Objectives of the Research
Discusss about the research and business decision making considering the survey among the customers of shopping mall in Australia.
This report is performed on a significant customer satisfaction research decision making. The report provides a complete research and business decision making considering the survey among the customers of shopping mall in Australia. This report mainly discusses how the research will be conducted with appropriate research techniques and creating achievable objectives. The report discusses how relevant data has been collected through a customer satisfaction survey. Moreover, the reliability of data and information is a significant concern of most the scholars; thereby, this research report ensures that to generate an authentic outcome from the research, appropriate research techniques have been applied. To perform the research effectively, first a set of objectives have been generated including both business objectives and the research objectives. Hence, the research objectives only revolve around the importance of conducting this research and the gap analysis. Furthermore, to ensure data collection method for the research, a certain checklist for data collection has been considered.
- To provide a desired level of customer service
- To learn about the needs and demands to create a desired level of customers service
- To know about how informed decision can be effective for the organization through the survey
The aim of the research is to conduct a customer survey to learn about the customer satisfaction, which would further help the business to respond to the market and lead the business. To achieve this particular aim, the above mentioned objectives have been created. The first objective is about creating a desired level of customer service which is required for any business to grow, because if the customer services are not improved, the business might not receive its return against the investment; so, it is highly important to learn the level of customer service. The second objective is about learning the needs and demands of the customers because to provide customer a desired level of service and create a desired level of customer satisfaction, it is highly necessary to learn about what customers actually want. As put forward by Saeidi et al. (2015) when a business knows its requirement such as the demand of customers, it becomes easy to operate. Thus, the last objective is about knowing how an informed business decision can be formed.
The information collected helps to achieve the research objectives because the information collected are about the needs of customers. The data such as for a long the customer is using brand’s products or services will be collected. There should be a survey containing the research questions such as customer needs, the service they expect, issues with price and reaction to deals and offers. The survey will be performed among the 100 customers of the shopping mall with the age above 18. As the customers do not have sufficient knowledge about the businesses or the brand’s internal strategy, they just need to provide answers of the close ended questions. The collected raw data will be further converted to numeric digits and then present them with the help of graph and table. This presentation will help to conduct the analysis, which further helps to generate the outcome. The data will be compared with the findings found in the previous scholarly journals.
Information required to fulfil the research objectives
To collect the data from the customers, personalized emails of customers will be used in which the selected respondents will be provided with a questionnaire and in the questionnaire, nearly 10 questions are required to be answered. Now, the collection of responses are useful for the business because, some important aspects can be learnt from the survey. By collecting the information, it might become easy to learn more about the satisfied ad unsatisfied customers. It is certain that satisfied customers are more likely to make the repeat purchase, while unsatisfied customers tend to look elsewhere when they are supposed to purchase the product. According to Namasivayam, Guchait and Lei (2014), the business or the organizations with the satisfied customers have as much as a 16% advantage over the competitors in customer’s intention to make purchase, reluctance to switch brands as well as probability of recommending them. So, this little piece of information would help to learn why the customers are unsatisfied and what issues they are facing which are leading them to switching to brand.
The customer satisfaction survey must include market analysis, tracking performance, customer-follow up, customer demographics and crowd sourcing. As put forward by Minarti, and Segoro (2014), it is critical to know what customers exactly think about the brand and this online customer satisfaction survey provides the feedback that the business needs to keep the customers satisfied and loyal. This particular survey provides an in-depth insight to business and the organization can enhance their business, products as well as overall customer experience. As the business growth can be derived from the level of customer satisfaction, the business needs to enhance the customer experience; thereby, to create an amazing customer experience, the organization needs to simply ask the customers what it was about that experience that they discovered unforgettable.
The customers only remain loyal when their experience remains better than the competitors and once it is learnt, it becomes much easier to retain the existing customers than acquiring a new business. For example, during an earlier stage of my internship in a small firm called Atlassian in Australia, I conducted a market analysis to find out issues that customers face in using mobile application produced by the brand. From the survey, I go to know that almost 71% of the respondents have mentioned that the “app” takes too much to process the transaction and moreover, the app is not user friendly. Based on this responses, an idea of researching the applications developed by other brands and their consumption rate have reviewed and finally, based on the recoded response of the customers, the application has been further developed. Thus, it is worth mentioning that this survey helps to know both positive and negative about the brand or its products and services. Customer feedback is valuable and it creates a sense in the mind of the customers that the organization values their customers. Thus, when the customers observe that the brand they use, consider customers’ value and opinions, the customers may further think to reconsider the brand before switching to a new one.
Customer Satisfaction Survey and Benefits
A study conducted by Pizam, Shapoval and Ellis (2016), reveals on customer satisfaction reveals the fact that spending a more detailed survey could immediately considering a sale is often revealing with respect to how effectively, the brand is meeting customers’ needs. When collecting information from the customers about their needs and demands, the business should also pay attention to customer demographics; this means the organization needs to pay attention to their lives, problem, preferences, challenges and dislikes even beyond some areas where the business serve. Apart from all these aspects, the business can also be benefitted in other way from this particular customer satisfaction survey; for example, the organization needs to take survey feedback seriously and then follow up with the customer respond negatively.
Here, the unsatisfied customers could inspire the maximum growth, indicating where the improvement is required. More specifically, for example, if a customer is found to be unsatisfied because the after sale service has never been good of the brand he/she follows. As the solution, after sale service should be developed. In addition to this, customer satisfaction efforts might also help the brand to outpace business competition. As put forward by Jones, Taylor and Reynolds (2014), in a saturated markets, the customer satisfaction could spark the completion for consumer loyalty. For example, the organization like Amazon and Zippos have paid attention to customer satisfaction and their success confirms a customer-centric philosophy (Kokkodis and Lappas 2015). More specifically, by 2020, the customer experience could overtake product because there is a key brand differentiator for Business to Business sales.
The data collection process is the most significant part of research and the customer survey because when conducting an analysis, the research requires validated and authentic data; therefore, the data collection technique approaches or the methodology should be applied consciously (Lewis 2015). For the present research, as a survey is supposed to be conducted among the customers, it is highly necessary to choose the primary data collection method, in which, by taking help from quantitative method, the analysis can be done by adding the statistical information (Cleary, Horsfall and Hayter 2014). The following are the aspects that have been considered when conducting the customer satisfaction survey for the business.
Questionnaire Design: When designing the questionnaire for the customer satisfaction survey, the organization or the manager must have to think of customer’ demographics such as age, sex, regions, and other significant aspects associated with the demographic (Krosnick 2018) The questionnaire will be designed on based on three different section such as Part A is about customer demographics, the questions in the Part B is about the topic- customer satisfaction and Part C is about the recommendation and improvement scope.
Conclusion
Target customers and sample: The target customers for the survey is the shoppers at the shopping mall with the age above 18; the manager must have to ensure that both male and female customers have been involved in the survey process. There should be not be any criteria about the region or geography, only the shoppers who pay a regular or a frequent visit to the mall will be surveyed.
Sampling: Sampling is another significant concern, which the manager or the researcher must consider when performing the survey. As the customers of the shopping are surveyed, there should not be any strict criteria for selecting the respondents; hence, the simple random sampling technique can be used. Here, the simple random sampling method has been used because the population size is large and each respondent has an equal opportunity to take part in the survey. The sample size for the survey is 200; hence, the population size is large because, it could help the business to identify issues in the more interior areas of the business.
Contact strategy: The manager needs to make sure that the respondents have only been conducted through their emails because filling out a survey form could be time taking. From the customer database of the organization, the customers’ email addresses will be identified and then the questionnaire will be distributed or sent to the customer’s email address. More specifically, each respondent will be provided with a separate questionnaire along with the first name of the customers.
Response rate: It is certain not all customers will provide the feedback; for instance, some customers may answer few of the questions and some may not reply at all. Therefore, the manager must have to ensure that there is proper response rate based on which the data will be processed or analysed. For this research, the response is 80, which means, the analysis will be conducted on 80 responses.
Hence, the manager must have to ensure that the data collection team has knowledge about the data collection, designing the questions in a way that generate response and the knowledge about IT. The volunteer should be trained about creating a Google Sheet form in which the customers find the questions and respond to the questions by selecting one of the given options. In addition to this, the manager also have to ensure that, as survey is performed among the customers, there should not be any descriptive question. The researcher must have to ensure that the questions do not include any objectionable element such as religion and race that hurt customers’ sentiments. The survey form must include proper instruction written at the top of the form; hence, the survey authority must have to ensure that no respondent has been forced to take part in the survey.
As mentioned earlier, the collected data will be converted to numeric digits and represent them in the table and graph to identity the highest and lowest responses on the areas of the business. In order to identify the frequency and intensity of the responses, few statistics will be included in the data such as mean, mean, mode and median. This statistical analysis will help to lean about the risk associated with the particular areas in the operation.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be mentioned that outcome of the research depends on the type of methodology or research approaches. Thus, it is highly important to select an appropriate research approach. Moreover, the selection of research approaches increases the reliability and validity of the data. Improper research approaches could generate a biased research outcome or an unexpected research result which further requires modification. Thus, it is wise to select the methodology that have a clear link or relation with the research objectives. This research can be further extended by adding few more techniques of research; for instance, a secondary research can be conducted to learn more about the theories of customer satisfaction, which can be further linked to the real-world data collected by the survey
References
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