Supply Chain Engagement In Retail Environment: A Study On The International Students’ Preference For Woolworths Over Coles Supermarkets In Australia

Research Objective

Discuss about the Supply Chain Engagement In Retail Environment.

The following research will be aimed to find out the reasons and the factors that lead to International students having a preference for Woolworths rather than Coles Supermarket stores. The Australian retail market has been long dominated by the two giants of the industry and there has been a long fight for supremacy amongst the mentioned two to prove their supremacy. The proposal prepared here will give a brief but compact idea of the actual research that is to be undertaken by the researcher.

The research will be discussing all the factors that are responsible for the preference of Woolworths over Coles by the international students. The research will also give a brief idea about the retail industry of Australia which and its characteristics. The research will also take the help of a survey that will be conducted amongst a selected group of international students.  The proposal will highlight the methods as well as the different types of research instruments that will be used to construct the final research.

The main objective of the research will be mainly the determination of the different factors and reasons behind the preference of Woolworths by the international students rather than Coles and Aldi. The objectives of the following research will be attained by means of a proper identification of the aims and then the analysis of the following using the appropriate methods.

The main area that will be focused on by the formulator of the research will be the main factors that are responsible for the success of Woolworths to the international students rather than Coles and Aldi. In other words, the main research will be focusing on the superiority of Woolworths in comparison to Coles and Aldi. The problems that lies within the supermarkets likes Coles to attract students will be identified and discussed.

According to, Addis (2016) woolworths, Coles, and Aldi are three of the most prominent retail organizations in Australia and each of the companies have been making steady growth in Australia as well as the overseas market. There has been a debate as to who achieves the most votes when it comes to the satisfaction of the customers. All the three retail organizations claim about each of their individual success but survey results have altogether a different saying.  It will be seen that in attracting the local customers all the three organizations performs more or less the same however there is a striking difference in one particular category, which is the International Students choice. In the study of, Berning (2014) it is seen that Woolworths is the most preferred amongst the international students who come to study in Australia. There may be a varied number of reasons that may be the cause of such a choice. The surveys carried out earlier have identified more than 25 different categories where the management of Woolworths was able to perform its nearest rivals. This includes the likes of the in-store execution, pricing strategies, morale and different promotional effectiveness. Both Coles and Aldi posted lowest scores in each of the categories that Woolworths turned out to be superior. This allows the increasing popularity of Woolworths in the market which has made the international students prefer them more than that of the other retailers in the Australian Market.

Management Problem

On the other hand, Mugera Burton and Downsborough (2017) have verified that the success of Woolworths in the international market is mainly due to a number of competitive strategies and the implementation of these strategies by the company workforce. The momentum in Australian retail market clearly lies in the hand of Woolworths and the company is far ahead of its nearest competitors in terms of sales, marketing, and promotion. The management has taken up a number of special steps to reach out more to the international students by a number of different ways. They are as follows;

1. Student Discount Cards- The management of the company provides student discount cards to most of the frequent international students (Rucker et al. 2015). The students who have the tendency to buy different products from the Woolworths stores find it easy to avail the cards as these cards help them to get additional discounts which are not available on any other cards (Chao and Jo 2015). On the other hand, the international students are also provided discounts once they furnish their identity cards in the stores. This makes Woolworth the best preference for the international students.
2. Stores nearby the colleges-As seen by, Mugera Burton and Downsborough (2017) some of the stores of Woolworths are located in close proximity to the universities and the colleges which helps them to attract a large number of different students as they find it easier and feasible to gather the products of their needs from nearby stores without traveling long distances and incurring extra expenses (Rucker et al. 2015).
3. Providing additional offers on large-scale purchases-The international students staying in the island continent of Australia generally prefer to buy all their necessary items in one go on a particular day. This allows Woolworth to provide different kinds of discounts on bulk purchases made by the international students (Eckman et al. 2015). The discounts offered to them in the mentioned company are much better and greater in size than the ones offered by their counterparts.
4. Huge Range of useful Products- The most important factor for the success of the business in the Australian market is the ability of the company to offer the people a wide and varied range of products (Rucker et al. 2015). The use of the different forms of useful products helps the organization to attain loyalty from the customers and in turn, provide them with more advanced services.
5. Promotional Strategies- The promotional strategies of the mentioned organization are one of the best in the market and it makes use of all the latest technologies to attract the people towards them (Zielke and Komor 2015). The presence of the company in the social media is a great source of contemporary promotion as because social media is the hub of young teenagers and thus advertising in different social media applications helps in the proper promotion of the business.
6. Online Growth- As said by, Zielke and Komor (2015)the management of the organization has ensured to mark their presence in different types of the social media applications to make sure that they stay updated with the latest trends. Their presence in the social media helps the organization to reach out close to the students.

The qualitative aspects will help the organization to make a detailed analysis of the research topic and explain each and every one of the different elements related to the research in details (Zikmund et al. 2013). The particular research on the choice of Woolworths by the international students will use the analytic or descriptive research design to complete the research. The choice of the particular research design over the other kinds of existing research designs is mainly due to the ability of the descriptive design of the research to provide a detailed analysis of the different theories and concepts that are related to the subject of the research. The following research design will be essential to gain an in-depth understanding of the different factors that help the services of the organization to be one of the very best in the business. The following research will thus be the most suitable for completing the following research. The in-depth analysis of the research will be helpful for the determination of the right set of results (Mackey and Gass 2015). The use of the descriptive research design will be justified as the researcher who will be conducting the following research will be able to test the formulated hypothesis of the research.

The following research will take the help of both the primary as well as the secondary data analysis methods to determine the exact results of the research. The research will be using both the primary as well as the secondary sources of research. The research will be using the survey research strategy to determine the different results of the research and to arrive at a solid conclusion (Flick 2015). The following kind of research will provide the researcher an opportunity for the researcher to collect and gather the information from the organizational perspectives. The main purpose of the selection of the international students will be to gain a ground-level understanding of the issues and concepts that are related to the following research topic. The sampling technique of the research has to be selected according to the research techniques. The completion of the particular sampling will be done by the use of systematic sampling technique. The selection of the particular sampling technique will be useful for the better and clear understanding of the topic and will also be useful to avoid bias. The use of the secondary data from different sources like that of books, journals, news articles is quite relevant and related to the following topic.

Literature Review

The research will be carried out by qualitative means with a slight use of quantitative means to verify the statistical measurements. The use of both the research methods will be useful for a better analysis of the Research and it will also provide both a theoretical as well as a statistical analysis about the preference of the international students for Woolworths.

As the research will use the Qualitative surveying method, an interview will be carried out to determine the different responses of the participants regarding the topic of the research (Taylor Bogdan and DeVault 2015). The participants will mainly be a group of 50 international students who will be interviewed via online applications to garner different responses regarding their preference for Woolworths. The following research will be using a structured format of qualitative data collection where the researcher will be providing a predetermined and standardized set of questions for the participants. The questions will be provided to them through online sheets and the online responses will then be evaluated accordingly. On the other hand, the secondary data will be collected through different forms of information sources that are already available in printed or other forms (Lewis 2015).

The data will be analyzed in the form of charts and tables for the better understanding of the different figures and facts. The qualitative data will be evaluated by performing a thematic analysis of the different responses that will be derived after completion of the survey. The thematic analysis of the responses will bring out new knowledge about the different forms of the data.

The ethical issues are one of the most important considerations that must be taken care of while undertaking the main research. Ethics forms the pillar of success for the research and thus ethics should be implemented by the formulator of the research while carrying out the particular project. At the very beginning, the formulator of the particular research has to be honest and integrated into his approach. The research must not be copied from any other sources or from the researchers of other researchers which had been performed earlier. In other words, the content of the research must be plagiarized free. On considering the analysis part of the research the researcher who undertakes the research must make sure that the participants are selected in a fair way. The first and foremost thing while choosing the respondents is to take their prior approval before proceeding with the said research. After getting the approval of the participants, the researcher must ensure that no harm or abuse is made upon the participants. The responses of the participants must also not be manipulated and it is the task of the research formulator to ensure that their responses are kept secret. The privacy and security of the research participants, as well as the research responses, is one of the basics that form ethics.  Confidentiality forms one of the most basic components of research. The research participants must also not be harmed in nay way during the collection of the resposnses.

Table 2: Research Budget

Source: (As created by the Author)

Reference List

Addis, J., 2016. Retail sector wrap: One opportunity and plenty of worry. Equity, 30(3), p.6.

Berning, A., 2014. Sustainable supply chain engagement in a retail environment: the case of Woolworths food suppliers(Doctoral dissertation, Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University).

Chao, P. and Jo, M.S., 2015. The impact of brand, attribute strength and country-of-origin on product evaluation: A web survey. In Proceedings of the 2000 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 186-191). Springer, Cham.

Eckman, M., Sakarya, S., Hyllegard, K., Borja, M.A.G. and Descals, A.M., 2015. Consumer receptiveness to international retail expansion: a cross-cultural study of perceptions of social and economic influence of foreign retailers. The International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research, 25(3), pp.260-275.

Flick, U., 2015. Introducing research methodology: A beginner’s guide to doing a research project. Sage.

Insch, A. and Bowden, B., 2016. Possibilities and limits of brand repositioning for a second-ranked city: The case of Brisbane, Australia’s “New World City”, 1979–2013. Cities, 56, pp.47-54.

Knox, M., 2015. Supermarket monsters: The price of Coles and Woolworths’ dominance (Vol. 6). Black Inc..

Lewis, S., 2015. Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Health promotion practice, 16(4), pp.473-475.

Mackey, A. and Gass, S.M., 2015. Second language research: Methodology and design. Routledge.

Mugera, A., Burton, M. and Downsborough, E., 2017. Consumer preference and willingness to pay for a local label attribute in Western Australian fresh and processed food products. Journal of Food Products Marketing, 23(4), pp.452-472.

Rucker, M., Kaiser, S., Barry, M., Brummett, D., Freeman, C. and Peters, A., 2015. The Imported Export Market: An Investigation of Foreign Visitors’ Gift and Personal Purchases. In Proceedings of the 1986 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 120-124). Springer, Cham.

Taylor, S.J., Bogdan, R. and DeVault, M., 2015. Introduction to qualitative research methods: A guidebook and resource. John Wiley & Sons.

Zielke, S. and Komor, M., 2015. Cross-national differences in price–role orientation and their impact on retail markets. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 43(2), pp.159-180.

Zikmund, W.G., Babin, B.J., Carr, J.C. and Griffin, M., 2013. Business research methods. Cengage Learning.

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