Research Proposal Mechanism - Essay Example

?Research Proposal Research proposal is perceived to be the central theme of any research work. One of the foremost advantages of a researchproposal is that it assists the researcher to develop a well-structured research work which in turn increases its efficiency. A research proposal also assists in determining the aim and the objective of the research rewarding it a firm base. Moreover, it intends to determine the research methodology, i.e. the data collection procedure and the analytical tools to be implied. Thus, research proposal possesses a great importance in providing an extra edge to the finalised research work with limited risk of revisions and deficiency (Remenyi & Money, 2004). With this virtue, the research proposal presented here shall provide a specific structure to the ultimate research work mentioning the aim and objectives to be amended in the final discussion of the research. It will also intend to suggest an appropriate research methodology, apparently highlighting the importance of the research topic and evaluating its future scope. Table of Contents Abstract 2 1. Introduction 4 1.1. Research Problem 4 1.2. Background 4 1.3. Research Aims and Objectives 6 2. Literature Review 8 3. Research Methodology 10 3.1. Types of Research 10 3.2. Research Approach 12 3.3. Data Collection Process 13 3.4. Data Analysis 14 3.5. Limitations of the Research Methodology 15 3.6. Recommendations 16 References 18 Bibliography 21 1. Introduction 1.1. Research Problem Research problem is referred to the area of interest identified in the research work. It is termed to be an important element for a research work as it provides a purpose to the research which again signifies its ultimate objective. The research problem also provides certain specific research questions which in turn simplify the research process specifying the focal point of the research. 1.2. Background Sodexo is an international company which was set up in 1966 by Pierre Bellon. By its origin it is a service based company and renders its customers with a wide range of services. However, the company mainly focuses on its catering services to general public and fine dining customers as well. To be mentioned, the major objectives of Sodexo are attaining a sustainable growth of at least 7% per annum, reaching 6% operating margin, gaining the recognition as a global leader, developing the employee base and increasing its brand awareness and brand image at large (Sodexo, 2010). To encourage its virtues, Sodexo has also been recorded to be the first company to enter the contract of catering with the 2012 UK Events Industry Fair Pricing and Practice Charter. According to this contract, Sodexo Prestige, the catering group of the company is entitled to serve the chief customers in 2012 Olympic Games. This indeed is a great opportunity for the company to move ahead in accomplishing its optimum objectives (Sodexo, 2009). Therefore, the research problem which can be identified is to develop a well-designed uniform with key consideration to the aspect of the brand image of the company in representing 2012 Olympics and its employees’ perceptions. With this concern, the suggested research questions can be stated as follows, 1) What is the Brand Philosophy of Sodexo? 2) What are the Ethos and Values of the company? 3) What kind of uniform look would represent the company in the best possible way? Based on these research questions, certain significant research aims and objectives have been suggested in the following discussion. 1.3. Research Aims and Objectives Being an active participant of the service industries, fashion industry provides an utmost priority to the aspect of client satisfaction which enhances the possibility of client retention in future. Hence, it rewards the designer a long-term benefit. In this milieu, it shall be quite supportive to determine the research aim and its objectives focusing on the perception of both the primary and secondary customers (Dickerson, 2004). The primary aim of the research work shall be focused in designing an appropriate uniform for the workers of the company, ‘Sodexo’ with due concern to the aspect of 2012 Olympics. The set objectives of the research shall be to understand the company’s requirement for a well-designed uniform. To be specific, the need of the company relates to its brand philosophy and the ethos and values adhered by the company in its international operations. Notably, the uniform of a company represents its core values and cohesively relates to its brand image. Thus, it shall be highly beneficial to develop an in-depth understanding of the company’s vision and their expectations through the research. This shall in turn reward high satisfaction level from the customers end (Hines & Bruce, 2007). Accordingly, the comfort of the staffs and the perceptions of the staffs are also significant in this case. For instance, Sodexo is an international organisation and employs more than 380,000 employees in its 34,000 sites scattered all around the world (Sodexo, 2010). Consequently, the perception of the employees shall differ largely in this case, as most of the employees belong to varied cultures and different ethnic groups. Likewise, it is also quite natural that the comfort zone of the employees shall vary according to their perception and the characteristics of their ethnic groups. On the similar context, comfortability of the customers in fashion marketing is termed to be highly essential in serving the client with efficiency (Dickerson, 2004). Considering all these aspects and adhering to the virtue of fashion marketing the research shall further aim at recognising the perception and preferences of the staffs associated with Sodexo. It is worth mentioning that due to the fact that uniform represents the brand image, it holds a considerable significance for the company. With this concern, the third group of customers can be stated as the targeted customer of Sodexo to be served in the event through public catering and fine dinning services. According to the managerial vision, brand image not only helps at attaining a larger base of customers but also assists the company in their customer retention strategy. This can be set as a secondary objective of the research (Moisescu, 2010). 2. Literature Review Customer has always been treated to be the life-blood of the fashion industry. As mentioned by Dickerson (2004), “The Fashion Business exists for one reason only-The Consumer”. The author in his studies further states that the fashion business today has gained a significant position in the international market as an employer and a contributor to the world economy as well. However, the underneath reason for the survival of the company is the strength of its customers. In other words, the failure and the success of the fashion marketer are strongly depended on customer satisfaction (Dickerson, 2004). Therefore, throughout the research work considerable importance should be provided to the customers, i.e. Sodexo, the staffs and the ultimate customers of Sodexo. The importance of customers in fashion marketing was further discussed by Hines and Bruce (2007). According to the authors, the structure of the fashion industry has changed drastically from the early years. With due course of time, the role of customers of fashion products have also transformed to be strategic rather than operational as it was recorded in the earlier phase. With this change, fashion marketing has also witnessed several challenges in terms of competition, need of continuous innovative and creative ideas and others. Besides these the globalisation of the fashion industry has also raised various technical issues which strongly influence the preference and demand in the targeted market (Hines & Bruce, 2007). One of the technical issues to be mentioned is the ergonomic issues faced by a designer in order to design uniform for a specific organisation and a specific occasion. According to the International Ergonomic Association, ‘Ergonomics’ is referred as a scientific discipline related to the various human factors such as the interactions taking place between humans and other elements of a system. However, the aim of the discipline is to derive theory, principles, and methods to design as well as data to optimise ‘human well-being’ and also the overall performance of the system. By its origination the term has been derived from the Greek word ‘ergon’ and nomos, which means work and laws respectively. Previously, the concept was restricted to the designing of tools and workplace infrastructures, but in the recent phenomenon the concept is extended to almost every sector related to the feature of human activities (IEA, 2000). Fashion designing and marketing can also be related to the ergonomic issues as it strongly relates to the features of human activities. Moreover, being an international company, it is also quite likely that Sodexo shall possess a unique ergonomic discipline in terms of internal environment, i.e. their organisational structure and the organisational hierarchy. This in turn also affects the perception and the preferences of the customers regarding the uniform (Seifert & Et. Al., 2008). 3. Research Methodology From the above literature review, it is quite apparent that a considerable amount of information is required in order to generate a feasible idea regarding the company’s internal environment. It is due to the fact that organisational structure and the hierarchy maintained in the organisation play a crucial role in influencing the ergonomic issues related to the designing of a uniform. Another most significant factor in order to develop a well designed uniform for the staffs of Sodexo is related to the cultural environment of the company. The cultural issues not only signify the colour that shall be preferred more by the customers but also indicate their choices regarding the design of the uniform. 3.1. Types of Research Therefore, to generate a sufficient amount of information regarding the organisational features of Sodexo, it would be highly beneficial to focus on a well-structured research methodology. With this aim it is quite essential to recognise the type of research undertaken in this case, i.e. experimental, creative and descriptive, ex-post facto, and action, historical and expository research. Experimental research is referred to the type of research work which is chiefly focused on deriving an evident relationship between the causing factors of any provided situation and the effects, and therefore can be termed unsuitable for the research in this case. Likewise, the creative research work is mostly based on generating a fresh idea or inventing something new which is related to the research aim, i.e. to make a uniform for Sodexo’s staffs. The descriptive research refers to the researches which are based on a particular case-study related to a situation and tends to analyse it throughout the paper. Thus, it is also irrelevant for the proposed research paper. On the similar context, the ex-post facto research is termed as an extension to the experimental research work and the action research is concerned about a particular problem and intends to derive solution to eradicate the obstacle. Both of these methods can be stated as irrelevant as they do not relate to the research aim in this case. The historical research is mostly intended to identify a pattern between a provided cause and effect, while the expository research is termed to be a review of any provided situation, a journal or any other reports which are also irrelevant to the proposed research (Goddard & Melville, 2004). Notably, the proposed research aims at producing a feasible idea regarding the requirements of the customers, in order to design a uniform for the staffs of Sodexo. Thereby, it includes itself in the category of creative researches where the researcher tends to make a suitable uniform with a fresh idea. According to Goddard and Melville (2004), a creative research is based on both theoretical and practical research, where theoretical research indicates the secondary data research and the practical research indicates the primary data research methodology (Goddard & Melville, 2004). 3.2. Research Approach With a general perspective, there are three types of research methodologies used in a research work, i.e. the qualitative research approach, the quantitative research approach and the mixed research approach. In a qualitative research, the prime focus is on generating information utilizing the secondary sources for data collection and is mostly descriptive, experimental or historical. On the other hand, the quantitative research approach focuses on the primary source of data collection, i.e. organising field survey through questionnaires and/or through personal interviewing method (Creswell, 2003). However, both these research approaches comprise of various limitations which strongly influence the affectivity of the research paper. For instance, high dependency on secondary sources such as newspapers, journals, articles, books and others develops the research to be highly time consuming and often confusing as well. Accordingly, the quantitative research approach depends highly on the primary data. One of the most significant limitations witnessed in these kinds of researches is that the approach lacks in deriving sufficient amount of reliable data (Creswell, 2003). Thus, a mixed approach have been derived in order to eradicate the limitations of the basic research approaches and accumulate their advantages in order to increase the applicability and the efficiency of the research work. In a mixed approach equal importance is provided to the secondary and the primary data collection procedure. This not only assists to minimise the risk of developing an inefficient research work but also eradicates the limitation of deriving unreliable data from primary sources. To be precise, the research approach provides a scope to cross-check the data collected from primary sources with the data generated from the secondary sources (Creswell, 2003). Considering these facts regarding the efficiency and the nature of the research work, it can be stated that a mixed approach of data collection and analysis can be considered for this research. To be specific, being a creative research work the paper needs to generate a feasible amount of both the primary data (related to the customers’ perception) and the secondary data (related to the ergonomic issues and other information regarding the company’s brand philosophy, its ethos and values). Moreover, implying the mixed approach can also increase the efficiency of the paper. 3.3. Data Collection Process Adhering to the research approach suggested above, the data collection process comprises both the primary and the secondary sources. The primary sources in this case can be the managerial team of Sodexo and its employees. The data shall be generated through a survey of questionnaires both through personal interviews and mail survey. Thereby a well-structured questionnaire should be prepared focusing on the brand philosophy of the company and the expectations as well as the preferences of the staffs. In this regard, the questionnaire can be designed in two forms, one to be used to generate the perceptions of the managerial team of Sodexo and the other to be surveyed to the staff members of the company (Axinn & Pearce, 2006). Accordingly, the secondary data sources shall be the company reports stating specifically the brand philosophy of the company along with its ethos and values. Few journals based on designing uniform and the principles of fashion marketing shall also be beneficial as secondary data sources. Inclusively, a considerable amount of significance should be provided to the aspect of ergonomic issues related to uniform designing and the company as well for which secondary data sources shall be supportive. Books are also termed to be effective secondary data sources and therefore, can also be useful in this research (Axinn & Pearce, 2006). The sources can be identified as the statements of the managerial team and staffs of Sodexo in regard to the research aim, company reports, journals, books, online articles and others. 3.4. Data Analysis Data analysis is termed to be the most crucial part of a research work, as it assists in identifying the flaws left untouched in the research work and also derives the key findings of the research. Hence, through an efficient data analysis, a researcher is able to derive reliable facts in order to answer the research questions. In other words, a well-organised analysis of data can assist the research work to gain an extra level of accuracy and efficiency and thus it holds a considerable amount of significance in a research work (Johnson & Christensen, 2010). With reference to the above mentioned facts regarding the characteristics of a mixed research approach, both the data analysis processes of a qualitative and a quantitative research are considered by the mixed research approach. Therefore, the research methodology shall compel both the descriptive analytical process and the statistical tools for the research. In this case, review of various secondary sources shall be useful to generate few facts related to the aim of the research. On the other hand, statistical tools such as regression analysis or a diagrammatic representation of the facts identified shall be useful to develop a well-organised understanding of the research aim. It shall further assist to answer the research questions with efficiency (Johnson & Christensen, 2010). 3.5. Limitations of the Research Methodology It is of no doubt that the mixed research approach rewards several advantages to increase the efficiency of a research work. However, accumulating the two research methodologies, i.e. the qualitative and the quantitative research methodologies, raised few limitations from the end of the research method. For instance, as the method equally focuses on the secondary and the primary data collection process, it becomes complex to an extent. Moreover, the data collection and the data analysis process become quite time consuming due to the fact that the researcher requires to generate both the primary and the secondary data and evaluate the collected data twice (the review and the statistical representation). To be specific, the two major limitations of the mixed approach are its time consuming nature and complex behavior (Driscoll & Et. Al., 2007). 3.6. Recommendations With reference to the above discussion, it is quite apparent that although the mixed approach of research is termed to be greatly advantageous, there are also certain drawbacks possessed by the approach which prove to be a strong barrier in its ultimate research work. In order to eradicate these limitations, certain noteworthy measures shall be followed during the research work. For instance, the findings generated from the secondary data collection and the primary data sources shall be represented through diagrams and charts. This will not only assist in generating a comprehensive outlook of the research work, but shall also reduce its complexity and time consumption. The findings identifiable from the diagrammatic analysis shall further be reviewed and analyzed in order to produce appropriate answers for the research questions. Moreover, rather than focusing on a wide range of respondents (the personnel to be interviewed through questionnaire survey), the paper shall concentrate on the middle level supervisors concerned with the 2012 Olympic event, and a random sampling shall be performed in case of the employees. However, the sample size shall be derived as a standard value of 1% of the total population. To be illustrated, 1% of the total number of Sodexo staffs assigned to serve in the 2012 Olympic event shall be interviewed in order to recognise their expectations and preferences. This will not only minimise the time required for the data collection but shall also enhance the possibility to generate reliable information from the respondents (Ardilly & Tille, 2006). Conclusively, the research work shall be performed with due concern to its determined aim and objectives, i.e. to design a well-designed uniform for the staffs of Sodexo. Adherence to the ultimate objective throughout the research work shall indeed reward it with high efficiency and wider applicability. References Axinn, W. G. & Pearce, L. D., 2006. Mixed Method Data Collection Strategies. Cambridge University Press. Ardilly, P. & Tille, Y., 2006. Sampling Methods: Exercises and Solutions. Birkhauser. Creswell, J. W., 2003. Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Method Approaches. SAGE. Dickerson, K. G., 2004. Inside the Fashion Business. Pearson Education India. Driscoll, D. L. & Et. Al., 2007. Merging Qualitative and Quantitative Data in Mixed Methods Research: How To and Why Not. 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