Research Project On KFC co

Business organizations endure because they have customers who are prepared to pay for their product and service (Cinoy, 2007). In this competitive world satisfying the needs of the customer plays an important role for any business organization with providing the quality service that reaches the expectations of the consumer and satisfying them with their product by this company can adopt successful business strategy that can take them over their rivals in the market. Now a day’s many organizations are investing considerable amount of resources in finding out new methods and tactics for filling the gap between the actual customer expectation and service provided by the organization this is because of lack of correspondence between customer expectations and actual service provided by the organizations which results in dissatisfaction of consumers.

This research project is concerned about analyzing the service quality provided to its customers by KFC store, Belle vale, Liverpool and to analyze the level of satisfaction experienced by its consumers. Service quality has been conceptualized as the difference between customer prospect regarding service to be received and opinion of service being received (Parasuraman et al., 1988). Customer satisfaction is recognized as being highly associated with “Value” and consequently on the “Price” (Antreas, 1999). Customer satisfaction has been acknowledged as central concept as well as essential goal of all business activity (Eugene et al., 1994). These food court industries are fast growing industries in the whole United Kingdom and Globally. There is intense competition among the firms in the industry for example: MC Donald’s, Burger King Etc. Expansion in service sector has resulted in increased variety of customer demands and customer needs and wants. To reach increased customer demands business should adopt strategies which gain the business than its rivals.

1.1 Problem outline

As the most successful food firms are organized to deliver most enviable combination of food and service to consumers (jean & Ben, 1996). The firms find it difficult to understand how consumers perceive their services and evaluate service quality (Valarie et al., 1985).This research is concerned with customer satisfaction and Service Quality in the hospitality industry focusing KFC store, Belle vale. Research will critically analyze to determine the level of customer satisfaction provided by the store and makes suggestions how to plan to increase the level of customer satisfaction which in turn increases the store overall performance. Report will investigate and come up with the steps and suggestions to be taken for the customers to be satisfied.

1.2 Organization overview

KFC (GB) Ltd forms a part of Yum Brands. Yum Brands consist of 5 core Quality service Restaurant (QSR) KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, A&W, and Long John Silver. KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) operates in 74 countries and territories throughout the world. The KFC concept was introduced to Britain in 1965. Following by worldwide acquisition of KFC by PepsiCo it was announced that the British operations KFC GB Ltd has become a joint venture a company owned by “Trust House Forte” and “PepsiCo” (KFC, 2000).

KFC Store, Belle vale is one of the new store it just being 20months. As it’s a new store this report would suggest some of the plans that are important for the store to increase their level of customer satisfaction among its customers.

1.3 Aims and objectives

This research main aim is to study and critically evaluate the customer satisfaction of the customer’s for the service quality provided to them by the KFC store in Belle vale. To suggest solution for some of the issues faced by the consumers respectively thus by fixing them store can gain higher customer satisfaction and could provide their customers with proper service quality which could reach the expectations of them. The research plan is to use different types and modes of the quantitative research methods for collecting data. Quantitative data is collected by questionnaire. The data collected through questionnaire is analyzed through SPSS.

Objectives:

To adopt Quantitative research methods in order to know how far customer is satisfied.

To critically review the literature of the customer satisfaction in the hospitality industry, Identify key areas, and concepts to develop and support the research.

To make suggestions and recommendations to the store so that they plan and attain higher customer satisfaction from the survey conducted for the research.

To investigate the importance of customer satisfaction and service quality in order to create new customers

To reach the expectations of existing customers and to retain them in future.

To critically review and apprise the current literature on SERVQUAL.

Literature review

“The Literature review is the work of syntheses”. The literature review is an attempt to summarize the existing state of knowledge about a subject and, in research proposals, to frame the proposed research’s expected involvement to knowledge (Jeffrey, 2006). Literature review enables the researcher to position research in a large context by determining on overall review of the body of research and revealing the work that already being done and reported. The fundamental variables contribution to customer satisfaction in store about The Quality, and Environment can be ultimately enhanced but the service offered eventually provide business a competitive advantage (Evert, 1991)

The predominance of evidence in the accessible literature on the marketing of services has identified the critical role of service quality and satisfaction in the formation of customer purchase retention (Steven & Thomas, 1994). Understanding the relationship between the customer satisfaction and service quality is crucial for the effective management of any business institution (Rust & Oilver, 1994). However drive for the product and service apparent worldwide but the increasing customer satisfaction has become corporate goal for the business (Bitner & Hublert, 1994). The development of better understanding of how service quality perception and consumer satisfaction judgment interacts and influence each other on consumer purchase intention is a key challenge face by current services in marketing discipline (Bolton & Drew, 1994)

2.1 Concept of Customer satisfaction

Market researcher distinguishes between customer satisfaction with respect to a specific transaction and their global evaluation of service (Eugene et al., 1994). Customer satisfaction has been distinguished under two different conceptualizations they are Transaction specific and Cumulative (Boulding et al., 1993). Transaction specific perspective customer satisfaction is viewed as post evaluative judgment of a specific purchase occasion (Oliver, 1980). Cumulative customer satisfaction is an overall assessment based on total purchase and consumption experience with a product or service encountered (Fornell, 1992). Once the customers are satisfied with a service, they become more likely to re-purchase, which then increases the company’s profits. As per the survey conducted food quality, restaurant atmosphere and fairness and efficiency of seating procedures significantly influence customer satisfaction. Also service quality, personnel response, food price and convenience directly influence customer satisfaction with their meal experience.

Concept of service quality

Service quality is defined as the gap between the customer expectations and perceptions (Zeithaml et al., 1998). Over the past years service sector has become the dominant sector in the economy, and the studies reveal that service quality is the pre-requisite for the success and survival for business organizations in the competitive world. Service quality is famous as SERVQUAL. SERVQUAL has two types of approach Normative, and Predictive. Normative study explains how a firm proves to be excellent apart from the other firms operating in the same industry. Predictive SERVQUAL study explains expectation of the customers and perceptions of the same customers after them being served. The interest in service quality has increased noticeably (Gummesson, 1991). Service quality leads to customer loyalty, attraction of new customers and increased business performance through increased high levels of satisfaction (Parasuraman et al., 1988). The problems which are involved in service quality are in part a manifestation of intangible, Simultaneous, Non standardized and perishable nature of service. It’s very difficult to clarify the characteristics of service and their relationship with service quality. Usually they are many problems faced by organizations providing high quality service to its customers.

From the customers point of view they are five factors that affect the service quality of a firm (Suresh, 2001).

Core services or service products

Human elements of service delivery

Systemizations of service delivery: Non-human element

Tangible of services

Social responsibilities

Measuring service quality

They are many service quality measurements and methods proposed by various researchers. These methods can be broadly classified into two groups incident based and attribute based service quality measurements. Attribute based methods exist in a wide range of variants. One of the few tested instruments available to measure service quality from the customer’s perspective is the SERVQUAL instrument (Parasuraman et al., 1988). Perceived service quality is measured by subtracting customer perception scores from customer expectation score. The five dimensions considered are: Tangibility, Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance and Empathy. . The research conducted by researchers found that the three most important expectations of Quick service restaurant patrons were assurance, reliability and tangibles. This instrument will be used in the store to compare service quality to that of the other sectors and to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the store.

Service Elements

Service encounter elements are studied by many service marketing scholars to reveal personal interaction because increasing the pleasure of service encounters can “reduce the perceived risk associated with purchasing a service and improve the buying experience” (Briggs et al., 2007). The influence of service encounter elements can be reduced to three main components.

The first is environmental elements, which include tangible and intangible elements in the service environment such as ambience, lighting, music and internal and external environmental design.

The second component comprises of service employee factors which include the kind of employees providing services to customers. Specific behaviors, including the behavior of service employees are the key determinants of perceived service quality and customer satisfaction.

The third component is consumer factors such as whether the consumer is influenced by the appearance, behavior and perceptions of other customers.

Research methodology

The research methodology is an approach which encompasses of several issues including problems, constrictions and ethical preferences within the research. The methodology is the speculative examination of the methods that are appropriate to a specific field of study. To achieve the objectives and goals of the research, selection of methodology is essential and is indispensable for investigation and analysis. Keeping in consideration the quality of services provided by the organization (Valarie et al., 1985) the “onion theory”, plays an important role in determining the philosophy, approaches, strategies, time horizon and the data collection methods

3.1 Research philosophy

The learning style questionnaire or assessment assessed the research’s style as a Positivist and an Accommodator (See Appendix 1 -Learning Style Assessment). The perception by which a researcher carries out his or her research is called as research philosophy and these are classified into three positivism, interpretive and realism. With positivism, a researcher will work with an observable social reality with the end product of the research being generalizations (Saunders et al., 2003). The positivist approach is taken in the value free way. This implies that the researcher will neither affect or be affected by the subject of the research.

Approach to research

Deductive and Inductive are the two approaches to research. Deductive approach is a process in which we develop a theory and hypothesis and design a research strategy to test the hypothesis, whereas in Inductive approach we would collect data and develop theory as a result of data analysis. As the researcher’s study deals with positivism a deductive approach will be adopted in this research (Saunders et al., 2003).

In the deductive approach, the laws present the basis of explanation, allow the anticipation of phenomena, predict their occurrence and therefore permit them to be controlled (Collis & Hussey, 2003).

There are five sequential stages through which deductive research will progress (Robson, 2002).

First stage is Deducing a hypothesis from the theory.

Secondly, expressing the hypothesis in operational terms, which propose a relationship between two specific concepts or variables.

Testing the operational hypothesis.

Examining the specific outcome of the inquiry.

If necessary, modifying the theory in the light of the findings.

Research strategy

The strategy can be used for explanatory, descriptive and illustrative research (Yin, 2003). There are seven strategies namely Experiment, Survey, Case study, Action research, Grounded theory, Ethnography, and Archival research (Saunders et al., 2003). The survey being the popular strategy in business and management research it is used for exploratory and descriptive research. This strategy allows the collection of large amount of data from a sample in an economical way. The survey strategy is perceived as authoritative by people in general and is both comparatively easy to explain and to understand. It allows us to collect quantitative data which can be analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The questionnaire, however is not the only way to collect data, it includes structures observations, structures interviews etc. This survey strategy calculates and analyzes the satisfaction levels of the customers.

Methodology conclusion

The researcher intends to use a quantitative approach using a positivist and deductive approach and utilizing the data required in a way to support the research and provides the ability to understand.

Research methods

Research may be categorized into two distinct types: Qualitative and Quantitative. The former researcher concentrates on words and observations to express reality and attempts to describe people in natural situations (Amaratunga et al., 2002). The latter grows out of a strong academic tradition that places considerable trust in the numbers that represent opinions or concepts. According to the other researcher research strategy should be chosen according to the research situation. The researcher uses quantitative method (i.e. questionnaire survey) to measure the customer satisfaction and quality of service provided by the restaurant staff (Yin, 2003).

4.1 Quantitative research

Quantitative data is the information that can be counted or expressed numerically. Quantitative data refers to all the numeric data that can be a product of all research strategies (Saunders et al., 2003). This type of data is often collected in experiments, manipulated and statistically analyzed. Quantitative data can be represented visually in graphs and charts. A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions and other prompts for the purpose of gathering information from respondents. They are often designed for statistical analysis.

Questionnaire survey

Questionnaires are often used to collect primary quantitative data from the customers. The aim is to gather valid, reliable and unbiased data from a representative sample of respondents. One of the objectives of this research is ‘to investigate factors which are more effective on overall customer satisfaction and service quality’, in which case a certain proportion of customers should be inquired to draw out quantified information, and the sample will be chosen in a random basis. Questionnaire based survey is more efficient in terms of time, cost, thus increasing its accuracy. Moreover, the sample is much easier to be picked up.

Types of questionnaire

There are two types of questionnaires namely Self-administered Questionnaires and Interviewer Administered Questionnaires (Saunders et al., 2003). As far as this research is concerned the researcher will use Self administered Questionnaires which will be delivered by hand and collected later.

Questionnaire design

Questionnaire consists of a set of questions that the respondent has to answer in a set format. Questionnaire design calls our sociological imagination into play in a number of ways. It is designed in such a way that the questions are meaningful, sensitive, precise, searching and salient to our respondents. The construction of questions should be done precisely so that the respondents will want to answer them fully and truthfully as they can. It consists of open ended questions and close ended questions. The open ended question asks the respondents to formulate their own answers, whereas close ended questions requires the respondents to pick up an answer from a given number of options. The questionnaire will include: Ranking questions, open ended questions, simple direct questions requiring the respondent to tick a box and questions using Likert scale.

Sample selection

A sample is a set of elements selected in some way from a population. the available sampling methods fall into two main categories: probabilistic and non-probabilistic sampling. The researcher prefers to go for Non probability convenience sampling where the sampling will be randomly done until it satisfies the requirements of the research. The minimum criteria for selecting the samples from the population would be that the individuals or the group of individuals selected should be the customers KFC Belle vale.

Formula to Calculate sample size (S).

S =

Where

n = no of customers

e = 5%

Data collection methods

If the researcher wants to use some data for a particular purpose, he may use either the primary data or secondary data (Waters, 2001). Primary data is collected by the researcher himself for a particular purpose. Secondary data will be collected for other purposes.

Primary Data

The primary data will be collected through the questionnaires distributed to the customers/guests. A well structured questionnaire will be given to the customers in order to evaluate the opinions, beliefs, views and preferences of different people. The primary data collected through the questionnaires will be interpreted using SPSS.

Secondary Data

Data which includes both raw data and published summaries is incorporated in secondary data (Saunders et al., 2003). Various forms of secondary data will be collected from journals, books and websites in order to support the research. The researcher has access to wide range of facilities of the learning resource centers of the universities in Liverpool

Profile, Personal Suitability

5.1 Researcher personal knowledge and skill

Researcher is the graduate in Bachelors of commerce (Honours) from Osmania University. The researcher has done a project on “Export Finance provided by banks in India” from the State bank of Hyderabad (SBH) during his graduation. The store understands that this research can help them to improve their business as the researcher has prior experience in customer services.

Research suitability

As the researcher is the employee of the KFC store, it will enable him to get the required data and conduct a survey on service quality. Being the employee of the organization, the researcher did not want to lose the opportunity to enhance on his personal interests. Moreover, with the support of his manager the researcher has gained confidence in the completion of the task successfully. A consent letter has been issued by KFC to carry on the survey which has been put in Appendix 3.

Time and project management

6.1 project plan

A project plan which is produced using the Microsoft Office project 2007 is presented in the Appendix 2. The project starts on 1st July 2011 and ends on 29th November 2011. As the researcher is an employee of KFC, there seems to be no hindrance for the successful completion of his project. However there may be some aspects which may exceed the time allocated, say for example the questionnaires. This is because the researcher will have to manage with the customers for their respective feedbacks which may exceed the allocated time period.

Cost

The only cost involved in this research would be the printing cost of the questionnaires.

Research protocol

7.1 Questionnaire protocol

Questionnaires will be directly given to the customers after they complete their meal.

Sufficient time will be given to fill the questionnaires.

A brief idea about the research will be included in the questionnaire.

On receiving the completed questionnaires, the data will be loaded into SPSS to analyze it.

Using Microsoft Word

Amend all the text to be Times New Roman size 12.

Amend all the text of any ‘bold’ or ‘italic’ script.

Remove all headers and references to original authors.

Others

8.1 Ethical issues

Research ethics relates to questions about how we formulate and clarify our resource topic, design our research and gain access, collect data, process and store our data, analyze data and write up our research findings in a moral and responsible way (Saunders et al., 2003). The researcher guarantees that the research will cause no harm in terms of personal or physical harm (Kumar, 2005). That sharing information about respondents with others for non-research purpose is un-ethical. All the data will be kept confidential and will not be disclosed without the organization’s permission. The author will make sure that no questions will be asked which would break the legal rules and the privacy of the organization. The raw data will be safely stored by the researcher who will be the only person to access it, and it will be destroyed once the study is completed.

The required ethical approval form has been put in the Appendix 4.