Part 1 (a) – Develop a questionnaire (15 marks)
A large multi-department retailer currently has approximately 100 stores in both central town/city locations and out-of-town retail developments. All shops sell the same stock and are fitted out to a similar style as the company strategy up until now has been to target the same type of customers in each location. However there is now debate at executive board level over whether this strategy should be changed, with the possibility of more distinct offerings being created.
As part of this discussion, a decision has been made to survey existing customers to find out whether there are already differences between customers at the two types of stores in factors such as:
• their demographic profiles (e.g. age, income, family status);
• their purchasing patterns (how often and which type of stores they visit, how much they spend)
• how far they travel to the store and what mode of transport they use;
• the influence of facilities such as a café, toilets, parking in the choice of whether to visit a town or retail park location.
You have been invited by the board to put forward a detailed proposal to carry out this research and if they are impressed by it you will be employed as a consultant to carry out the work. You should, therefore, design a questionnaire which could be used by the company to find out about the issues outlined and present this to them in a professional manner. Include the areas given above as a minimum, credit will also be given for independent thought about the scenario with inclusion and justification of other related questions which you feel might be important to answering the central question of how customers at each type of store differ.
Your questionnaire should be a maximum of three pages and should be presented professionally so that it is ready to send out to potential respondents if the board approve it. You should use the above information along with any further research you may wish to do to decide on the questionnaire content.
Students are permitted to use the ‘Qualtrics’ software to produce their questionnaire, but this is not compulsory and students can choose to produce their questionnaire using normal word processing packages. The marks awarded for the questionnaire will not be dependent on the software used to design the questionnaire however if Qualtrics is used then presentation should still be of a professional report standard, and a coding plan should still be provided.
Your questionnaire should be presented as an appendix to your assignment.