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Problem defnition, research questions and hypotheses, research design, sampling plan, potential ethical issues and critiquing the questionnaire. This is the research proposal stage of your project. The research proposal is a document which provides a detailed description of the proposed research project to your client. This document must be able to communicate to your client how you plan to undertake research work. This section should include: stating the research problem, undertaking secondary research; suggesting a research design, building a sampling plan, identifcation of potential ethical issues in the conduct of research and constructing or critiquing the (already designed) questionnaire for quantitative survey. Submit a maximum 1,500 word report during week 8. This component is worth 10 marks. Part B Sumo Salad Report
1 CONTENTS I INTRODUCTION II PROBLEM STATEMENT III RESEARCH OBJECTIVES IV LITERATURE REVIEW V RESEARCH DESIGN VI SAMPLING PLAN VII QUESTIONNAIRE VIII ETHICAL ISSUES REFERENCES I INTRODUCTION Sumo Salad is an Australian healthy food restaurant chain established in 2003 with the purpose of making Australia a healthier and happier place by serving the customer nutritious, convenient, and tasty meals (Baylis, as cited in O’Brien, 2017) This proposal aims to identify the Sumo Salad position in the restaurant chain market and current consumer behaviors as well as lifestyle II PROBLEM STATEMENT The positioning of the brand in consumers’ eyes might be different from which the company is constructing and pursuing Therefore, annual research is conducted to measure brand health and positioning III RESEARCH OBJECTIVES To determine the brand awareness and brand positioning to the consumers To measure customers’ satisfaction about Sumo Salad products To survey customers’ wishes relating to nutrition facts of Sumo Salad products IV LITERATURE REVIEW Sumo Salad has found many opportunities in the fast food market with its low cost and healthy meal Bucolo et al (2013) states that Sumo Salad has best provided a salad-based meal thanks to its market acumen and its ability to meet consumer demand for healthy food at low prices Satisfying consumer demand, good product quality along with reasonable prices are the contributing factors to help Sumo Salad position its brand Price, product quality, and service are some of the factors that create customer satisfaction and affect brand image (Khadka & Maharjan, 2017) Deloitte’s ImagineSydney series (2017) said that Sumo Salad is the largest healthy fast food brand in Australia and making Australia healthier is its mission Sumo Salad always creates real experiences along with the tradition of fast food and provides freshness to consumers Sumo Salad constantly researches the market, consumer behavior and domestic and global culinary trends to ensure the development and position of the brand in the hearts of consumers Carrad & Miller (as cited in Fellows, 2018) has stated that consumers have a growing need for nutritious and convenient foods based on their busy lifestyles and healthy eating Since entering the market, Sumo Salad has attracted many potential customers and is a direct competitor of other brands (Fellows, 2018) Sumo Salad has captured the technology trend in its brand by applying a mobile application to customize the customer’s meal The method for Sumo Salad to become a famous brand is the excitement it brings along with the establishment of an active brand that promotes healthy lifestyles (Kelly, 2014) It can be seen that Sumo Salad always prioritizes the needs of customers, typically the preference of ready-made salads In addition, Sumo Salad emphasizes that its brand is always proactive in securing a local location (Kelly, 2014) Most cultures in Australia not promote nutritional products and hence Sumo Salad was created to deliver a powerful and nutritious meal (Toutounji, 2019) Sumo Salad has established itself as Australia’s first fresh and healthy food brand Aiming to change the way consumers eat and consume nutrition, Sumo Salad has been constantly changing; it not only focuses on a small market but towards a wider audience and stronger purpose Understanding customers is what Sumo Salad always focuses on to find out what they want and make appropriate business decisions V RESEARCH DESIGN To tackle the established research objectives and assist Sumo Salad in determining its brand positioning, the research design will collect and analyze appropriate data through means of exploratory and descriptive research The project will first use exploratory research, which is defined as an unstructured and informal research type (Burns et al., 2017, pp 91-113), to gain understanding of the current situation and generate hypotheses that are relevant to the topic In particular, a literature search is conducted to obtain secondary data via internet sites and journal articles The data collected from these sources provides comprehension of the current climate for healthy food brands in Australia, and Sumo Salad’s business operations as well as competitive differentiation Subsequently, a descriptive research takes place, which, as Burns et al (2017, pp 91-113) also explained, is a research type often used to describe a target demographic based on their answers for more specific “who, what, when, how” questions On that account, the project utilizes cross-sectional studies and implements a questionnaire to collect primary data The main aim of this research method is to understand the target market’s perception of and factors affecting their attitudes towards the Sumo Salad brand, its offerings and the overall healthy food segment Detailed information of respondents, for example, their ages, genders, and education levels, will also be acquired The findings accumulated from the exploratory and descriptive research will thus be used in formulating analytical rationales to address the research objectives, at the same time providing justifications to evaluate Sumo Salad’s position in the market VI SAMPLING PLAN The proposal uses a probability sampling method which means respondents are selected randomly The target population is anyone in Australia who has heard about Sumo Salad Therefore, the questionnaire is sent to participants via Gmail or social media platforms aimlessly based on data collected from old customers In addition, the questionnaire is distributed at some crowded positions like the supermarket area or the station area around the store or even at the store for the respondents to complete directly The total number of respondents are limited to 1000 persons With this sample size, the questionnaire is opened for receiving responses in a month VII QUESTIONNAIRE Throughout the questionnaire, the majority of the questions listed are well-attached and access to all aspects of the objectives mentioned above The majority of the questions are well designed so that information gained from those are enough for the organization to confirm the positioning and values of the company The questionnaire is divided into two main parts The first one focuses on general knowledge and perception as the topic is to understand the brand image in consumers eyes, health awareness, buying behavior and price as well as nutritional values It, in contrast, has an issue of the logical sequence as the first statement in the warms up part is straightforward to the feeling of the consumers about the products offered by Sumo Salad This can raise the feeling of discomfort and reduce the chance to gain the real thoughts of the consumers because panelists might be self-defense and might refuse to answer their true feelings (CITE) The sequence should be about the healthy lifestyle or general behaviors and then later be arranged to ask about the feelings By this way, the warm up part can make customers feel more at ease and allow them to quickly move their thoughts to the survey issue In addition, although objective-oriented, there are some statements in this part that are noticeably personal and critical, causing the panelists to feel uncomfortable An example is that question 11 uses negative words such as “I not see any reasons” and question 12 uses words that are too general which is everywhere, leading to not accurately reflecting the respondent’s opinions It then ends with gathering the personal information of respondents , making it not only a good closing part but also reducing the unnecessary uncomfortable feelings while doing the survey This is strongly advised because respondents may not be open and honest when responding to private and sensitive survey questions Moreover, putting the identity question at the end of the questionnaire can prevent respondents from thinking the identity question is the survey’s major goal Instead, if they are asked after answering other questions, they are more likely to complete them without distractions (Community Tool Box, n.d) Moreover, the questionnaire, which is based on a numerical interval scale and a Likert scale, can aid in achieving a higher degree of measurement of respondents' thoughts and feelings about each issue An interval scale is also widely used to determine characteristics such as importance, frequency, and lifestyle/perspective on satisfaction Therefore, this survey format was chosen as acceptable for the survey's objective In addition, the questionnaire lacked notification about transitioning from one section to another which gives panelists an idea of the types of questions that will be asked (Trochim, n.d) and prevent them from misinterpreting the subsequent questions, which are unrelated to the preceding ones For example, after answering questions 13 to 22 on understanding consumers’ attitudes toward healthy food, the questionnaire shifts its focus to Sumosalad's price (from questions 23 to 25) The questionnaire should be supplemented by “We will now ask a few questions about your perception of Sumo Salad menu prices” VIII ETHICAL ISSUES Within the conducting of a research study, numerous ethical issues can arise, some of which are worthy of consideration as follows: Making fake survey results In the process of analyzing the results, researchers must be responsible for analyzing the collected data honestly The researchers must ensure the objectivity of the investigation results and without exaggerating, embellishing, or blackening the obtained information Regardless of whether the results are not achieving the desired effect of researchers or not meet the ultimate purpose of the survey, data should not be manipulated or falsified It is one of the misconduct and misleading survey takers Privacy of information The answers obtained from the participants must be kept confidential and not shared with any other person If researchers want to publish any research-related information, they must obtain respondents’ consent and ensure that respondents will not be harassed by any survey results Potential harm to research participants For the questions that must be answered in the questionnaire, the researchers must design based on the willingness to answer of the participants Researchers must ensure that these questions not cause any harm to the participants or make them feel uncomfortable about the question REFERENCES Burns, A.C., Veeck, Ann, author, & Bush, Ronald F., author (2017) Marketing research (8th ed.), (pp 91-113) Bucolo, Sam, Wrigley, Cara, Matthews, Judy, Dean (2013) DESIGNING INNOVATIVE BUSINESS MODELS A DESIGN CATALYST LEARNING RESOURCE Queensland University of Technology, Australia Retrieved from https://eprints.qut.edu.au/59634/22/59634.pdf Community Tool Box (n.d.) Chapter Assessing Community Needs and Resources | Section 13 Conducting Surveys | Main Section | Community Tool Box Retrieved from https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/assessment/assessing-community-needs-andresources/conduct-surveys/main Deloitte (2017, April 27) ImagineSyney Retrieved from https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/au/Documents/about-deloitte/deloitte-auabout-imagine-sydney-create-hot-pockets-240417.pdf Fellows, G (2018) Strategic Marketing Report Retrieved from https://angieharford.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/strategic-marketing-report.pdf Kelly, J (2014, October 31) Salad threat to fast food market Dynamic Business Retrieved from https://dynamicbusiness.com/leadership-2/entrepreneur-profile/salad-threat-to-fast-foodmarket.html Khadka, K & Maharjan, S (November 2017) CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AND CUSTOMER LOYALTY CENTRIA UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES Retrieved from https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/139650/khadka_kabu%20%20and%20%20 maharjan_%20soniya.pdf?sequence=1 Toutounji, R (2019, October 10) How Sumo Salad Has Adapted in a Changing Industry with Luke Baylis | Industry Change Episode 21 [Video file] Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMmLUG_cYzs Trochim, W M K (n.d.) Research Methods Knowledge Base Question Placement Retrieved from https://conjointly.com/kb/survey-question-placement/