Question:
What is design and why? What is type of research and why? What is your sample and why?
What is the method of data collection and why? More detail and justification please in your final paper.
Retail market in United Kingdom is a popular industry among the customers. Apple is one of the leading brands in the retail industry with its head quarters at Unites States. The company has 364 retail outlets all over the world (Tupikovskaja-Omovie et al., 2014). The company have various retail stores across United Kingdom. The success of the company depends on the purchase of products by customers, which in turn depends on the satisfaction of the customers.
Customers’ satisfaction is an important part of any business that depends on various factors of the company and their services (Chakravarti & Thomas, 2015). In this assignment, the satisfaction of the customers of Apple across United Kingdom would be explored. Various methods of data collection, data interpretation and probable outcome would be given in this research proposal (Wong & Lam, 2016). This would give a vivid idea about the probable satisfaction level of the customers and the probable reasons behind it.
This research aims to find the satisfaction of the customers of Apple and the factors that affect the satisfaction level of the customers. Satisfaction level of the customers is an important part for the business, as plummet in the customer’s satisfaction would result to loss in business. Factors that influence the customer’s satisfaction would also be explored in this research.
The objective of the research is as follows:
The research questions are as follows:
The problem statement of the research is that the satisfaction level of the consumers of Apple products across United Kingdom is decreasing in the recent years. This had affected the business of the company.
According to the viewpoint of Huang et al., (2013), it was seen that the products of Apple cost a huge sum of money than the products of other company. This results to lesser sale of the products of Apple than the products of other companies. The products of Apple have specific features that are not available for same products of other companies. As per the viewpoint of Sargunani and Bruce, (2015), it was seen that the products produced by Apple have higher resolutions, bigger display screen and advanced operating systems. Phones, laptops and other products produced by Apple provide their users with unique and user-friendly features, which are easily acceptable by the users (Piotrowicz & Cuthbertson, 2014). As per the comments of Kumar, (2015), it was found that the iphone of Apple had a special feature of figure print scanner. This feature is unavailable for other phone of different company. This feature had been widely acceptable by the customers and the customers are largely satisfied by this feature of the phone. As per the opinion of Wong and Lam, (2016), the cost of the products of Apple had been a constraint to the customers. The cost of the products makes it unreachable to many customers. This factor does not let the new technologies reach to the customers of various financial levels from all over the world.
As per the opinion of Ayanso and Lertwachara, (2015), it was seen that branding strategy of Apple is an important aspect to attract customers towards their company. This company uses the Apple brand to draw consumers towards their company. They have even captured the consumers’ electronic industry of the United Kingdom with the products of iPods, distribution of music through iTunes Music Stores, the market of smart phones with the help of Apple iPhones and other applications via AppStores for its different products. This had drawn huge number of customers towards the company; especially the younger generation. United Kingdom, being a developed country, the people is technically advanced. They like the new features and technologies that are available in the devices of Apple. The consumers get the chance to explore new features of the devices and they tend to buy the new products that Apple introduces over the time. On the viewpoint of Taylor et al., (2014), it was found that the consumers expect new features with the introduction of new models of Apple products to the world. The consumers expect new design and innovative technologies in the products of Apple. According to the comments of Chiu et al., (2013), the company introduces new technologies and improve their designs with the introduction of new products over the time. However, this leads to the increase in the price of the products. The common people could not buy them and they settle down with lesser-priced products that contain similar technology. This had proved harmful to the business of Apple products and they had sometimes failed in their strategies to draw customers.
As per the viewpoint of Piotrowicz and Cuthbertson, (2014), promotional strategies play an important role to attract customers towards the company. The consumers of Apple products across United Kingdom are educated and have better financial conditions. They are influenced by the sophisticated advertisement of the products of the companies. This is another strategy that is adopted by the company to draw the attention of the consumers towards them. According to the viewpoint of Berg, (2014), it was seen that adapting this strategy of advertisement had failed to draw their expected amount of customers of United Kingdom to buy the products of Apple. The company had found plummet in their number of consumers in the recent years, which had become a concern for the company (Taylor et al., 2014). The causes for the dip in the number of customers over the recent years are a major concern for the business of the company in United Kingdom. The company wishes to make efforts to raise the number of consumers across United Kingdom, which would help them to develop in their business.
The methodology of this research includes various steps that are discussed below:
The research would be designed that includes consumers across various age groups and various financial levels. This design would involve collection of primary data across the stores of Apple across United Kingdom by questionnaire method. The store members and the managers of the stores would be involved in this survey and they have to convince the visitors of the stores to fill up the questionnaires for the survey. These data would be used for further analysis.
The desired data for this research would be the primary data that would be collected on interviewing the consumers who come to the stores of Apple to either purchase or find out about the products. The stores across United Kingdom should be instructed to survey their customers who visit the stores, irrespective of whether they purchase the product of not (Hayes et al., 2014). The stores would be provided with the questionnaire and they must be instructed to help the customers to fill up the questionnaire (Ayanso & Lertwachara, 2015). The questionnaire would contain both qualitative and quantitative questions and the consumers would be asked to fill them up according to their opinion. This survey would be done for a period of three months (Piotrowicz & Cuthbertson, 2014). Data collected over the different stores of Apple across the United Kingdom over three months would be used for further analysis. Three months of time would be chosen as more time would lead to the change in opinion of people with time. It would be difficult to identify the factors that affect the satisfaction level of the consumers and how does this satisfaction level influence the business of the company.
A sample size of thirty across twenty stores across United Kingdom would be drawn from the primary data that would be collected from the survey. Twenty stores would be chosen randomly across various parts of United Kingdom. The data collected from these chosen stores would be considered for the survey. Thirty samples would be randomly chosen from these selected stores and they would be used for further analysis (Ayanso & Lertwachara, 2015). Thus, the method of random sampling would be used to collect the samples of this research.
There are various methods of analysis that would be done on these data in order to find the factors that affect the satisfaction level of the customers in context of the products of Apple. Count of the factors that attract the consumers to the Apple products would give the frequency of the factors (Kennedy, 2013). This would give an idea about the most and least favoured factor of the products that attract the consumers. The method of descriptive statistics would be done, which would give an idea about the average amount of money spent by the consumers to buy electronic devices and the time spent to research about the electronic gadgets (Chiu et al., 2013). Comparative study would also be done in order to find the preference of the products of Apple over the products of other companies (Jaeger et al., 2016). The method of correlation would also be done in order to know how the satisfaction level of the consumers affects the buying behaviour of the products of Apple, which in turn would give the idea about the business of the company in United Kingdom (Montgomerie & Roscoe,2013).
The method of descriptive statistics would also give an idea about the type of people who usually visit the stores of Apple across United Kingdom and the type of people who us ally purchase these products. The method of descriptive statistics would also provide an idea about the age group of the consumers of Apple products across United Kingdom (Varley, 2014). The method of frequency distribution would give an idea about the types of professions that influence the purchase of the Apple products. It would also help to give an idea about the economic level of the consumers of the buyers and the visitors and the influence of profession on the purchase of the products of Apple across United Kingdom (Taylor et al., 2014). The method of correlation between the types of profession and the business of the company would also help to give an idea about how the profession of the consumers helps the business of the Apple in United Kingdom (Hayes et al., 2014). Thus, these methods would be used to analyse the surveyed data and it would give an idea about the factors that affect the satisfaction level of the consumers of Apple products across United Kingdom and how this satisfaction level influences the business of the company across United Kingdom.
Conclusion
In this assignment, the methods of data collection were suggested to be primary data collection method, which would include all the stores of Apple across the country of United Kingdom. These data would be surveyed with the help of questionnaire method to form the population of the research. The method of random sampling would be applied on this population in order to collect the samples of the data. These collected data would be subjected to various statistical methods like frequency methods, descriptive statistics and methods of correlation. These methods would give an idea about the factors that affect the satisfaction level of the consumers of Apple products across United Kingdom. It would also give an idea about how these factors affect the satisfaction level of the consumers of Apple products in United Kingdom. These statistical methods would also give an idea about the influence of the satisfaction level of the consumers on the business of the Apple in United Kingdom.
References
Ayanso, A., & Lertwachara, K. (2015). Analyzing Customer Service Technologies for Online Retailing: A Customer Service Life Cycle Approach.Journal of Computer Information Systems, 55(4), 73-80.
Berg, B. (2014). Introduction. In Retail Branding and Store Loyalty (pp. 1-26). Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.
Chakravarti, A., & Thomas, M. (2015). Introduction: hit-or-miss consumer insights. In Why People (Don’t) BUY (pp. 1-6). Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Chiu, W. Y., Tzeng, G. H., & Li, H. L. (2013). A new hybrid MCDM model combining DANP with VIKOR to improve e-store business. Knowledge-Based Systems, 37, 48-61.
Hayes, S. G., Tupikovskaja-Omovie, Z., Tyler, D. J., & Chandrasekara, S. (2014, January). Segmenting the UK Mobile Fashion Consumer. Association for Information Systems.
Huang, L., Hu, C., & Zhang, X. (2013). Consumer experience analysis: A case study of Apple Inc. from consumers’ perspective in experience marketing.
Jaeger, S. R., Antúnez, L., Ares, G., Johnston, J. W., Hall, M., & Harker, F. R. (2016). Consumers’ visual attention to fruit defects and disorders: A case study with apple images. Postharvest Biology and Technology, 116, 36-44.
Kennedy, B. (2013). Retail Marketing Theory In Fashion Retailing Context.
Kumar, P. (2015). Factors that determine the shopping behaviour of customers of organized and unorganized retail outlets:-a statistical survey of customer behaviour of shopping in Delhi/NCR. International Journal of Management, IT and Engineering, 5(4), 150-184.
Montgomerie, J., & Roscoe, S. (2013, December). Owning the consumer—Getting to the core of the Apple business model. In Accounting Forum (Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 290-299). Elsevier.
Piotrowicz, W., & Cuthbertson, R. (2014). Introduction to the special issue information technology in retail: Toward omnichannel retailing. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 18(4), 5-16.
Sargunani, S. S., & Bruce, M. M. J. (2015). Impact of Product and Market Factors on Consumer Behavior: A Study on Personal Computers Purchase.Asian Journal of Applied Sciences, 8(1), 92-100.
Taylor, S. A., Donovan, L. A. N., & Ishida, C. (2014). Consumer Trust and Satisfaction in the Formation of Consumer Loyalty Intentions in Transactional Exchange: The Case of a Mass Discount Retailer. Journal of Relationship Marketing, 13(2), 125-154.
Tupikovskaja-Omovie, Z., Tyler, D. J., Chandrasekara, S., & Hayes, S. (2014, March). Segmenting the UK Mobile Fashion Consumer. In ICMB (p. 2).
Varley, R. (2014). Retail product management: buying and merchandising. Routledge.
Wong, I. A., & Lam, I. K. V. (2016). A multilevel investigation of the role of retail stores in cross-border shopping. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 1-17.
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