A vice-president of a shoe company was in India to assess the market. He found that many people in the southern part of India were walking bare footed. This can be indicative of either the fact that there is a potential market for shoes or there is no market for shoes in that part of the world. To formally confirm one instinct or the other the vice-president should:

a. establish an office to start manufacturing shoes in India
b. give free shoe samples to a selected group of customers
c. conduct a research to find the potential and actual customers
d. find out if that is true for other Asian countries
e. give up the idea of doing business in India
c. conduct a research to find the potential and actual customers