RESEARCH APPLICATIONS IN GLOBAL BUSINESS (RAGB)
ASSIGNMENT:
Business Research Proposal for NOKIA
SUBMITTED TO:
STEPHEN HUMPHREY
SUBMITTED BY:
SYED ALI SULTAN
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CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................ 3 2. PROBLEM STATEMENT ............................................................................. 3 2.1. QUESTION ......................................................................................... 3 3. STRATEGIC AND OPERATIONAL RATIONALE ................................... 4 4. BUSINESS QUESTION & SUB QUESTION .............................................. 5 4.1. HYPOTHESIS ..................................................................................... 5 4.2. VARIBLES ......................................................................................... 6 4.2. CONSTRUCT DIAGRAM ................................................................ 6 5. RESEARCH OBJECTIVE ............................................................................ 6 6. LITERATURE REVIEW .............................................................................. 7 7. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ................................................................... 9 7.1. TARGET POPULATION & SAMPLE SIZE ..................................... 9 8. RESEARCH TECHNIQUE .......................................................................... 9 9. DATA ANALYSIS ....................................................................................... 10 9.1. CODING ............................................................................................ 10 9.2. TECHNIQUE ................................................................................... 10 10. BARRIERS ................................................................................................... 10 11. TIMELINE .................................................................................................... 11 REFERENCES ................................................................................................... 12
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1. INTRODUCTION NOKIA, one of the top brands of telecommunication handset manufacturers, is a Finnish Multinational corporation. It’s headquarter is in Espoo, Finland with operations all over the world. Nokia is considered to be leading supplier of cell phones and relating customer services. Nokia was the biggest phone maker st company till early 21 century. It produced its one billionth handset as a whole in year 2005. It was the era when it captured the whole Asian and African market. There occurred a dip in the sales of company but the recent collaboration with Microsoft in hope for the growth and development of company is vital.
2. PROBLEM STATEMENT PROBLEMS
ISSUES
QUESTIONS
The company is not been Nokia is sticking to the What factors involve able to keep its idea of introducing new Nokia losing its customers. platform/software customers?
Nokia is finding hard to Less keep its identity Developers
Application What factors involve Nokia losing its worth?
2.1. QUESTION The Problem Question focused in this research proposal is about losing customers because the main problem company is facing today is not been able to maintain the number of consumers. A consumer of this age needs such an advanced platform in their handsets which contain loads of life easing options and applications. But the company is not satisfying new evolving and emerging needs of consumers and it’s continuously failing to do so.
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3. STRATEGIC AND OPERATIONAL RATIONALE
3.1.
STRATEGIC
3.1.1. REPUTATION:
This study will help to build the reputation of company to the level it once had th during the late 20 century. 3.1.2. GROWTH:
The proposal will result into the increase of demand and sales of the company. 3.1.3. COMPETTITVE ADVANTAGE:
Many customers are loyal to the Nokia and still buy Nokia handsets because of its key features. The company must retain them to maintain a competitive advantage. And this study will enable Nokia to do what is required. 3.1.4. AFFORDABLE PRICES:
Nokia should make such mobile phones that are within the reach of the consumers. This research will give an insight of the budget of consumer and why cost effective phones are required. 3.1.5. FINANCE:
With this proposal the company will be able to make increase its profit by increasing its handsets consumer numbers.
3.2. OPERATIONAL 3.2.1. CUSTOMER REQUIREMENTS:
This study will enable Nokia to determine what modern age consumers want from their handsets. 3.2.2. INVESTMENT:
The proposal will help Nokia to decide on what areas it needs to make investments and how it will prove to be beneficial to the company.
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3.2.3. SKILLED EMPLOYEES:
This research will enable Nokia to hire such employees that are good in application developing techniques and can make the platform easy for the consumers. 3.2.4. MARKET AREAS:
The study will let the Nokia know different demands of various areas around the world. Company will then be able to decide which phones to be sent where according to the consumer needs.
4. QUESTION AND SUB-QUESTION What factors involve Nokia losing its customers?
4.1. HYPOTHESIS H1: New software is negatively affecting company sales. H2: Number of Applications increase company sales. H3: Inflexible Customers Attitude negatively impact company sales. H4: New mobile phone software negatively affects cell phone selection. H5: Rigid Customer attitude negatively affects the choice of mobile phone. H6: Mobile Applications has direct relationship with switching mobile phones. H7: Demand of mobile phones increases sales of company. H8: Different mobile phone users negatively affect people mind set to choose new platform. H9: Sales positively affects Growth of company
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4.2. VARIABLES Variables, in our case, are the factors on which the growth of the NOKIA depends upon. Variables are determined with the help of hypothesis and formed a diagram showing the relationship between the variables. This relationship between variables can be shown in the construct diagram.
4.3. CONSTRUCT DIAGRAM H1
OTHER PLATFORM
NEW
USERS
SOFTWARE
H4 H5
CELL PHONES
H3 CUSTOMER ATTITUDE
H8
H7 DEMAND
GROWTH
SALES
H9 H6
MOBILE APPLICATION
H2
5. RESEARCH OBJECTIVE The research objectives of the Proposed Study are:
Identify and analyse the modern age consumer needs.
Improvement in the platform to make it user friendly
Efficient training of Employees and application developers.
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6. LITERATURE REVIEW Huselid, Becker and Beatty (2005) in their recent research paper found that Human resource management provides a way to realize the objective goals and strategies of a firm. This idea has been taken further by Egri and Hornal (2002) that policies and strategies made by HRM help to develop behaviour of employees to achieve sustainability goals in firm. HRM can bring the best out of any firm by enhancing the social and financial state of company and then it can focus more on the goals. Every company has its own goals and sustainability policies. For example, mining company may want to focus on the safety of its employees more but on the other hand a firm having more foreign workers may want to facilitate its more employees because of absence of their families. Taylor, Osland and Egri (2012) expressed that making good HRM policies is the first and foremost step in understanding and managing goals. Any company can progress if its HRM department is on right track. For the higher performance of this department, training is a key element. This view has been supported by Gregory John Lee (2012). Training must be done in a firm to maintain high quality performance of the employees. Guest (1997) and Huang (2001) have both shown that Training of employees will result in the improvement of not only their individual skills but also enable the firm to be good in other practices like team work. If there is more number of environmentally trained workers in any firm then it is more likely the chance that company will grow and adapt easily to new requirements (Zilahy, 2004). Innovation is another key element in the company’s growth and smooth operations. Recent research (Prajogo and Ahmed, 2006) suggests that success in innovation can only be possible if the firm has technology and is capable of managing the change in technology. Dobni (2006) agrees with this suggestion by explaining that companies need to be proactive and quick to adapt changes if they want to apply innovative ideas. Firms must provide suitable environment to employees to develop innovative ideas. A similar view is held by Yami and LeRoy (2007) and they took it further by adding on that firms should listen to ideas generated workers and thus provide them a friendly environment. Silvia Cantarello, Roberto Filippini and Anna Nosella (2012), however, suggest that firm cannot be innovative only by bringing new innovative ideas. In fact, it needs to improve customer satisfaction and provide better services to its customers. Alex, K. Michele and Carl P. (2003) explained that customer service in any organization is a behaviour which depends on three important parts:
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management team, employees and customers. An alternative view is that customer service is basically a way by which organization focus on meeting the requirements and future expectations of costumers (Schneider, et al., 1998). The latter view is supported by Hennig-Thurau (2004, p.462). He stated that services provided to customers by the company can be determined by the behaviour of its employees with them. Customer service and customer satisfaction are interlinked with each other and there is strong connection between them (Rust and Zahorik, 1991). Customer relationship marketing is a field that deals with how to provide best service in order to satisfy customers. The definition of Customer Relationship Marketing by Grönroos (1994, p.355) is that it is the phenomenon that attracts, sustain and build relationships with the consumers and various associates. This Customer relationship marketing is important because of the communication between firm and customers which in result build strong and long term relation between them and increase the profit margin of any firm. Grönroos (2000) holds a view that a strong relationship takes place when there is compatibility between organization and customer. And an organization can flourish if majority of its customers are relationship oriented. Thus there is no doubt in saying that customer relationship marketing can make, maintain and break relationship with customers when required (Rashid, 2003). Recent research (Hashim N.Tareq, 2012) described dimensions of Relationship marketing as: Trust, Commitment, Social Bonding and Communication. Moreover, customers like to deal with such organizations which think in the same manner and whose image match with that of the customers (Schiffmann and Kanuk, 1997). And according to Kotler and Keller (2006) this behaviour is described as the way customer recognizes the company and its products. It has been stated that the firm should adopt offline as well as online techniques for building strong customer relationships depending upon the product and targeted customers (Lianga, Chenb, 2008). So, all researchers are in favour of the argument that strong relationships between consumer and firm will improve customer loyalty towards certain product which results in the increase in the profit (Liang & Wang, 2006; Abdul-Muhmin, 2005). Operation management is a field that incorporates many constituents like supply chain, process designing and project management etc. Chase, et al. (2006) describes the operation management as the method by which design and operations of any firm can make and deliver products and services. Recent researches proved that outsourcing is also vital for management decisions of the firms. Daniel Arias-Arandaa, Oscar F. Bustinzab and Vanesa Barrales (2011)
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proposed outsourcing as a technique in which some core activities of the organization are carried out outside of the local boundary in order to modify strategies and minimize the cost. Outsourcing should be included in the decision making for the operation management strategies of firms (Miles and Snow, 2001).
7. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY According to philosophical study, this research is considered as positivism and the research technique should be quantitative with inferential statistics as data analysis technique. Quantitative method is better suited as it can provide more data for the measurement of result based on people’s mind set.
7.1. Target Population and Sample Size According to Rugimbana (2007), students are considered a top priority for this kind of study because of their maximum adaptability towards innovation in mobile field. Thus, target population will be students of university of technology. Students of that age group are maximum users of technology for entertainment and educational facilities (Choi, Hwang & McMillan, 2008). The sampling method used in this study is purposive method. Recent research of Churchill & Iacobucci in 2002 stated that in this method, sample target is assumed to assist in the research. 400 students will serve the purpose of this research. As this sample size is considered appropriate with researches done earlier that was based on the idea of cell phone usage among students (Abdelkarim & Nasereddin, 2010).
8. RESEARCH TECHNIQUE The research technique that will be used in this research is questionnaire with an open box at the end. This will be distributed to 400 students of the chosen university. Strength and reliability will be calculated of the questionnaire design so that it will serve the exact purpose of research theme. Structured interviews are the way of collecting data but it limits the researcher to certain questions. He cannot divert from a set pattern in order to get more out
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of the interview. Furthermore, the structured interviews cannot conclude sufficient results because no consumers will be willing to take part in such long interviews for assessment.
9. DATA ANALYSIS 9.1. CODING Coding is a technique in which data is transformed in a language that can be easily understood by the computing software. The choices in the questionnaire will be given different codes so that it becomes easier for statistical analysis. This is done in order to get the best results out of the quantitative analysis. The open box will be post coded according to the response and remaining designed set questions will be pre coded in order to assess the response.
9.2. TECHNIQUE The type of data we obtain will be ordinal because of the questionnaire options. If the data is parametric we will analyse with the data with the Pearson’s correlation and if the data is non-parametric we will use Spearman’s rank correlation co-efficient to find the closeness between variables. Afterwards, Regression analysis technique will be used to determine actual time usage of mobile phone by consumers assuming the linear straight line association. These results will then be analysed by the SPSS software for getting accurate results.
10.
BARRIERS
10.1. SUFFICIENT DATA Receiving correct amount of questionnaires from the participants is very crucial for the research. Research cannot be done if there is not appropriate amount of data because for the analysis of quantitative data there ought to be certain level of data. Otherwise, it results would not be reliable.
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10.2. FINANCIAL STATUS Well-being of the person who is participating in the research is very vital. It will affect the decision of the person and in result will have a major effect on the results of research.
10.3. OPINION OF RESEARCHER There is a valid risk that opinion of research might disturb the analysis of data in the research. So the researcher must not be biased towards certain technology.
10.4. QUESTIONNAIRE FILLING There is risk that some participants will not be willing to take part in the survey or some will not give honest responses while filling the questionnaires. So it will disturb the result of statistical analysis of data in the research.
11.
TIMELINE
1-Aug 11-Aug21-Aug31-Aug10-Sep20-Sep30-Sep 10-Oct 20-Oct 30-Oct 9-Nov Questionnaire design Pre-trial Select the assesors Select participants Questionnaire distribution way Time, date , place Conduct survey Data analysis Results and conclusion
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