Background Information
Burger Guru is a restaurant that offers fast food services across several states in the US. It is a franchise of the famous Burger King Company that has many other ones around the globe. The organization provides its customers with various kinds of fresh submarine sandwiches. The latter usually decide on the way their burgers need to be served. The restaurant’s promotion is based on continuous improvement and customer satisfaction. Burger Guru has numerous competitors including Subway, McDonald’s and Sunset Boulevard. Thus, the research proposal will provide a background information about Burger Guru and its customers mentioning the current state of the fast food market in the United States and the competition between Burger Guru and its three huge rivals such as McDonald’s, Subway and Sunset Boulevard.
Problem Definition
The purpose of this research is to find out the reason of the decline in sales of Burger Guru. This implies that the focus of the survey will be to analyze the market and find out the factors contributing to this situation that are present in the company. That means that there is a need to consider the entire market that this restaurant is engaged in.
The mentioned above steps will assist in determining the necessary actions that can be taken in order to curb the situation. A company needs to understand its primary competencies as well as its general capabilities. After that, it can take a decision to venture in areas where it is likely to achieve success.
Research Design
The research will follow the below mentioned processes:
- External analysis. Any organization needs to understand its customers completely. The current decline line could be attributed to the negligence of the customers’ complaints or even poor services. The target group of the customers should also be determined in order to offer specialized quality services. Such knowledge is vital since it will make it easier to make decisions about products, service and promotion.
- Competition analysis. It means determining and examining the competitive situation. It is of great importance to understand the rivals by getting to know their most current secrets of service that are different from those offered by Burger Guru. There is no doubt that fierce competition could have led to the decrease in sales of the company under analysis.
- Market analysis. It will be done in order to determine to what extent the market has changed. The company should carry out a market research and stop relying on its past records. The study will aim at determining the needs of the current market.
Research Method
Market research will involve gathering information concerning the current customers, competition and market as well as the market trends. Methods of data collection will be comprised of questionnaires, discussions and surveys. Both qualitative and quantitative methods of research will be applied since they are both available and required in this study. Other approaches will include:
- Observation. The qualitative research will be carried out on the general appearance of the company considering the cleanliness of the customer attendants as well as the building and its contents. Additionally, the manner in which the customer attendants address the clients will be analyzed through observation.
- Client interview. A sample of customers will be interviewed. Mode of selection will be random the respondents being chosen in every hour throughout the day.
Sampling
Sampling means picking a portion of a population for analysis in order to achieve the aims and objectives of a research. In this case, random sampling will be preferred while choosing study participants. The selected respondents will be a clear representation of the entire population. Undoubtedly, the process of random sampling will consider the customers’ age and gender. For this research, the age of the representatives will be between 17 and 35. The group will include 25 female and 25 male individuals giving a total of 50 participants.
Data Collection
Collection of data across the population will be done using questionnaires that will be written in English language in order to enhance effective understanding. Questionnaires will be distributed to a sample of random customers while those will be taking their meals. They will be expected to tick where necessary. The following are the examples of questions that will be included:
- How satisfied are you with the services you get?
- Are the attendants rude to you?
- Have you ever had to wait for the order for a long time and left looking for another place to eat?
- What improvements do you think will help to provide the best service possible?
Discussion of the Questionnaire
The pre-testing will be carried out to check any errors and to see whether the questionnaire covers all the required information. The questionnaires will be distributed to thirty customers who will be selected randomly in every hour. The test is likely to indicate what changes need to be done in certain questions meaning that the discussion will be of great help in order to make corrections. That way, all questions will be analyzed in order to determine what one thing that annoys customers whenever they come to Burger Guru is. For instance, question 4 will ask which meal customers prefer at Burger Buru: breakfast, lunch or both and why. Quantitative research will involve taking data pertaining to the number of the current customers per day, products prepared and sold per day as well as rate of customers coming to the restaurant in an hour. The discussion will further be conducted on:
- Secondary data. Past data of the company when sales were not declining will be used to get a trend for the current situation in order to come up with ways to resolve the issue.
- Competitive situation. The major rivals will be analyzed closely because they are considered as the main reason for the declined sales. McDonald’s, Subway and Sunset Boulevard have been selected and will be examined since they are conceptual fast foods, just like Burger King. Market share of each competitor will be analyzed using the secondary data such as magazine and financial statements of each. The company will thereafter be expected to investigate some of the techniques that are applied by the business with the largest market share and try to enumerate them. The same will be done with the other two competing companies to optimize the number of customers and reduce the decline in sales. However, some facts will be kept constant such as brand. It will not be possible to compare McDonald’s as a brand with Burger Guru since the former is quite established. Data to be used will therefore be one that does not include personal preferences in terms of brand instead of product and services offered.
- Price analysis. An analysis on price set for similar products offered by competitors will be conducted. It has to be done because the consumers do not hold high bargaining power. Their bargaining power could be limited to preferring another restaurant with the same products and services. The hypothesis here will be that some customers might have chosen a competitor due to difference in price since Burger was quite expensive.
- Substitutes. There could have been some substitutes for Burger products which resulted in customers going for them. Thus, one needs to determine the reason of the shift. For instance, customers may be asked if they feel the same way when they eat bananas and burgers. The preference for the substitute will be also examined in terms of price difference of the products.
- Product. The competitor mentioned like McDonald’s provides a variety of products in its menu like salads, French fries, burgers and drinks. On the other hand, a rival like Sunset Boullevard offers much healthier products like smoothies and sandwiches instead of milkshakes and hamburgers. In case Burger Guru does not have a specialized model of service and product that is associated with it, it might be the reason for the decreased sales. Product analysis will therefore look deeply into whether Burger Guru has any specialized set of products that are unique to them. If they do, one has to consider how quality the service is.
Tabulation of Data Analysis Procedures
Once the process of data collection is completed, the computer will be used to carry out tabulation and analysis of the data. The information gathered will be fed into Microsoft Excel where further examination will be done in order to determine the mean, mode, median, standard deviation and variance. The computer will also play a huge role in enhancing the preparation of cleaned and labeled data files. Furthermore, frequency distribution tables will be drawn in order to identify the correlation of different variables that will be specified throughout the research such as age. Finally, a spreadsheet will be drawn in order to record all the results that will be deduced from the analysis.
Reporting
After the analysis, the data will be presented in various forms of graphs. Line graphs will be drawn to show the trend of the sales while the bar one will be used to demonstrate product that is sold the best as well as that one that has shown the worst sales. It will also include the comparison of the products with those of the competitors. Additionally, a pie chart can be used interchangeably with the graphs. It will demonstrate the percentage of sales of each product.
Time and Cost Estimates
The research is estimated to take a period of three days distributed evenly throughout the week. However, one of the days should be at the weekend in order to cater for the time when the customers are not at their work. The only time contradiction might occur when some correspondents turn down the request to be interviewed due to their schedule.
Certain costs will be required in order to organize the entire process of the research. Approximately $500 will be needed in order to print out the questionnaires as well as purchase other materials that will be used for the survey such as pens, pamphlets and brochures. There will also be other costs such as transport ones that will amount to $600 along with miscellaneous expenses of $200. That way, this research will be cost-effective and will provide all the vital details of the company.
Limitations
The research will however face several challenges. First, secondary data from the competitors may be difficult to get because of competitor-competitor jealousy that might lead to ill or untrue news. Secondly, the cost of this operation maybe higher than expected due to several fees that will be involved. Time will also be another factor since some customers that may be selected might end up turning down the request for the interview or answering the questionnaire. However, the advantages definitely outnumber the limitations, and therefore, the survey is worth conducting.
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