information -- primarily through brochures, browsing their websites, as well as making some phone calls -- to fund out exactly what the competition offered as part of their cleaning services. In addition, Jason obtained an updated list of 423 local companies and their addresses from the Chamber of Commerce in his area. Although this list contains 423 local company names, Jason has decided to survey 100 of them. Jason gathered information about the competing firms from brochures, phone calls, and the Internet. Obtaining this type of information is an example of ________
