Fall 2019 Internship Experience at Parks Associates-Research Analyst

Parks Associates is an internationally recognized market research and consulting company specializing in emerging consumer technology products and services. Founded in 1986, Parks Associates creates research capital for companies ranging from Fortune 500 to small start-ups through market reports, primary studies, consumer research, custom research, workshops, executive conferences, and annual service subscriptions. The company's expertise includes new media, digital entertainment and gaming, home networks, Internet and television services, digital health, mobile applications and services, consumer electronics, energy management, and home control systems and security.

As my internship kicked off I was overwhelmed with numerous terms and definitions in Smart Home, Digital Entertainment, Digital Media, DIY Home Security industries on which I had no prior knowledge. But now, I believe I have the confidence in assessing logical findings, analyzing consumer data, identifying market trends, performing significance tests, feature engineering of variables to get detailed insights and understanding the type of visualization to use in order to explain my story, working on publishing level reports pertaining to Connected Entertainment, Access Entertainment, Home Security , Broadband Value added Services and presenting the business insights pulled out of the analysis to the company’s managers.

I have had days of head-scratching not knowing how to accomplish the tasks that had been assigned to me. But what I can definitely attest to, is that this internship made me push my limits by researching unendingly to solve seemingly insurmountable problems, collaborating extensively with Consumer Analytics team to bring research projects to fruition, all while juggling my academics.

Overall I would like to say this has been a great learning experience for me and I am thankful to my supervisor Yilan Jiang and my fellow coworkers in Consumer Analytics team for their constant support and guidance, and for giving me challenging opportunities to explore these domains and also get hands on experience in Market Research. I would also like to thank each and every one at Parks for helping me gain industry knowledge from them.

I would like to thank all my professors at UT Dallas for making me competent in applying what I have learnt in my Masters in Business Analytics as I progress in my career. I would like to extend my gratitude towards Prof. Bill Hefley and Sivya Leventhal for being extremely supportive throughout this journey.