Strategic Business Decisions: Joes Wraps and Subs - Research Proposal Example

Questionnaire Design and Data: Joe’s Wraps and Subs Strategic business decisions require thorough understanding of the elements that need to be considered in the decision-making process. In some situations, access to the data and information relevant to the decision-making process is easy, most of the time it is not. It often requires the aid of statistical tool to enable deeper understanding of the factors involved in the decision-making process. Joe’s Wraps and Subs might be experiencing a thrill with the growing number of branches it has in the local scale but deciding nationwide expansion based on emotions may not yield the best possible scenario. Hence, it is necessary to have a better understanding of the market and how the captured market perceives the product before expanding on a national scale. Research Question In order to identify whether or not Joe’s Wraps and Subs is ready to expand its product line on a nationwide scale through franchising, it is necessary to answer and understand the elements that affects the current performance of the business. This implies that the market research should be able to identify the answers to the following questions: (a) Is Joe’s Wraps and Subs able to differentiate its product from the competition? (b) Is the current market reception of Joe’s products representative of the potential reception of a nationwide market? (c) Which areas of its products and operations must be enhanced, altered, or modified in order to capture a bigger market? Potential Contributions The results of this research prospectus will provide valuable information to Joe’s Wraps and Subs on whether or not it should commence on its strategic plan to franchise. The business can do so by analyzing which elements of the business attracts customers and sets it apart from the competition. The identification of these elements as well as the understanding of how these elements contribute to the success or failure of the organization in getting a strong market position Moreover, the results will help the business identify strengths and weaknesses so that it may be able to design and implement strategic marketing plans that would address the issues that will be identified. Methodological Approach and Research Design The research design and methodology suitable for the kind of market survey that will be employed in Joe’s Wraps and Subs requires a preliminary survey and a final survey. Doing a preliminary survey is important since performing a telephone interview for market research requires personal information from clients that they may be reluctant to divulge. Such information could be their names, professions, or telephone numbers that they do not wish to divulge to the crews of Joe’s. Hence, it is necessary to filter the customers (the population) for people who are willing to be interviewed by Joe’s crews (the sample size). The research aims to obtain 45 respondents for each of the five sites. It is necessary to have the same number of respondents for each store in order to ensure that the population is well represented. (It is also good to consider the distribution of the sample population based on the actual population of each site. Example, if the population of the customers at site A is twice as many as the population of the customers on site B, then the sampling ratio should also be 2:1). These respondents will be randomly chosen from the results of the first screening where the customers give their consent on a random interview from Joe’s crews. The qualifier questionnaire will also gather the relevant demographic characteristics of the sample size to be used in the descriptive analysis. These select respondents will then be interviewed by phone and the results obtained from the interview will be analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Data Collection Plan The qualifying questionnaires will be distributed to random customers during their visit to any of the five stores of Joe’s Wraps and Subs. The qualifying questionnaire appears as follows: This customer survey is for market research purposes only. Joe's Subs and Wraps will not use, divulge, or share any of your personal information to third parties Name (optional) Age: Profession/Occupation Joe's Branch: Phone Number: 1 - How often do you visit Joe's Subs and Wraps Answer: Please tick appropriate box 2 - Would you consider a phone interview from Joe's staff about Joe's products and services? Certainly No 3 - What is the best day and time to call you The names of the respondents needs to be optional but their age and their occupation are necessary for the store to identify what percentage of the social segment the brand is able to capture. The qualifying questionnaire has two purposes: first, it filters potential respondents (those who are willing to be interviewed by phone) from the rest of the customers; second, it provides the business information about the demographic characteristics of the captured market. When the data on the captured market is obtained from this qualifying questionnaire, the business can use this to focus its marketing and promotional campaigns to the social segment that needs to be drawn closer to the product the business offers. Forty five individuals from each store (or 225 respondents for all stores) will be chosen as the sample population. It is expected that not all of the 225 select individuals would cooperate during the interview process. The research should collect the information on the number of respondents actually participating in the interview. The select individuals will then be interviewed via phone using the following interview question guide: Phone Interview Guide Questions 1 - How often do you visit Joe's Wraps and Subs? 2 - On the average, how much do you spend each visit? Please rate the Joe's Wraps and Subs on the following on the scale of 1 -5, 5 being the highest rating 1 2 3 4 5 Do we have reasonable price? Do you find our stores comfortable? How do you rate the speed and quality of our service? Do you like the available variety of our Sandwiches? How do you like our Subs? Do you think our Wraps are superb? Please rank the following items based on your personal preferences about our product/service Price Comfort Quality of Service Food selection Did you see our recent commercial Advertisement? If Yes, what are the particular things you like about our ad? Do you have any comments/suggestions about our products or services you want to share? Data Coding Plan It is easy to identify that the research will not compare one product with another. This poses a strong benefit for the research since the quantitative analysis required to synthesize data and information is not so great. However, there is a great need to have the scales chosen to be internally reliable and valid so as to avoid, reduce, or eliminate any subjectivities in the interpretation of the data to be included in the research. A combination of the Likert’s scale and the Lofland & Lofland scale will be used to code the answers of the respondents on the first part of the qualifying questions. (Lofland & Lofland (1995) scale is a coding scheme where data is categorized by similarities of themes, patterns, and other obvious demographic indicators). The paper will use certain codes for each age-range and tabulate them as follows: Age Code 18 below 1 25-18 2 40-25 3 40-60 4 60 above 5 A combination of Likert’s scale and Lofland & Lofland’s scale will also be used to tabulate the answers of the respondents on the first and second questions during the phone interview. Frequency Code many times a week 1 once a week 2 occassionally (once every 2 weeks to once a month) 3 rare (fewer than once a month) 4 Expense per visit Code less than $2 1 $2-$10 2 $10-$20 3 more than $20 4 The rest of the items do not require further coding since they require quantitative responses from the respondents. Once the data sets are properly coded, data analysis can then be performed. Data Analysis For the items that are coded in the modified Likert’s and Lofland & Lofland’s Scales, only the descriptive statistical measures apply. This means that measures of central tendencies like average, mode, median, standard deviation, and variation will be performed to identify the general characteristics of these data. Graphical interpretation will also be provided to aid in the understanding of the data and information obtained. The rest of the data obtained will be analyzed using a combination of t-test difference between groups, linear correlation analysis, analysis of variance (ANOVA) or analysis of covariance whichever is applicable, or regression analysis whenever fit, particularly the for the rating systems employed in the research (Dillion et al, 1994; 16). References Dillon, W. R., Madden, T. S and Firtle, N. H. (1994), Marketing Research in a Marketing Environment, 3rd edition, Lofland, J., & Lofland, L. H. (1995). Analyzing social settings: A guide to qualitative observation and analysis, 3rd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co. Read More