Research Methods Strategic Managers Management Essay
In this assignment my main topic that would be discussed is Management research method. I have selected an organization name ASDA a chain of Wall Mart and it’s a biggest groceries retailer in the UK and recently they announced to offer 1500 jobs offer to the local community. By understanding their offer we can measure their turnover and their scale of business. Because of large scale of business they have step down to the different level their management in the smallest group to handle their local ASDA store process same as they operate in the biggest town’s stores that operate 24 hours.
Background of Research:
Back ground of research means the actual route of research that how they fall into this and why they need to be researched. In this organization through customer surveys I have found some problem at management level that new staff they hired is not qualified and not efficient to perform their tasks efficiently. The researched material would be showed in the end of this assignment. Now I will create a hypothesis and will do research that how this loose pole could be removed and the value of ASDA brand could be increased. But first of all we will discuss the root of problem because creating hypothesis to be researched. Following are the root problems found during the researched program at ASDA with their customers:
Lack of skills in employee (stores assistant) such as
low knowledge of merchandising
Poor customer relation
Poor knowledge of Point of Sales product
Low sales and productivity because of not proper knowledge
Use of extra resources to trained those employees
Need of HR department to manage these training expenses
These are the few main route problems I have found from the researched in store of Asda 4 weeks ago. Now after consideration of all above title I will discuss research point and will create a hypothesis for proper research.
Hypothesis/Title:
“Professional Training would help to increase the satisfied customers in ASDA as well increase their sales”
Research questions:
Why the staffs of ASDA (Stratford) need professional Training?
What would be the basis of this research?
How ASDA would be benefit from this research?
Company would be most benefit in which sense?
Explanation:
Professional training help organization remove any current barriers in employees daily routine tasks these barriers could be removed by training and the other way is providing them learning knowledge and material to do better job. (TDA, 2010).
The basic need of research is founded by the research material I’ve carried out in one of the ASDA branch in Stratford, London, United kingdom, they have recently hired 80% of new staff and according to the customers they are not trained enough to provide them excellent level of service as compare to other stores.
Through satisfaction level of customers ASDA store in Stratford would increase their monthly sales and would raise their brand value in that area.
Increase in their values with the increase in sales
Company of Research:
ASDA is one of the biggest retailer food chain in United Kingdom and recently increased their product line non food products such as cheap garments for men’s and ladies. Recently according to ASDA annual report of 2010 they increased their sales in garments industry by 10% by opening new stores and by hiring new employees in it. But in Stratford branch of ASDA have not exceed the over all level of sales up to 3% comparing to other branches. Now we will discuss that why it happened in to that branch and what were the actual reasons.
As we have discussed that the company have hired new employees and some of them have not experience of retail industry and currently unable to perform their own tasks. First of all we will discuss the aim and objective of our research.
Aim of the Research:
‘Increase the monthly sales and performance of customer relation of Stratford (ASDA) Branch’
Objectives of Research:
Following are the deep objectives of the research:
Increase in satisfied customers
Attract more customers
Increase the brand value
Increase the monthly sale and meet the target and become more profitable branch of UK of ASDA.
Literature Review:
ASDA is a part of Wall Mart and in UK have lots of local and 24hr branches their aim is to become Britain’s favorite retailer. Here they are not specifying their choice for customers that they want to become no 1 on the basis of food items but they are also including their fashion brand named ‘George’ and accepting to increase their sales up to 5% overall from UK in every 6 months. In this assignment I have already discussed the need of chosen organization because there employee currently needs the training to provide excellent level of services. They are currently have 20 employees in Stratford branch out of them 16 are new and untrained to provide them training we need to identify first clear objective of the training purpose.
Theory Used in Literature Review:
To get the right picture of the skills they possess I did SWOT analysis inside the ASDA Stratford store and found some key strength and weaknesses. SWOT analysis is the key comparing analysis tools that tells you the weaknesses inside the organization. Below are the some researched strength and weaknesses of ASDA in specific branch:
Strength:
Following are the key strength of ASDA in Stratford branch:
High Brand Value with highly competitive prices
Strong leaders
Experiences Managers
Weaknesses:
There are few weaknesses that we choose as a key research topic for this assignment these are as follows:
Untrained Staff
Improper knowledge about products
No sense of proper merchandising
Now to get the maximum out of their strength and to cover their weaknesses I would suggest a key plan described below
Objective of the Research:
ASDA is the biggest and successful market leader and have strong business from their past history now the need is that they currently having problem in only one branch where they recently hired new staff. The objective of this research to maximise the profit of stratford branch as compare to other ASDA branches but before achieving this goal company need to provide their employees training to get the high level of sales with satisfaction of customers.
Research Effectiveness:
Through training in the field of merchandising they would able to put things on right place and with the right view so the customer who enter in store could easily identify their demanded product and can send it to further process.
Through training process they would learn the process of shelving the products
These above two learning would automatically help them to learn about the things with their respective names.
Over all change in management would increase the number of satisfied customers and will increase its daily and monthly sales.
These all above points are the current need of the business to process in the way of getting higher level of profit.
Facts and Figure of Proposal:
Now here I will discuss the researched sales figure that show constant declines and after that i started research to find ou the reason of decline in sales. Below is the sales figure of 3 different moth of ASDA Stratford branch.
February (sale in pounds)
March (sale in pounds)
April (sale in pounds)
13,000
9,000
5,500
As we can see the sales is constantly falling down and are not meeting the need and target of the organization. This is an alarming stage to discuss about the change and to find out the solution as I have mentioned that during my survey from customer are not happy with the level of service and mostly things are difficult to find because they are not placed on right point.
Training Process:
Before step down towards training process I will describe the analysing process of training need in any organization.
SWOT Analysis
SWOT analysis helped org. to remove threats and weaknesses before they occur and helped them to grow more efficiently by telling them their strength and by showing upcoming opportunities. The same process I would carry on in ASDA store to get rid of all weaknesses.
Training on Job:
There are different ways of training that helped org to learn to employees in their own best way but here leanininig on job is most effective for the employees of ASDA they could learn on job that how to merchandise and how to merge all the products in one sequence after this they would able to learn the right thing at right place. That would minimize the complaint from the customers.
TIME SCALE:
J
I
h
G
f
E
d
Working pattern
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Weeks
L
Preperation of research proposal with the research question and material
M
On paper feedback
N
SWOT analysis to get the clearer picture
O
Questioner with employees
P
Collection of primary resources from website
Q
Review and monitor the Whole Process
R
Conclusion
(Measured on 7 week)
In this time scale my most of time spend on collection of data and doing research on the basis of collection of in store questioner. T his whole process measures in 7 weeks and after that that this plan would show their result in terms of increasing sales.
3rd week progress:
In third week I will collect the on paper feedback form from customers and interviews some of the employees from ADSA store.
Feedback from customers:
In any organization customers are known as key stake holders and they have high level of interest in the new products so changing the way forward helped them to keep track of their record.
Self Assessment of Merchandiser (Sales Assistant):
After completion of half of training process I will take the common feedback from every single individual that they are training them on decided topic and they are learning it efficiently.
Population of ASDA STRAFORD:
There are twenty employees in which 4 of them are supervisors who assist other employees.
Questioner and reason of decline in sales (with employee):
Q 1: What do you think is mst hot selling product of the store?
Answer: I think the most selling things are eggs and bread.
Q 2: What do you think is there any problem at management level
Answer: I think there is one problem because they didn’t give us proper training.
Q 3: Do you think customers dealing is must be with the smile?
Answer: No it depends on one to one individual’s mode.
Q 4: Is the reason of sales decline is due to competitors in the market?
Answer: I think it is due to lack of knowledge at basis sales level.
Q 5: Do you think training could improve the sales of level?
Answer: Yes it can leave positive effect on it.
Reason of Sales decline:
According to the above discussion it is now clear that company must act on time to complete their previous loss and increase their level of Income from that branch, but these all could be performed if they capture the biggest problem which is lack of knowledge of products at ASDA store, new employees must learn these skills and knowledge during the process of training and should get more out of that training.
First we have discussed was lack of knowledge of merchandising the other term defined that they don’t have any experience at all and need to learn the name and kind of the products to assist the customers.
Third reason of sales decline is poor customer relation ship as customer stated that they don’t know how to deal with customers so it is very important to take care of the interest of key stake holder to get the profit to satisfy other key stake holders.
Now I will discuss the need of researched material below are the discussion with and researched material from customers and from inside the org.
Questioners with 10 ASDA Employees
Name
Date
Agree
Strongly Agree
Strongly Disagree
Customer have no right to criticise on us
2
6
We are always right in front of customers
3
7
Reason of sales decline in strong competitors policies
2
6
Learning the things name is the difficult process at ASDA
1
7
Doing analysis are worthless
1
5
4
Customer have no right to criticise our services
6
2
I would like to learn new things
5
3
2
According to the above survey I did I’ve found that the employees at ASDA do not know about the importance of customers and they even don’t know any kind of analysis, these all points shows that they are all inexperienced and have no proper channel to do right work, but they all are willing to learn new things this is positive point of view. Throug strong leadership ASDA amanagment need to apply the rule of win the game at small check points and teach them the basic knowledge of selling products that would create a healthier competiton layer among them and they would learn those names and kinds more quickly as compare to any other method. Now I will discuss the need of researched material form the customer and below I will show the researched material form customers at ASDA.
Questioners from Customers of ASDA
Name
Date
Agree
Strongly Agree
Strongly Disagree
Customer services are really poor
2
6
2
Employees at ASDA mostly don’t know about the products
3
3
4
Customer service at ASDA were good
2
7
ASDA need to increase their product line
1
5
2
ASDA have fresh products every day
2
7
Discussion of Above analysis and feed back from customers:
Te feedback of customer are very dangerous for the ASDA Stratford branch, as they said that ASDA some times have old products that describes employees at ASDA did to change the products with its expiry dates that could lead them towards bad condition o good will. So here It is very necessary for them to learn the main concepts of the things and products in ASDA store to bring it sales up with satisfied customers and with excellent relationship with customers.
Conclusion:
Main conclusion and bottom line of whole research is that customers are allowed to criticise when ever they see any incompetency in company, that help organization review there policies and get rid of any barriers quickly to satisfy the customer as they are the stake holders of the business and ASDA must teach basic rules when they hire the staff that would help to go further with proper knowledge and skills.
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