The relationship between customer loyalty and sales performance - The case of Apple, UK

Hi Mert,

Thank you sending in your research proposal. Please see below the given suggestions on your research proposal and make the necessary amendments.

Title

You have selected a suitable title for your research. The independent and dependent variable is clearly stated along with a suitable case study. However, you have not presented the chosen geographical location of the research.

Therefore, you are advised to include the geographical location along with the case study.

Research Background 

You have attempted a brief research background. However, this is not sufficient. Under the research background you are advised to clearly discuss the importance of conducting your research on the identified research issue. Furthermore, literature sources should be incorporated when developing the overall dissertation to improve the depth of the discussions.

Research objectives

When developing the research objectives, you are required to include the case study and the geographical location at the end of the objective. Furthermore, you are required to include a 4th objective providing recommendations.

For example –

· To provide suitable recommendations to employee retention and customer loyalty of Apple Inc.

Research questions

You are advised to develop suitable research questions in line with the research objectives.

For example –

· What are the factors that affect employee retention?

· What are the factors that affect customer loyalty?

· What is the impact of employee retention on customer loyalty?

Rationale

You have briefly attempted the rationale. However, it could be further improved. You are advised to develop the research rationale under the below sub sections;

· What is the research issue?

· Why is it an issue?

· Why is it an issue now?

· What could this research shed light on?

You can refer the below example on a different topic to get an idea on how to attempt the rationale section. Please note that the below is ONLY an example. This is only provided to you to get an idea.

Research Topic: A study on the impact of grievance management on performance of the customer care representatives

What is the research issue?

Electronic marketing is the most competitive scenario of today’s market industry and to stay upfront and attain profitability, organization should be cautious in dealing with all the essential components of the system (Bones and Hammersley, 2015). Customer care service play pivotal role in internet market to reach out to organization as they serve as the human resource accessibility to the consumers (Nayar, 2013). Firms that fail to realize the crucial role of customer service in rising reputation and profitability are at stake and will also fail to attain prominence in the electronic market (Bones and Hammersley, 2015). The needs and demands of employees that evolve during the processing of a job should be met seriously to keep them motivated and engaged in work (Gomathi, 2014).

Even if there are rules and regulations for effectual employee grievance management, proper administration of grievances is curtailed. Timely tracking of dissatisfactions is quite essential to avoid the loss of energy, demotivation and conflicts (Ayedin and Ceylan, 2009). Ineffective unsatisfactory working environment of ASOS as reported by Malm (2015) and Glass-Door (2016) is a major cause for its customer-care representatives to behave insolently to their customers which thereby resulted in pulling down the consumers from this shopping store.

Why is it an issue?

Though bestowed with various honors ASOS promises best customer-services and online shopping (ASOS, 2015), recent reports in “Asia One” by Lin (2016) unveil the irresponsibility of customer-care representatives. Trust pilot (2016) also reveal poor customer service and also elaborates on the need to improve quality of services. Further Glass Door (2016) support this by pointing out the improper behavior from the administration and the negation of employee problems which demotivate and extract energy from ASOS employees. Hence, grievance management has become a rising concern in most organisations within today’s dynamic environment.

Why is it an issue now?

In the opinion of Dhiman (2014), grievance has a direct influence on employee-performance and its consequences include dissatisfaction, low-quality service, and employee-turnovers. Therefore, the need to review the employee management is imperative for ASOS and hence grievance management and its relation to performance of customer-care representatives of ASOS, UK are investigated in detail in this study. Improper administration drives to disappointing attitudes of ASOS staff and the lack of timely attention to employee problems has led to the decline of employee performance which in turn has affected the service quality. The 14% profit fall reported by Felsted and Barrett (2014) in “The Financial Times” also points out to this fact. Ram (2016) also supports this fact by showing out the fluctuations in profit level of the firm. From the above statements, it can be inferred that ASOS lack a provision for effectively resolute the employee problems and hence it is essential to study the influence of grievance management and its relation to the performance of customer-care representatives of ASOS industry so that it can improvise its grievance system to attain market prominence.

What could this research shed light on?

In this study, researcher will analyze various employee grievances and the techniques used to manage them. Performance of customer-care representatives with regard to management of grievances will also be assessed so that corrective measures to improve staff performance can be determined by ASOS and similar organizations; thus achieving overall objectives of the company. This study will be highly significant for ASOS and similar organizations in that it will try to highlight the positives and negatives of the grievances management strategies implemented by ASOS, which in turn will pave way for necessary improvements in strategies from employees’ regard and enhance their performance.

Literature review 

Literature review have not been attempted. Under the literature review you are required to review concepts related to the research topic. For example – the concept of employee retention, customer loyalty, relationship between employee retention and customer loyalty and etc.

Furthermore, you are required to bring in theories and models related to the research topic.

Research design and methodology

Note that you cannot collect information/data from direct questionnaires. If you are collecting data from past questionnaires make sure you clearly mentioned it under this section and make sure you clearly site the sources.

Important note: At undergraduate level, you must not undertake primary research using human participants (e.g. a questionnaire, interview or survey) Therefore, make sure that for the research title you have chosen you are able to find secondary data sources which are accessible and reliable. 

Secondary sources such as books, journal articles, websites, magazines and etc. should be used to develop your major project.

If you require further assistance, please do contact me. Now you can start working on the first three chapter submissions. Also please refer your Practice for Workshop Manual for detailed guidelines and examples. 

Wish you all the best! Kind regards,  Dushanthi