Correlations between the Impact of Frontline Personnel at Sainsbury's and the Consumer Behavior - Research Proposal Example

An investigation into the impact of frontline personnel on consumer buying behaviour: A case study of Sainsbury’s Introduction Frontlinepersonnel at Sainsbury’s are multicultural staff that invariably brings to bear a diversity of experience and culture on the retailer’s customer base. Sainsbury’s European operations are characterized by ever increasing uncertainty and competition. Against this backdrop it’s essential to consider the extent to which the frontline staff has an impact on customers at its retail stores. As much as retailing is highly influenced by competitor behavior as an exogenous variable, the frontline staff also affects the consumers’ perception and behavior as an endogenous variable. This paradigm of behavior is essentially associated with the ever rising retailer competition in townships across the globe. European Union (EU) hasn’t been an exception, though in EU competition is subject to such heavy regulation. Sainsbury’s multicultural frontline staff has a far reaching impact on the consumer buying behavior because the former’s diversity along with the organizational culture, leadership style, organizational goals and structure affect their (personnel’s) disposition towards the customer. Thus the consumer buying behavior is influenced by the frontline staff in a way that indisputably acts like the harbinger of all organizational outcomes. These outcomes are predominantly uppermost throughout this analysis so that even in the absence of metrics that enable the researcher to measure them (outcomes), the analytical depth of the research effort would remain intact and sound. The theoretical and conceptual framework of this research effort would be basically determined by the relevance of the existing theoretical postulates and the conceptual frameworks of analysis and reference. Thus there will be a greater examination of the available literature on the subject to identify the core issues involved in frontline personnel management and its structure. Hypothesis or thesis statement The thesis statement of this paper rests on the testing of the primacy and the immediacy of a core group of theoretical and conceptual perspectives appertaining to the impact of frontline personnel on the consumer buying behavior at Sainsbury’s against the backdrop of the former’s cultural diversity and the latter’s constant exposure to competition related issues along with the defined or undefined organizational outcomes. Both a priori and a posteriori elements of consumer buying behavior are inherently included in the analysis to capture the convergence/divergence framework of reference within Sainsbury’s employee relations and work culture. Research problems or questions What’s the nature and extent of impact of the primarily and immediately relevant aspects such as cultural diversity of Sainsbury’s frontline staff, organizational goals, culture, structure and leadership style on the consumer buying behavior? Do the Sainsbury’s frontline personnel recognize and acknowledge the existence of an immediate impact on the consumer buying behavior and its relevance to organizational outcomes and/or goals? The direct and indirect impact of techniques adopted by Sainsbury’s frontline staff management process on the consumer buying behavior. Research aims/goals To establish positive and negative correlations between the impact of frontline personnel at Sainsbury’s and the consequent buying behavior of consumers. To investigate and prove/disprove the existence of causal links between cultural diversity of frontline staff at Sainsbury’s and the subsequent purchasing behavioral changes among customers. Finally to ascertain the relevance and significance of the impact of frontline staff management techniques on the consumer buyer behavior at Sainsbury’s. 1. Literature review The literature review of this paper would focus on both the theoretical and conceptual aspects of consumer buying behavior and the frontline personnel management issues determined by multicultural retailing industry environment. Thus essentially there would be a thorough investigation of the structure and nature of the frontline staff at Sainsbury’s. This emphasis would be further heightened by an examination of international HRM issues that have a very far reaching impact on the multicultural workforce at retail stores. Though corporate governance issues would be thoroughly examined in order to apply a more appropriate conceptual and theoretical contingency model/framework of consumer buying behavior in conformance with the Sainsbury’s own organizational structure and culture, there would be much less emphasis on the Sainsbury’s corporate governance principles. The current literature, on the conceptual and theoretical frameworks of frontline staff management and its impact on the consumer buying behavior indicates a positive correlation between consumer spending and flexible work practices adopted in frontline personnel management approaches. While the degree of convergence between the two variables has been metrically presented as higher, there is very little analysis on the related organizational outcomes such as employee motivation, productivity, job enrichment, job enlargement, redundancy and absenteeism among frontline personnel. The current literature on the subject also doesn’t adequately address the EU regulatory environment’s impact on personnel management issues in the retail sector despite the fact that there have been a number of EU legislations to control the growth of monopoly power in the industry in the recent past. In fact the EU regulatory environment apart there is also the more pressing need to consider the stakeholders’ demands for achieving organizational goals in the long run. 2. Research methodology The research methodology of this study would involve primary data gathering and secondary data analysis along with a singularly directed focus of attention on both the qualitative and quantitative analysis. In fact there would be greater emphasis on interpretative analysis of existing data. The study then would involve a questionnaire administered on the following detailed lines to a selected sample of population at Salisbury’s and a survey. 2.1. Primary research 2.1.1. Interviewing Data collection is one of the central challenges in any research project. It is the process through which the opinion of people are collected and categorised. There are many methods of collecting data such as interviews; questionnaires; documents and observations provide invaluable information that is used for policy decisions, marketing strategies, and academic studies etc (Miller and Salkind, 2002). Interviewing is a data collection method in which the researcher asks for information verbally from the respondents. It is the way to access people’s perceptions, definitions, meaning, situation and construction of reality, where it involves discussing or questioning issues with people to collect data unlikely to be accessible using techniques such as questionnaires or observation (Punch, 1998). Interviews are suitable when in-depth information is desired and this type of information is required in order to fulfil the purpose of this research. Therefore the interviewing research method will be followed in this paper. 2.1.2. Preparation of questionnaire This is the most important part in the planning of a sample survey, because a poorly designed questionnaire may ruin an otherwise well conducted survey. At this stage it is always advantageous to think in advance what variables and tabulations would be required for later analysis. It is advisable that a dummy tabulation plan should have been prepared in advance, if possible. This would ensure the inclusion of the information, which would be needed for the questionnaire. While preparing the questionnaire the following points were kept in mind in order to overcome the related problems. (i) As few questions as possible were included. (ii) Individual questions were framed in a simple and straight language. (iii) Questions followed a logical sequence. (iv) Highly personal questions were avoided, and if necessary for some enquiry they should be kept at the end of the questionnaire. 2.1.3. Administration of Questionnaire Once the questionnaire is prepared it may be administered by three different methods. (i) Direct personal interviews. (ii) Email inquiry (iii) Telephonic conversation. In this case study the method of e-mail inquiry was used. This method was applicable because most of the respondents were educated and co-operative and they realised the significance and importance of such a sample survey. The problem of non-response due to carelessness on the part of respondents is expected to be very large, though in the current survey such negligence was minimal. 2.2. Survey Statistical surveys are often carried out to collect quantitative information about items in a population sample. While political and government related surveys of people and establishments are too common in health, social sciences and marketing, they are carried out with a particular purpose on mind, i.e. to investigate some facts or information. Many surveys are usually intended to administer questions to respondents. When a researcher administers the questions it becomes a structured interview. When the respondent himself administers the questions the survey is called a self-administered survey or a questionnaire. There are three types of interview: structured, semi-structured and unstructured interviews (Groves, 2001). This dissertation utilises semi-structured type of interviews due to the fact that it helps the relatively structured interview guide, which includes ratings as well as relatively open questions. This type of interview is the most appropriate choice to gain the data necessary since it allows the researcher to lead informal conversation based on predetermined topics. Generally speaking, an interview is social interaction between two people, with one person gathering information from the other. The interaction is what differentiates the direct methodology from indirect methodology. Structured interviews enable the interviewer to ask each respondent the same questions in the same way. A tightly controlled structured schedule of questions and format is used, very much like a questionnaire. The questions contained in the questionnaire were planned in advance. The interviewer has some discretion how these might be elaborated/explained but the aim is to standardize data as far as possible and to eliminate biases due to different wordings. The questions in a structured interview may be phrased in such a way that a limited option response is elicited. The possible answers are defined in advance so that the respondent is limited to one of the pre-coded responses and thus data analysis becomes relatively easier (Dillman and Bowker, 2001). Interviews must be well prepared and must have clear objectives for each interview. Interviews can be conducted after the team has established the topical areas to be covered in the interviews and after the lead investigator has reviewed with the board the objectives of the interviews and strategies for obtaining useful information. In many research situations permission requests should be received before the interview takes place. The interviewer should consider the length of the interview to cover his aims, normally between 15 minutes to an hour. Provide contact information of the interviewer and it must be determined whom to interview, in what order, what interviewing techniques to employ and what method of record to use (Denscombe, 2003). The following aspects should be considered when defining a strategy for the interview. The questions should make sense and be meaningful to the interviewee. The questions should be related to the interviewee experiences based on what is already known about them. The interviewer must take care to be sensitive to the needs of the interviewee. The interviewer should be aware of the flow of the interview interaction by attempting to move seamlessly between topics and questions. The interviewer needs to focus on issues and topics that are relevant to the research problem and questions. Interview questions have been compiled from the existing literature and detailed in relation to the research topic, aim and objectives, and focused on the main areas described above. The researcher noted all the replies to interviews and then transcribed the data of each interview. Although this was a time consuming process, the richness of interviews’ contents warranted such an effort. 3.2. Secondary data Secondary data would be collected through an extensive research effort conducted both online and in libraries. The researcher would extensively use the books written on the topic and also study research journals, reports, graphs, articles, newspaper articles and so on. References would be taken from most of the research material available in the field. This study depends mainly on the secondary material, because theoretical analysis is much well facilitated by it than primary material which is basically limited to responses in the questionnaire and the survey. The available literature would be analyzed with specific focus on the relationship between frontline staff at Sainsbury’s and their impact on the consumer buying behavior. This researcher would make a singular effort to show the most important aspectual overview of the research in the Literature Review. Also there is considerable reflection on the state and relevance of current research. Future research possibilities in the field are discussed in depth to show how theoretical underpinnings evolve with time and space with specific reference to retail industry and international multicultural workforce management at retail stores. There is little or no critical literature to support the methodology of metrically determining the extent to which consumer buying behavior has been influenced by multicultural workforce at retail stores in general and Sainsbury in particular. This particular handicap has affected the researcher to a greater extent. However the research methodology segment of this paper places emphasis on the qualitative aspect of it rather than the quantitative aspect. As such the available empirical evidence has been greatly utilized by the researcher to delineate the current line of arguments as expounded in the Literature Review of this paper. Anticipated findings The researcher, as already has been stated, is particularly impressed by the existence of an obvious link between better international multicultural workforce management practices in international HRM and the retail industry’s frontline personnel management. Next, there is probably an even stronger positive correlation between better groomed multicultural frontline personnel in retail stores in general and in Sainsbury in particular and that of the incremental spending habits of consumers. In fact this paper would focus attention on the new organizational outcomes related perspectives in Sainsbury through a convergence contingency model of consumer behavior and the positive attitudes of the frontline personnel at Sainsbury. Recommendations There must be a well articulated work practices at Sainsbury. The organizational culture at Sainsbury’s needs to be refocused on the organizational outcomes related to employee motivation and absenteeism. The current practice of recruiting staff on the general expectations of performance related pay and increasing productivity has to come to an end. Instead, the top management at Sainsbury must initiate productivity enhancing behaviors among employees through delegation of more responsibility to supervisors. REFERENCES 1. Denscombe, M. 2003, The Good Research Guide for Small Scale Research Projects (2nd Edition), Open University Press. Maidenhead. 2. Dillman, D.A. & Bowker, D.K. 2001. The Web questionnaire challenge to survey methodologists. In U.-D. Reips & M. Bosnjak (Eds.), Dimensions of Internet Science (pp.159-178), Pabst, Lengerich, Germany. 3. Groves, R.M. 1989. Survey Errors and Survey Costs. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 4. Miller, D.C. and Salkind, N.J. 2002, Handbook of Research Design & Social Measurement, Sage Publications, Inc. California. 5. Punch, K. 1998, Introduction to Social Research Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches, SAGE Publications, Inc, California. 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