Research Proposal on the Marketing and Promotional Strategies

Question: The report describes a business research proposal on the marketing and promotional strategies of a food company of Australia named 7 Chefs Pty Ltd. Answer: Introduction The business research proposal deals with the description of the functioning of an organisation named 7 Chefs Pty Ltd. The company 7 Chefs Pty Ltd is based in Australia. The founders of the company established and started the business of the company way back in 1996. The main line of production of the company is that it manufactures prepared and canned food products. The company specialises in production of other miscellaneous food items. The company belongs to the sector of Consumer Staples in Australia. The industry in which the company belongs is the industry for the consumer food products. The company also manufactures packaged food products (7 Chefs 2016). The company 7 Chefs Pty Ltd is a top ranked manufacturer of the food product pasta. The foundation of the company was laid in 1986 as Casa Della Pasta. At that time the company produced pasta by machines that were operated manually. The company produced gourmet pasta in small quantities in those days in a little shop in Victoria. In 1996, the ownership of the company changed from one hand to another. The new owners of the company had 30 years of experience in the food and beverage industry. With the help of this experience the new owners of the company have developed the company to what it is today. The company 7 Chefs is developing its techniques of production constantly (Sacks et al. 2015). The company ensure that they produce the best quality of gourmet and traditional pasta. The company claims that they use the freshest and purest form of ingredients to produce the pasta. The company claims that they use the technology of individual quick freeze and pasteurization techniques that would enhance the life of the food products. The company claim that they do not add any external preservatives (Meloncelli et al. 2015). The product that the company produces is very fascinating to the buyers. The company is very consistent in their line of production. The company adopts different techniques to promote their products and to associate with the customers (Moodie et al. 2013). The topic of the research is to identify the effect of these promotional strategies on the customers. The research would also investigate the effect of adequacy of these strategies on the customers. Literature review of the topic There are many scholars and researchers who have conducted extensive studies on the food and beverage industry of Australia. The studies reveal that Australia is the worlds leading source of innovative, safe and high quality processed food products. The food market of Australia shows immense expertise in the production of best quality food items. The country uses the processed food items for both the domestic as well as export markets (Mills 2014). Australia supports the beverage and food processors of the country with immense access to raw materials. The country provides security to the processed food suppliers in terms of supply of the products. The Australian economy mainly focuses on the export of improved qualities of processed food products. The international market distinguishes the food and beverage industry of Australia as the highest ranked industry for producing best quality processed food. The food processors in the Australian market have sound experience in manufacturing products that would meet the tastes and preferences of the consumer (Austrade.gov.au 2016). The company 7 Chefs Pty Ltd of Australia is famous for presenting a variety of delicacies of pasta. The company also pays special attention to their sustenance of cleanliness. The company tries to enhance the positive effects that their products have on their customers. In todays times, the dietary habits of people are changing due to the changing pattern of their way of living (Mialon et al. 2016). To cope up with these changing food habits of the customers, the company is trying to enhance their products. The products of the company are well within the reach of the customers. Hence, buyers are very much inclined to buy the pasta produced by the company 7 Chefs. The different other organisations in the food and beverage industry of Australia resort to different methods to connect with their customers. The firms promote their products through advertisements on magazines, television or on the internet (Ronit and Jensen 2014). There are some of the mainstream methods that the company follow to place their food product in the minds and hands of the people of Australia. Some of these mainstream methods that the company 7 Chefs Pty Ltd adopts is promoting their product on television and print media or displaying advertisement of their products on the streets of the cities. The company guides the shoppers to buy their product through their advertisement campaigns. The customers get the idea of the quality of the product that the company produces through the advertisement. The customers are always inclined to the products that cater to their needs. The customers buy mainly those products that have utility value for them (Richards et al. 2015). The company tries to get the idea of what their customers want from them. The company works on their product to satisfy their customers. Researchers have studied the behaviour and the marketing strategies that the firms in the food and beverage industry of Australia adopt to satisfy their customers. Most of the studies reveal that the promotional strategies followed by the companies are the best methods to connect with the customers. Certain promotional strategies of the firms like advertisement draw most of the attention of the customers (Pollard et al. 2016). Research Questions The above discussion on the research topic gives rise to certain questions that the researcher tries to answer by conducting the research. The literature review gives a clear idea of the topic. The literature review of the topic helps the researcher to get an idea about the food and beverage industry of Australia. Moreover, the literature review explains the strategies that the company 7 Chefs Pty Ltd of Australia follow to promote their food product, pasta, in the market. The researcher poses the following research questions that are described below: What are the main issues that connect the company with their customers? What effects the marketing strategies of the company would have on its customers? What are the different ways in which the company can get the idea of the tastes and preferences of their customers? How are advertisements successful in mirroring the buying nature of the target customers of the company? How much commitment do promotional strategies of the company have towards the purchasing behaviour of the customers? The researcher tries to find answers to these questions through this research. Description of research methodologies and techniques The research methodology describes the steps that the researcher would follow to complete the research process. The researcher plans to conduct the research following these few steps: Defining research objective: The researcher would first decide the objective of the research that he is going to conduct. The researcher would explain the topic and give the literature review of the topic. Designing the research: The researcher would make a design of his research. The researcher would frame the procedure of the research. Data collection: The researcher would collect quantitative data from appropriate sources. The researcher would conduct interviews of the people associated with the company through questionnaire. Data analysis: The researcher performs data analysis using suitable statistical techniques. The researcher uses statistical software namely R, SPSS or Ms Excel to analyse the quantitative data. Reporting and conclusion: This is the final step in the research process. The researcher states and explains the findings of the research and draws conclusions from them (Flick 2015). Gantt chart The Gantt chart gives the dates on which the researcher would complete the literature review of the topic, the data collection and analysis and dates for final report submission. The bar diagram depicts the milestones of the research. Task Start date Duration End date Literature Review 13th June 15.00 28th June Data Collection 29th June 60.00 29th Aug Data Analysis 30th Aug 55.00 25th Oct Final Report Submission 26th Oct 30.00 26th Nov Description of the research process To conduct the research, the researcher adopts quantitative data collection methods to gather the desired information from a group of people. The researcher conducts surveys to collect the data. Conducting surveys to extract information from the subjects is the best possible method to collect large data. After collecting the data by conducting the survey, first the researcher ensures whether the people participating in the survey have completed it following all the rules or not. The researcher should conduct the survey in a legitimate way. The researcher utilised normal length of the poles. The researcher consciously maintained a strategic distance in noting down the responses of the people participating in the survey (Lewis 2015). The researcher gathers all the information from the respondents and checks if there is any missing or erroneous information. If the researcher finds any such outliers in the collected responses, he takes necessary actions. The researcher cleans and validates the data collected and brings it to a usable form. The researcher conducted the survey on people who are the regular customers of the company 7 Chefs Pty Ltd in Australia. After collecting the required data, the researcher performed data analysis with the help of the statistical software SPSS 17. The results of the data analysis would provide the answers to the research questions that the researcher posed in his study (Elo et al. 2014). Description of data collection and data analysis techniques The researcher collected the data from 150 people living in Australia. The participants of the survey claim that they have tasted more than 50% of the different flavours of pasta that the company 7 Chefs Pty Ltd manufactures every year. The interviewer collected the data from the respondents with the help of a questionnaire. The questionnaire contained questions related to the research. The responded marked their answers on a scale ranging from the option of strongly agree to the option of strongly disagree (Ott and Longnecker 2015). The surveyor explained the method of giving the answers to the questions to the respondents with the help of the internet. The questionnaire contained some of the questions like are the promotional strategies of the company highly committed to the tastes of the customers? or can the company connect with their customers very efficiently? among a few others. After collecting the data, the researcher would conduct a qualitative analysis test on the data. This would help the researcher to understand the mental set-up of the respondents. This would eventually help the researcher to find the answers to the research questions (Gale et al. 2013). The experimenter would also perform quantitative analysis of the numerical data that he has collected from different sources. Quantitative analysis of the data would include finding some of the descriptive statistics measures of the data. The descriptive statistics measures include the median, mean, standard deviation and variance of the data. The analyst would perform multivariate regression analysis on the multivariate data to find the value of some dependent variable based on the values of the independent variables (Heller et al. 2015). To draw inferences from the statistical data, the analyst may perform some hypothesis testing on the data. The researcher would perform all the data analysis using the statistical software SPSS 17. Expected research outcome By conducting the research, the researcher expects that he can draw some positive conclusions on the topic of the research. The research would reveal that the company 7 Chefs in Australia promotes their delicacies to the people mainly during their festive season. This is an important strategy of the company as this would draw in more customers. The research would also reveal what traditional or modern methods of promotions the company adopts. The researcher expects that the research would reflect the factors governing the purchasing behaviour of the customers. One such factor can be the image of the brand in the minds of the people. The research would also reveal how promotions can make or break the views of the customers regarding the product. Conclusion The research highlights some important aspects of the promotional strategies that the company 7 Chefs Pty Ltd in Australia adopts to connect with their customers. The research very efficiently answers the questions that were extracted from the literature review of the topic. The study reveals that the company makes advertisement following all the norms that would catch the fancy of their customers. This is a very efficient method of connecting with their customers. Hence, this research would benefit both the customers and the company as a whole. References: 7 Chefs. (2016). 7 Chefs - About Us. Austrade.gov.au. (2016). Food and Beverage - Austrade's industry capability information - Austrade. Elo, S., Kriinen, M., Kanste, O., Plkki, T., Utriainen, K. and Kyngs, H., 2014. Qualitative content analysis.SAGE open,4(1), p.2158244014522633. Flick, U., 2015.Introducing research methodology: A beginner's guide to doing a research project. Sage Gale, N.K., Heath, G., Cameron, E., Rashid, S. and Redwood, S., 2013. Using the framework method for the analysis of qualitative data in multi-disciplinary health research.BMC medical research methodology,13(1), p.117. Heller, M., Hannig, J. and Leadbetter, M.R., 2015. 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