1. Executive Summary
The purpose of the research is to understand customer satisfaction of café NESCA. Customer satisfaction of café NESCA means whether customers are satisfied with the products, price and service of café NESCA. For café NESCA, Result will allow managers to improve its disadvantages to increase sales.
The methodology with use exploratory and descriptive researches clarifies the problem and defines hypotheses, which are based on a literature review such as customers’ satisfaction and perception of quality. The techniques used to measure customers’ attitude are nominal scale and Likert summated rating scale method (one of Interval Scale). The questionnaire design is to understand the difference between provided service cognition and customer expectation, and identify the problems and make recommendation for improves.
The sample was collected by judgmental sampling method (one of non-probability sampling) and the sampling size was expected to about 200. The statistical analysis adopted descriptive analysis, t-test, ANOVA test, and correlation analysis to identify the degree of customer satisfaction. The result will be discussed.
2. Development of the Marketing Problem/Opportunity
Café NESCA is an outlet of the University of Newcastle Union in University House. The main customers of café NESCA are from students and staff of the Newcastle Graduate School of Business (NGSB). The diversity of students at NGSB, e.g. large numbers of overseas students (Appendix5), means the customer structure of café NESCA is complex. Therefore, café NESCA provides some drinks produced overseas by companies such as Uni-President. Nevertheless, although café NESCA tries to meet different customer needs, it does not have any record of customer satisfaction. In other words, café NESCA is not sure whether customers are satisfied with the services it provides or not. From the above mentioned the marketing problem of café NESCA is that whether cafe’s NESCA has performed to customer expectations and if not, what needs to be improved.
3. Development of the Marketing Research Problem
The management decision problem is whether café NESCA has performed to customer expectation, so the marketing research should focus on which factors influence customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. For example, the prices are so competitive in café NESCA, so this factor attracts customers. As a consequence, the marketing research problem is to understand which factors are critical influencing customer satisfactions in order to improve the degree of customer satisfaction.
4. Literature Review
Café NESCA is part of the service industry, so the key theoretical construct of this research is about customer satisfaction.
Customer Satisfaction
Oliver (1980) explained customer satisfaction as whether customer expectation and the performance of products and service are consistent or not. Customer expectation is what customers expect of a product before using it. The performance of products and services is what customers perceive when making purchase. For example, customers are dissatisfied with a shop. This means customer expectation exceeds customer perception for this shop. In contrast, if the performance of this shop is equal to customer expectation or great than customer expectation, customers are satisfied or delighted with this shop. Oliver (1980) proposed a model that expresses consumer satisfaction as a function of expectation and expectancy disconfirmation. Satisfaction can affect consumers’ attitude and their intention to purchase.
Churchill and Surprenant (1982) urged disconfirmation as an intervening variable affecting satisfaction and that the effect of disconfirmation is adequately captured by expectation and perceived performance. From the above definitions, customer expectation and customer perception are critical factors for customer satisfaction. As a consequence, analysing the differences between customer expectation and perception is an important step in this research.
Customer Perception of Products
Juran & Gryna (1986) defined quality as fitness for use. Ishikawa (1985) explained that quality lets consumers meet theirs needs and be glad to buy. According to these definitions, when consumers purchase a product, quality is an important factor. “Usually customers judge the satisfaction of products on the basis of some informational cues that they associate with the product (Schiffman.L, 2001)”. These informational cues are usually flavour, colour and packaging of products. In other words, these cues comprise quality of products. Consumers use these cues to judge the product and develop perception of the product. As a result, customer perception of products is an important issue. Customer perception is not wholly influenced by quality. Price is also an important consideration factor. “Consumer satisfaction and price consciousness is shaped in part by perceptions of price fairness (Sinha and Batra, 1999)”. Thus, price is usually considered by consumers while making purchase and significantly affects consumer satisfaction. These product factors can affect customer perception directly in relation of satisfaction of café NESCA.
Services
As a result of the intangibility of service, consumers often have difficulty judging service. Parasuraman et al. defined services having four distinctive characteristics-Intangibility, heterogeneity, simultaneous production consumption and perishability (1985). In relation to café NESCA, the professional ability and attitude of staff and the atmosphere are intangible. Consumers cannot touch or carry them out. Heterogeneity refers to consumers should be involved in production process. When consumers purchase products, these services are produced simultaneous. Perishability refers to services cannot be stored for tomorrow.
Customer Perception of Service Quality
As a consequence of service characteristics, consumers have difficulty evaluating service quality. Parasuraman et al. (1988) explained that service quality is perceived service quality. Consumers evaluate service quality from a subjective perspective. Parasuraman et al. (1988) defined five dimensions to evaluate service quality from an objective perspective (SERVQUAL) – Tangibles, Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance and Empathy. Tangibles mean that consumers depend on the environment or the staff uniform to evaluate service quality. Reliability means whether consumers can trust the service or not. Responsiveness means whether staff serve customers immediately or not. Assurance refers to whether staff behaviour is polite or not and whether staff communicate efficiently with consumers. Empathy refers to staff attitude is friendly or sensitive to consumers. Consumers can use these five dimensions to compare the differences between the expectation and perception of service quality. In relation to this research, service quality of café NESCA is evaluated according to the five dimensions for consumer perception.
From the above mentioned, evaluation of customer perception and expectation of products, price and service will be conducted in this research. The purpose is to understand the difference between customer perception and expectation in order to improve the degree of customer satisfaction.
5. Justification for the Study
Primary research-This enables the researcher to get as close as possible what actually happened during a time period. A primary source reflects the individual viewpoint of a
participant or observer(University of California, Berkeley, 2002) The aim of this research proposal is: What factors would influence customers in their choice of food, price and service. Moreover, the focus of this report is to offer determinations and recommendations on how to satisfy the different needs, wants, and demands of all students and staffs in University House as the customer satisfaction in shopping process to increase sales.
Secondary research-It is difficult to get the internal Data from café NESCA, such as accounting and sales information. Although it has own website to get some background information, it is general data. Therefore, this information cannot be appropriately
gathered from secondary research.
Benefit from practical and theoretical context-Research theory is a way and plan to
approach the objective. It provides researcher with referable theories. Because each case has a different situation, there will be some unsuited theories. Therefore, it is a gap
in the literature. On the other hand, research focuses on specific and individual cases. It is adoptable with specific situation to get benefit of research. Therefore, in the research we must consider what kind of data and what is the real benefit information of the practical and theoretical context.
Problem and opportunity- This research will focus on the difference between
customers’ expectation and perception relating to Café NESCA. This research will
benefit Café NESCA managers to understand whether customers are satisfied with
their service and product to increase sales. Furthermore, the service quality is also related to customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. It is believed that improving service would stimulate potential customers and create customer loyalty. Therefore, it is necessary to undertake primary research to analyze marketing strategies basic on problems or opportunities of Café NESCA.
6. Formulation of Objectives and Hypotheses
The objective of this survey is to determine the customer’ factors (services, prices and food) influence to purchase of Café NESCA. This hypothesis is tested by applying a one-sample t-test and paired-samples t-test to get the rejection or acceptation of the result.
Objectives
O1: To determine which factors influence customer satisfaction of foods.
O2: To determine whether price strategy is accepted by customers.
Q3: To determine which factors influence customer satisfaction about services.
Hypotheses
H1.1: There is no difference between consumer satisfaction and expectation about food
H1.2: There is no variety of food items offered by café NESCA
H1.3: There is no delicious food offered by café NESCA.
H2.1: There is no difference between consumer satisfaction and expectation about price
H2.2: There is no competitive price offered by café NESCA.
H3.1: There is no difference between consumer satisfaction and expectation about services
H3.2: The environment and facilities offered by café NESCA are not acceptable
H3.3: The service offered by café NESCA is not effective.
H3.4: The attitudes offered by café NESCA are not good
7. Methodology
The research design is to determine the difference between customers’ expectation and perception of service for café NESCA. Exploratory research and descriptive research are chosen as the two major types of the research to get qualitative and quantitative data. The mean targets measure the statement, and also develop and test hypotheses concerning café NESCA.
The exploratory research is expected to explore or search through a problem or situation to provide insights and understanding. The method is in-depth interview to gather information from café NESCA customers; it provides data on motivation, attitudes and feeling concerning a topic. (Malhotra, Hall, Shaw, Oppenheim, 2002) The interview will ask from general to probing questions (see Appendix1).
The descriptive research is when we wish to know how many customers we have
what products they buy and in what quantities, and what their attitudes are toward Café NESCA (Malhotra, Hall, Shaw, Oppenheim, 2002).The method is to make cross sectional designs, this measures a population of the difference between customers’ expectation and perception for café NESCA. It includes using a sample survey. Cross sectional studies have samples which are drawn in such a way as to be representative of a specific population (Malhotra, Hall, Shaw, Oppenheim, 2002).The research will use traditional panels; that is the same questions will be investigated in the survey for current customers.
7.1 Scaling Techniques
Self-administrated survey - directly request interviewees to answer the questionnaire to tell their attitude about something – is the main method that the study uses. (Kolter,& Armstrong, 2004) The customers’ background and characteristics are categorised into “Nominal Scale” question. “Likert summated rating scale” method, one of Interval Scale, is used to measure the degree of customer satisfaction with the statements to a five-point scale ranging from Very dissatisfied to Very satisfied in the second part. The final part of questionnaire also use interval scale to understand expectation of consumer with the statements to a five-point scale ranging from Not important to Very important.
7.2 Organisation of the Questionnaire
The composition of the questionnaire includes：
1. Cooperative requests： The purpose of the questionnaire and the time of finishing the questionnaire will be explained in this part. The interviewees will be requested to spend a few minutes to finish the questionnaire.
2. Instructions： The explanations about how to answer the different parts of questionnaire will be provided on the questionnaire clearly.
- Categorized materials： This part will collect interviewees’ characteristics, for
instance, age, gender, occupation, and nationality.
4. In search of information： This is the main part of questionnaire. Firstly, it will use “Likert summated rating scale” to understand the degree of customer satisfaction on different items. Then, it will ask the customers’ expectation on different items.
7.3 Sampling Issue
1. Target population：The population of the study focus on people who work or study at University House.
- Ensure sampling frame：The information of staffs and students. Owing to difficult to
obtain the list of whole staffs and student, the group members just got the number of students who have enrolled in NGSB in Trimester 1, 2004.
- Choose sampling method：As the study is focused on the opinion of people who
have consumption experience at café NESCA ,”Judgmental sampling” is chosen as sampling method.
- Decide sampling size：If the study requests 95% confidence coefficient (Z=95%), the relative precision will be set to 0.1 (r=0.1), and estimates are expected to be 70% of the population having consumption experiences at café NESCA (p=70%), therefore the sampling size (n) should be around 165. In consideration of the rate of questionnaire retrieving, the study expects to prepare 200 samples.
- Elect sampling unit：People who have purchased products at café NESCA are elected as sampling unit.
- Collect sampling information：Before giving the questionnaire, investigators should ensure that whether the sampling unit they choose is correct.
- Evaluate sampling result：It will evaluate whether the sample got is suitable for research need.
7.4 Field Work / Data Collection
Field work planning includes：
1. Preparing Work：Preparing questionnaires, collecting investigators (our group members), discussion in advance, and management project during field work are all involved in this part.
- Meeting：All group members should understand the whole investigative system,
procedure of field work, the structure of questionnaires, the content of questionnaires, and interview drilling.
- Interview Operation：All investigators must observe the procedure discussed before.
- Retrieve and Scrutiny of Questionnaire：Check and correct the questionnaires immediately.
- Inspection：Check whether the survey goes according to instructions and procedure.
Data collection：
In order to ensure the quality of data and decrease errors,
1. The questionnaire should be designed carefully. (avoid questions which are sensitive or too personal that may lead to refusal to answer)
- Group members’ cognition on research process. (training in advance is necessary)
and recognizing the importance of interview techniques. (maintaining a cordial and courteous attitude during the interview)
- Quality management of filed work must be enforced severely. ( one or several
supervisors should be appointed to increase the efficiency and quality of filed work)
7.5 Possible Data Analysis
The steps of data analysis：(Churchill, 1999, p. 630-698)
- Preliminary check：
This is to check and confirm collected information (data cleaning). The check items include：
(1) Whether the answers are completed or not
(2) Whether the writing is legible
(3) Whether the investigators follow instructions to choose the correct sampling unit
(4) Whether the answers are unanimous or not
(5) Whether the meaning of answers are clear
- Coding： The closed-end question will be pre-coded and open-end question will not
begin encode after the questionnaire being collected. The study will encode the response according to the following steps：
(1) Classification set up will be categorized accordingly with regard to the research problem and purpose.
(2) Appoint the series number.
- Tabulating： The study will arrange tabulation. In terms of simple tabulation, the
purpose is to find the errors and outliers, understand the distribution form of variables, and calculate the mean and dispersion. With regard to cross tabulation, the purpose is to prepare the later statistic analysis.
4. Statistical analysis： The research will use SPSS software to deal with data. Using the following mentioned data analysis, the study will measure relations among data and then analyses latent causes and factors of these relations (variation and trend).
(1) Descriptive analysis：This is for understanding the form of distribution and
dispersion of mean and standard deviation from frequency distribution.
(2) One sample t-test：It is the main test that the research uses. The purpose of one
sample t-test is to test customers’ degree of satisfaction and expectation in different items.
(3) Independent t-test：The research may also conduct independent t-test to test there is a significant difference between different background of customers.
(4) Paired t-test：The research may also conduct paired t-test there is a significant difference between customers’ perception and expectation.
7.6 Research Implementation
The research project of CAFÉ’ NESCA will be carried out in the following stages:
The first stage of research proposal is to determine the objective. After demonstrating the proposal, the research proposal covers to identify and define market opportunities and problems; establish research objectives and decide the methodology. Next, the sampling techniques and the questionnaire are also designed.
After preparing the report, the proposal will be presented when the dating is decided.
Once the proposal is approved, next, the group members will conduct data-collection.
After data being collected, it will be cleaned, edited, coded and entered to computers. The next stage is using SPSS to analyse data and to determine whether the hypotheses are accepted or not.
The last step is that using the information getting from data and hypotheses infer the result and make recommendations. in addition, the group members will present and submit the final report. (see Appendix2)
7.7 Limitation of Studies
1. Limitation of information： Due to café NESCA being a local small coffee shop, it is difficult to seek and search secondary data. In addition, the target population focuses on the staff and students of University House,
therefore in terms of sampling frame, thegroup members find it hard to
obtain the list of staff and students. This increases the difficulty of sampling.
- 1. Choice of variables： As too many factors may bring about negative impact, the
study will only focus on relevant and internal factors of café NESCA; the external factors are not within the research range. These two reasons may result in error of the research.
Bibliography
- 1. A. Parasurman, V. A. Zeithaml, and L.L. Berry, (1985), A Research model of Service
Quality and Its Implications for Future Research, Journal of Marketing(49), pp.41-50.
- 2. A.Parasurman, V. A.Zeithaml, and L.L. Berry, (1988), SERVQUAL: A Multiple-Item Scale for Measuring Consumer Perceptions of Service Quality, Journal of Retailing (64:1), pp.12-40.
3. G. A. Churchill, and C., (1982), Surprenant, An Investigation into the Determinant of
Customer Satisfaction,Journal of Marketing Research (XIX), pp.491-504.
4. G. Churchill, Jr., (1999), Marketing Research: Methodological Foundations, 7th, Fort Worth.
5. H. Boyd, Jr., R. Westfall, and S. Stasch, (1991), Marketing Research: Text and Cases, 7th, Homewood.
6. Kolter, Brown, Adam & Armstrong, (2004), Marketing, edition 6, Pearson Education, Sydney
7. Lawson, Tidwell, Rainbird, Loudon and Della Bitta, (1997), Consumer Behaviour Australia and New Zealand, McGraw-Hill Irwin, Australia.
8. R.L. Oliver, (1980), A Cognitive Model of the Antecedents and Consequences of Satisfaction Decisions, Journal of Marketing Research (XVII), pp.460-469.
9. Rugimbana, Robert & Nwankwo, Sonny, (2003), Cross-Cultural Marketing, 1st edition, Thomson Nelson, Australia.
10. Schiffman.L, D.Bednall., E. Cowley., A. O’Cass., J. Watson., L.Kanuk, (2001), Consumer Behaviour , 2nd Edition, Prentice hall
11. Sinha, Indrajit and Rajeev Batra, (1999), The Effect of Consumer Price Consciousness on Private Label Purchase, International Journal of Research in Marketing, 16
(September), 237-251.
12. T. Kinnear and J. Taylor, (1996), Marketing Research: An Applied Approach, 5th, McGraw-Hill, New York
13. The Library, University of California, Berkeley, (2002),
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/PrimarySources.html
14. The University of Newcastle Union, (2004), http://www.unu.org.au
15. Vitale and Giglierano, (2002), Business to business marketing: analysis &
practice in a dynamic environment, First edition, South-Western.
Newcastle Univversity of AUStralia
Peter Lee
留言列表
