Operations Manager Job At Salamanca Fresh In Hobart: Should They Expand Business With Student-focused Strategies?

Background

As an Operations Manager of Salamanca Fresh, the role entails looking out for any potential risks that will directly affect the probability of success and assessing those risks so that they do not hinder the performance of Salamanca in Hobart. This involves overseeing whether Salamanca is falling short to attract customers compared to its competitors.

Hobart is highly populated with university students who prefer to buy products on promotion from Coles, Woolworth and Asian stores rather that high quality products from Salamanca Fresh. The objective of the study is to assess whether Salamanca Fresh should expand its business operations in Hobart with new strategies to attract students so that they have better chances of succeeding compared to its immediate competitors – Coles and Woolworths and two Asian Grocery stores – Wing & Co. and PinGu Asian store which are also popular among university students because of their student discount schemes. 

Researchers have identified a change in traditional gender roles associated with grocery shopping, thus, including both male and female as main target audience for promotional strategies (Mortimer and Weeks, 2011). Coles and Woolworths are market-driving with their proactive strategies. They attract customer by providing fresh food at a lower price, making shopping convenient by incorporating alternative payment method rather than cash and locating stores in strategic positions (Merrilees and Miller, 2001).

Superior service quality can help supermarkets to gain customer loyalty which will help them to retain old customers and the loyalty award programs can also help attract new customers to become loyal (Shirohi et. al., 1998) This data was This study will help Salamanca Fresh to identify the customer requirements of students and other customer, both male and female, and develop an effective and efficient strategy to attract customers and also help retain the old customers at the same time, hence, increasing their sales.

2.0 Survey Questionnaire and Procedure

On reaching a consensus about the questions required in our survey in order to answer the primary question of “Should Salamanca Fresh expand its business operation in Hobart?” a google form was created. Google forms helped circulate the questionnaire with a designated link. All responses are saved automatically and the summary of responses in order to perform additional analysis were downloadable from the software itself. The link to the questionnaire was circulated mainly through social media and word of mouth. The primary target audience being students, as Hobart thrives on the student population. 

3.0 Data Presentation and Analysis

3.1 Summary Table

The respondents of the survey are mostly within the age bracket of 25-30 years with the average age being 27.3 years. Hobart being heavily dependent by the student population, the target audience to answer our primary question of if Salamanca Fresh expanding its business relies on these individuals. Most students are part-timers with an average income of $416.67 per week and further, spend $65.43 per visit on their visit to their preferred supermarket.

 The contingency table portrays that majority male and female use cars and public-transport and prefer to do in-store shopping. So, when expanding, Salamanca Fresh needs to make sure they have more car parking space and are also located near bus which will lead to more walk-in’s benefit as majority of the respondents prefer to shop in-store.

Survey Questionnaire and Procedure

3.3 Pie Chart

The side-by-side charts represents the information from survey that 16-30 age groups attracted towards the promotions in Coles and Woolworths and many people are wishes to shop in Coles because it provides best promotions and has credit cards options.so we would suggest Salamanca Fresh to follow the same strategy but with more points in credit cards which results in more customers.

The scatter plot (Figure 5), derived using data in Table 1, shows that majority of the respondents spends less than $50 whenever they go to supermarkets. Respondents who mainly goes shopping 1-2 times spend on average of $75. A few spends on an average of $125 – $175. Only one respondent spends over $200 when he/she goes shopping 1 time.

Table 1: Expenditure of the number of respondents when they went to the supermarket

Using data in Table 1, a coefficient of correlation of -0.00733 is derived. This negative correlation indicates that people will spend less if they go to shopping often and when the number of respondents will increase, a few people will be willing to spend more as the cluster in Figure 6 is around 1 and 2.     

3.7 Joint Probability

Table 2: Joint Probability of Coles, Woolworths, Salamanca Fresh and Others 

The probability of person living in Hobart choosing Salamanca is 9% with the most probable supermarket of choice being Woolworths with almost 50% of the respondents. Further, an analysis has been made with the reason for which these respondents prefer their choice of super market. It is understood that convenience, quality and range of products have been key factors for selection of a particular supermarket. Salamanca Fresh not being significantly prominent in its locations and range of products is struggling to be competitive against the major competitors Woolworths and Coles.

3.8 Hypothesis Testing

Hypothesis testing was conducted on the choice of supermarket to determine whether the means were equal. A t-test in excel was done as follow;

Test hypotheses

Null hypothesis (H₀): µ_1-µ_{2 = 0}

Alternative hypothesis (H₀): µ_1-µ_{2 ≠ 0}

Based on the tests statistics (t-Stat), the value obtained is-1.47261. This value is a negative indicative negative correlation. We thus reject the null hypothesis and conclude that Salamanca Fresh should not expand its business operations in Hobart.

4.0 Conclusion

The entire survey result reveals that Woolworths and Coles have better customer strategy in place and are in demand because of their promotional schemes compared to Salamanca fresh. The respondents are not keen to pay more for fresh and high-quality fruits and vegetable (most bought item by customers), hence, they choose Coles and Woolworths for grocery shopping. If Salamanca Fresh decides to expand its operation in Hobart it should follow Woolworths and Coles’ footsteps and adopt their customer strategy.

They must provide more promotions and loyalty programs to their customers and use loyalty points as an option to pay in addition to credit card and cash. They should also have self-check counters, which they do not have now, so that it saves time, making shopping convenient and cheaper for its customers.

Although the information received from the survey was useful to get an insight of the customer’s requirements from supermarkets, it also has some limitations:

1. Only 81 survey responses were used to get the results among which majority of them were university students living in Hobart which is one class group. Therefore, this survey result does not represent the opinion of entire Hobart population.
2. Some respondents may not have taken this survey seriously and provided false information. Some have skipped one or two questions as it was not required to answer all the questions to submit the survey.
3. The survey questions were mainly qualitative data; therefore, it was difficult to analyze one question at a time. So, two or more questions are included in one chart, plot, table and analysis to come up with a conclusion. Furthermore, the word limit of 40-60 words on discussion made it difficult to explain all the points briefly. Therefore, only the main outcome and points are explained in the discussion section after each of the graphs.

The following suggestions are provided for improvements in future studies.

1. Using other methods along with online survey can help to acquire accurate information faster. For instance, telephone interviews and face-to-face interviews will allow two-way interaction between respondents and the interviewer and will help the interviewers contact people from all age, gender and social class groups and they can also choose interviewees, which is impossible in case of online survey (Eaden et. al., 1999). Online survey will only reach people if they have access to the link and choosing the respondents is impossible for this case. The responses acquired using telephone and face-to-face interview will be accurate and quicker and will also be cheaper compared to other method (Kelly et. al., 2003).
2. Quantitative data is easier to use in showing difference between two items or companies by providing the answer of the number of respondents. This makes the method convenient for report writers and it is also reliable at the same time. Many researchers have also used this method to rest their case in academic journals (Ponto, 2015).

 References

Eaden, J., Mayberry, M. and Mayberry, J. (1999). Research methods: Questionnaires: the use and abuse of social survey methods in medical research. Postgraduate Medical Journal, 75(885), pp.397-400.

Kelly, K., Clarke, B., Brown, V. and Sitzia, J. (2003). Good practice in the conduct and reporting of survey research. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 15(3), pp.261-266.

Merrilees, B. and Miller, D. (2001). Innovation and Strategy in the Australian Supermarket Industry. Journal of Food Products Marketing, 7(4), pp.3-18.

Mortimer, G. and Weeks, C. (2011). Grocery product pricing and Australian supermarket consumers: gender differences in perceived importance levels. The International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research, 21(4), pp.361-373.

Ponto, J. (2015). Understanding and Evaluating Survey Research. Journal of the Advanced Practitioner in Oncology, 6(2), pp.168-171.

Sirohi, N., McLaughlin, E. and Wittink, D. (1998). A model of consumer perceptions and store loyalty intentions for a supermarket retailer. Journal of Retailing, 74(2), pp.223-245.

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