Opening Organic Coffee Shops In Australia: A Business Research Proposal

Difference between organic and conventional coffee

Question:

Write report to describe a business research proposal on the topic of “opening organic coffee shops in Australia”.
 

Introduction

The report describes a business research proposal on the topic of “opening organic coffee shops in Australia”. The business research encourages the growth and development of organic coffee shops throughout the country of Australia. There are a large number of people all over the world who prefers coffee more than their preference for tea or other beverages. The lovers of the coffee all over the world love to experiment with the different flavours of coffee. Coffees with different aromas and flavours are available all over the world. Coffees from different origins are also available in different parts of the world (Equalexchange.coop 2016).

There are two types of coffee that are available in the markets all over the world. One is the organic coffee and the other one is the conventional coffee. If one considers the commodities that are most widely traded all over the world, coffee holds the highest position. The different coffee markets of the world produce over twelve billion pounds of coffee each year (Morris et al. 2013). This research proposal deals with the prospective and consequences of opening organic coffee shops in the country of Australia. The research proposal highlights the need for doing so.

Since coffee is one such commodity that people all over the world uses widely, scholars and researchers have conducted extensive studies on the benefits and drawbacks of consumption of coffee. Researchers all over the world have also thrown light on the different flavours and types of coffee. The studies depict that there is high demand for coffee all over the world. So it is not a very easy task for the planters and producers of coffee to meet the needs of consumption of coffee. As time has gone by, the coffee planters have resorted to new and improved methods and techniques of coffee plantations all over the world. The new technology and methods of coffee plantations have affected the health of the people all over the world as well as that of the environment (Gitter et al. 2012). The new and improved methods of production of coffee gives rise to the conventional non organic variety of coffee that people all over the world uses largely.

The studies of the researchers and scholars show that there is a lot of difference between the conventional coffees that people all over the world consumes and the organic coffee. Research works have proved the fact the conventional coffee is one such commodity that is treated heavily with chemicals. Coffee planters all over the world apply different types of chemicals like fungicides, pesticides, herbicides, insecticides and fertilizers to increase the production of coffee. The application of all the chemicals adversely affects the taste and quality of the coffee that people throughout the world consumes. This hampers the health of the consumers of coffee. This also degrades the environment. The coffee planters also harm themselves while spraying these chemicals to the coffee fields. Moreover, the use of such chemicals causes air, soil and water pollution (Morris et al. 2013).

Need to open organic coffee shops in Australia

The erroneous and harmful techniques of the production of the conventional coffee drive the coffee producers all over the world to focus on the production of organic coffee. The articles and journals on organic coffee draw the attention of the people all over the world to the benefits that consumption of organic coffee has on the consumers. While growing organic coffee, the planters do not have to take help of the synthetic fertilisers to improve the production of organic coffee. The coffee planters all over the world grow the organic coffee by using organic fertilisers only. Some of these organic fertilizers include the compost, chicken manure or coffee pulp (Ferreira et al. 2013). Hence one can observe that the plantations of organic coffee do not have any negative impact on the environment. The studies on the organic coffee give the information that the organic coffee beans contain healthy antioxidants that help to improve the health of the people (Souza et al. 2015).

The above discussion emphasizes on the fact that the government of different countries and also the coffee businessmen should encourage the coffee planter to produce more organic coffee than the conventional coffee. Australia is the land of rich natural resources. Nature has blessed the country with different natural resources that aid the production of organic coffee throughout the country. The coffee planters of Australia should utilize these natural resources to produce organic coffee, keeping in mind the health of the environment and the coffee consumers (do Nascimento et al. 2014). As a result the country can witness the opening of more outlets of the organic coffee shops in different places and districts of Australia. The government of the country should also encourage the opening of organic coffee shops all over the country. 

Based on the above discussion and considering the literature review of the topic of the research, the researcher can frame some research questions that would guide the researcher throughout the study. Some of the research questions that the researcher can frame from the above discussion are the following:

1. Why, according to the consumers, is it necessary that the country should have more organic coffee shops?
2. What are the factors that would help the shop owners to open outlets for organic coffee?
3. How will the opening of organic coffee shops affect the profit generated by the coffee producing companies?

These are some of the questions which the researcher wishes to answer by conducting the research.

The researcher would complete the research process by following the few simple steps. It is necessary for the researcher to frame the steps which he would follow throughout the course of study. The author describes the following steps of the research methodology:

1. Selection of the research topic: First, the researcher would select the research topic. Here, the topic of the research is the opening of organic coffee shops in Australia.
2. Literature review: The researcher makes a review of some of the articles and journals based on the topic of the research. The literature review enables the researcher to get the idea of the background of the topic in question. The researcher also gathers secondary data on the topic from the literature review of the topic.
3. Gantt chart: The researcher prepares a Gantt chart of the research process. The Gantt chart describes the duration of time that the researcher would take to complete different steps of the research process.
4. Data collection: To conduct the research, the researcher would collect both primary as well as secondary data from different sources. The sources can be the websites of some of the coffee producing companies of Australia. The researcher also collects data by directly interviewing the coffee planters, the managers of the coffee shops and the consumers of coffee.
5. Data analysis: The researcher analyses the data collected from the subjects by qualitative data analysis techniques.
6. Conclusion and reporting: Finally, the researcher explains the findings and outcomes of the exploration. The researcher presents the outcomes of his research in a way that would be useful for both the owners of the coffee shops as well as the coffee lovers of the country (Mackey and Gass 2015). 

The researcher represents the important milestones of his study in a Gantt chart. The Gantt chart displays the duration that the researcher would require to make the literature review of the topic, to collect the data and to analyse it and to make the final report of the research.

Task	Start date	Duration	End date
Literature Review	17th  June	15.00	2nd  July
Data Collection	3rd July	60.00	3rd Sept
Data Analysis	4th Sept	55.00	31st Oct
Final Report Submission	1st Nov	30.00	30th Nov

One of the main steps to conduct the research is to collect data from relevant sources. The researcher first applies a probability sampling method to select the sample from where the researcher would collect the data. The researcher would select some of the coffee shops in Australia to conduct the interview. The researcher would collect the data with the help of a questionnaire. The researcher interrogates with the owners and managers of these coffee shops and notes their views on some of the questions mentioned in the questionnaire. The researcher collects secondary data also. Then the analyst analyses the data collected by suitable data analysis techniques. The data analysis produces the results of the research (Flick 2015). The experimenter discusses the outcomes that he expects from the research.

Health and environmental benefits of organic coffee

The researcher collects the primary data with the help of the questionnaire. The questionnaire for this study contains open ended questions that are not very well structured. Some of the questions that the questionnaire contains may pertain to the views of the customers or the shop owners regarding the opening of the organic coffee shops in the country of Australia. The questions in the questionnaire may also want to know why the respondents feel that there is a need to open organic coffee shops in different places of the country. The respondents would mark their choices on a scale containing five parameters. The five different parameters of the marking scale ranges from the option of “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”. The respondents have the freedom to mark any answer of their choice anonymously. The questionnaires are so designed that the identity of the respondents would not be disclosed at any point of the study (Lewis 2015).

After collecting the information the researcher cleanses and validates the data. The researcher discards any erroneous or missing values from the data that is given by the respondents. The researcher treats the data collected from secondary sources also in the same way. Qualitative data analysis method consists of a range of procedures that helps to explain and understand the data and interpret the results in an efficient manner (Taylor et al. 2015). Qualitative analysis helps to explain the symbolic content and meaning of the data. There are two approaches in the qualitative data analysis that the researcher uses – the inductive approach and the deductive approach (Grbich 2012). This completes the data analysis procedure of the research.

The researcher expects that the research would have a positive impact on the consumers of coffee as well as the coffee shop owners. The results of the research would help the researcher find the answers to the research topics. The people involved in the business for producing coffee would get an idea about the importance of production of organic coffee over conventional coffee. The coffee shop owners would also get an idea of what the customer wants from the research. 

Conclusion:

The business research proposal highlights the importance of organic coffee over the conventional coffee. Seeing the results of the research, one can easily conclude that the country Australia should encourage the opening of more organic coffee shops as organic coffee has a lot more advantages over the conventional coffee that people all over the world widely consumes. 

References:

do Nascimento, L.M., Spehar, C.R. and Sandri, D., 2014. Productivity of organic coffee orchard in the Brazilian savannah after prunning and grown under different water regimes. Coffee Science, 9(3), pp.354-365.

Equalexchange.coop. (2016). Organic vs. Conventional Coffee | Equal Exchange. 

Ferreira, F.Z., Silveira, L.C.P. and Haro, M.M., 2013. Families of hymenopteran parasitoids in organic coffee cultivation in Santo Antonio do Amparo, MG, Brazil. Coffee Science, 8(1), pp.1-5.

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

Gitter, S.R., Weber, J.G., Barham, B.L., Callenes, M. and Valentine, J.L., 2012. Fair trade-organic coffee cooperatives, migration, and secondary schooling in Southern Mexico. Journal of Development Studies, 48(3), pp.445-463.

Grbich, C., 2012. Qualitative data analysis: An introduction. Sage.

Lewis, S., 2015. Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Health promotion practice, p.1524839915580941.

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

Morris, K.S., Mendez, V.E. and Olson, M.B., 2013. ‘Los meses flacos’: seasonal food insecurity in a Salvadoran organic coffee cooperative. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 40(2), pp.423-446.

Morris, K.S., Mendez, V.E., Lovell, S.T. and Olson, M., 2013. Conventional food plot management in an organic coffee cooperative: explaining the paradox. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 37(7), pp.762-787.

Souza, A.G.C., Maffia, L.A., Silva, F.F., Mizubuti, E.S.G. and Teixeira, H., 2015. A time series analysis of brown eye spot progress in conventional and organic coffee production systems. Plant Pathology, 64(1), pp.157-166.

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