Abstract

Describe about the  satisfaction in perspective of fast food industry and specifically on McDonald at Balham in London?

This research assignment report will focus on selected topic customers’ satisfaction in perspective of fast food industry and specifically on McDonald. Customer satisfaction is essential and more important in hospitality sectors. Most of researchers have researched   that supported and justified the importance and levels of focus of each organization in perspective of customers’ satisfaction through cater range of products and services. The research project is discussed on importance of customer’s satisfaction and their overall impact on McDonald.

Through literature review the research assignment will reflect how customer satisfaction is important factor exists and potential scenario to create customer loyalty, business continuity and sustainability with respect to fast food industry. Literature review present information based on available data in secondary sources that involves past research articles, journals and web based reliable and authenticate sites that discussed and justified importance and role of customers’ satisfaction in existing competitive business environment. The research majorly focus on different practice that are using by McDonald in perspective of catering products and services and level of satisfaction involves in overall process in existing scenario. The literature review also present and discuss some models that reflect importance of service models in perspective of measure degree of services and satisfaction. (Anderson, 2009)

Background of the Study

This research assignment report will contain in-depth, descriptive and analytical information on McDonald who is operating its business at Balham in London. The research report will focus on one of common and most important factor customers’ satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is one of the critical issue that face by most of the fast food businesses. The research assignment report will reflect detail research information on identified important factor that is “Customer satisfaction” in McDonald. This research report will present existing practices, strategies and processes that McDonald is using to maintain their customer’s satisfaction and discuss how effectively McDonald is managing customer’s satisfaction.

Proposal for a research project

Customer satisfaction is the major and important parameter in any organization. With respect to high competition, the business needs to focus on an availability of the business. The company is facing issues with CRM strategies and there is a need to manage and maintain the customer loyalty with respect to customer satisfaction. It could be important with respect to proper implementation as well as training of CRM in McDonald’s. This will help the company to increase the sales and business with respect to company’s image. (Wetsch, 2008)

The major area of research is the strategic issue developed by the organization that has been conducted in McDonald’s, Balham London. The participants belong to different departments in the company such as human resources, quality department as well as customer services. (Carey, 2012)

The present situation of the company is to increase is that the consumers has decreased their spending habits and McDonald’s has done well to overcome the issues and followed major steps of marketing strategies to increase the sales and profits. The company followed the higher level of services to meet the customer complaints and they focused on handling the situation with respect to customer complaints.

Introduction and Background

Research questions

1. To implement the effective CRM strategy in McDonald’s Balham, London?
2. To develop the customer loyalty with effective approaches of CRM?
3. The major advantages of strong customer services in hospitality industry?
4. On-the-job training will help to implement the customer relations management?

Continuous changes and changing requirements of customers in hospitality sector is important. It is essential for McDonald’s, Balham to deal with customer satisfaction, safety and enjoyment of customers. The strategies of decision making are important for business and it also helps to improve the process successfully. Thus, it is vital to deal with the issues with respect to customer satisfaction and the quality of the products.

According to the case of McDonald’s, Balham, the company is facing huge issues with respect to customer satisfaction. There is a need to deal with those challenges and McDonald is required to achieve high level of customer satisfaction. The company will offer on the job training to meet with success and also it will create a huge difference in the organization. (Rigby, 2013)

Research questions were discussed to deal with the quick and easy approaches in terms of maintaining the strong customer relationships and this is important for customer satisfaction.

The major purpose of the research proposal is to deal with the strategic challenge that leads to customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is the essential parameter for maintaining customer relations and it will help in identifying and improving the different factors that can limit the customer satisfaction to meet the major criteria’s such as quality, commitment, satisfaction and improvements. (Read, 2009)

Secondary research includes relevant information from different reliable sources. It is based on the sources of direct communication and face to face interaction that helps to meet the observational techniques. This is vital for the researcher to communicate with the respondents and it helps the researcher to fill the questionnaires and to provide the complete information on the same. Secondary data is a great source for internet that helps in using the internet to develop the major area. This method also helps to collect the information and it saves time and offers database in a long range. (Nimer & Som, 2012)

Thus, the comprehensive section of literature review deals with the steps for research questionnaires and analysis. This will also help to meet the strategy and it will determine the potential advantages to meet the information for major goals.

Literature review

McDonald’s is the world’s largest food service retailer with more than 3000 restaurants in 119 countries. The company operates for increasing loyalty and CRM helps to develop the customer loyalty and increase its effectiveness in organization. (Forwardanalytics, 2006)

Customer depends on the skills and abilities that can provide strong customer relationship with their relationship. CRM implementation helps to develop the loyal and potential customers to invest on quality and money. CRM helps to enable the technology and McDonald’s; Balham can track the customer satisfaction by creating a strong relationship with the customer. CRM is not only the application of technology but it is vital to meet the needs of the customers. Effective CRM helps in McDonald’s help to identify the strong association. There are opportunities with respect to major sources such as direct marketing and online sales that are vital to achieve the goals and objectives. (Ialongo, 2001)

Formulate research project outline specifications

Customer relationship management helps to deal with the major insight of the business. This helps to understand the improvement of customer relations. McDonald’s, Balham can try to implement effective customer relationship management to improve the customer experiences.

With the effective CRM, loyalty increases. CRM software is important to increase the loyalty in variety of ways. It also increases loyalty and this creates synergy among the process of business. It easily tracks the level of retention of the customer and also employee retention plays an important role in CRM. Loyal customers are the valuable parameters to offer sales at retention cost. It offers support and cooperation for easy and fast response to deal with the CRM closely.

McDonald can try to deal with customer loyalty and it can increase the business functions and customer loyalty. With the help of CRM, McDonald’s, Balham can create safety to improve the quality of the products. CRM is important to develop the quality of the products. (Doyle, 2011)

Customer service determines the requirements and expectations of customers. Customer service is the major tool in the organization as it helps in effective customer loyalty. Service quality helps to deal with tangibility, assurance, reliability, empathy and responsiveness.

The model of Servqual develops high accuracy and quality in the customer’s mind and it helps to offer strong parameters of service quality. Excellent customer service helps in evaluating the service quality and meeting the customer’s expectations to measure the customer relations. This deals with high quality. With the help of effective customer service, business can develop strong outcomes. With the development of strong morale, it can create the pleasant work atmosphere.

Excellent customer service is highly important for the hospitality industry and it places the business in the forefront of the customers. McDonalds’ Balham can increase the tool to enhance the referrals with the enhancement of customer expectations. (Bowen, 2006)

With the help of on the job training, McDonald’s Balham, London can increase the loyalty of customers in multiple ways. With the on-the-job training, the customer complaints will be handled successfully.

Literature helps to develop the research problem and question with respect to the research study. It deals with the clear identification of literature towards research question. This involves scholars, journals, books, other sources. It also contains news papers, other secondary sources etc.

The research based on the descriptive study helps to identify the customer satisfaction and it will involve close ended as well as multiple type selections. It also measures the data and feedbacks with respect to the attitude of the employees. Thus, research is vital to measure the rate of satisfaction. It is important to collect the data and it identifies the information to reach the effective outcomes. This contains strong outcomes to meet the research. (Bryman, 2004)

Primary research identifies the information associated with the particular topic. Secondary research contains data from multiple sources and it is vital to know the real image in the minds of the researcher. This research will focus on questionnaires and surveys to conduct the research properly and the secondary data includes major sources of internet that helps to save time and offer a huge database in a long range.

Factors that contribute to the process of research project selection

Secondary data is the major source of internet and it uses main idea of secondary step. This contains literature review, case study and research that offer clear understanding of secondary information. (Bae, 2012)

Aim and objective of research

Aim of this research is to analyze current level of satisfaction in McDonald.

> Explore different theories and practical process to enhance customers’ satisfaction in fast food industry and specifically in McDonald.

> Discuss and rate key factors that impact customers’ satisfaction in fast food industry, hospitality sector and McDonald.

> Conduct research to support and justify relevance and importance of customers’ satisfaction in McDonald

The major data collection technique is to collect the information from the respondents as it offers clear idea on the knowledge and expertise. This could be achieving on the basis of direct communication and face to face interaction. It is very important to communicate directly with the respondents and the research helps with the chosen methodology called as surveys as well as questionnaires to communicate with the participants. (Joseph, 2014)

The sample respondents of 20 senior managers were taken to deal the suitability and convenience. The participants were grouped from 30-50 years of age and they were asked to fill the questionnaires. They were able to know the views and experiences of the strategic issues in McDonald’s Balham, London.

H0: CRM is vital for McDonald’s, Balham London to create high loyalty and to make them satisfied. This develops positive perception to improve on the products as well as service’s quality which is vital for McDonald’s, Balham, London.

H1: CRM is vital for McDonald’s, Balham London to create high loyalty and to make them satisfied. This develops positive perception to improve on the products as well as service’s quality which is not vital for McDonald’s, Balham, and London.

The research is proving null hypothesis

H0: The researcher has chosen H0 as null hypothesis.

H1: The researcher has taken H1 as hypothesis.

Null hypothesis: Not critical = H1

(Methodsofdiscovery.net. 2014)

With the help of the above graph, the research discussed importance of effective CRM in McDonald’s Balham, London to deal with the strategic issues and to resolve customer complaints with respect to the research and necessary implementations. Thus it is necessary to focus on implementing effective CRM strategies according to the respondent views and experiences. (Methodsofdiscovery.net, 2014)

There were issues with the number of respondents due to less time and lack of financial resources. The challenges with the research works are as follows:

Limited number of sample size is the major challenge during the interview and questionnaires as well as surveys.

With the insufficiency of the interviews and surveys, it was complex to gather the most relevant information from McDonald on customer satisfaction.

The issues of ethics were another limitation for its research. The issue of privacy, confidentiality and other issues were the major challenge in the research.

Action plan and target dates

Research completion timeframe

(Prasongsukarn, 2014)

In the above in Gantt chart reflect the timeline to complete the research activities in different phases according to involve list of activities in each phase. To understand the importance of customer’s satisfaction in fast food industry and in McDonald this research will drive in following ways: The major activity will be survey and data gathering during survey that will provide real scenario, facts and figures for McDonald. Direct interaction with customers will help in terms of rate the level of satisfaction based on identified factors and parameters in questionnaires that are may be affecting customer’s practices and processes. Data collection for research is completely based on two techniques that involves primary data collection techniques that have direct interaction with customers who are coming McDonald and share their view through structured questionnaires and another methodology is secondary source that reflect past research result.

Conclusion

To conclude, researcher is able to collect information on internal business practices, processes and strategies of McDonalds in terms of catering their products and services and how these all strategies impacting the level of satisfaction among customers. The analysis of internal communication process, management, response time and customers’ feedback reflect McDonalds’ position in existing scenario along with customer’s preferences. Continuous observation, interaction and internal auditing will help to monitor overall research work and help to generate more appropriate and accurate data for research. (Media.com, 2004)

References

Anderson, T. 2010. Improving customer loyalty through a regular customer program: Final thesis report. Retrieved from < https://publications.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/16386/Savolainen_Teemu.pdf?sequence=2>

Bae, H. 2012. Three essays on the customer satisfaction customer loyalty association: Iowa research online. University of Iowa. Retrieved from < https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3256&context=etd>

Bowen, D. 2006. Managing customers as human resources in service organizations: Human resource management. Vol. 25. No. 3, pp. 371-383.

Bryman, A. 2004. Social research methods. 2^nd ed. Oxford University.

Carey, J. 2014. An investigation into the extent to which guest knowledge and familiarity of the Marriott brand differs from their experiences in a London hotel, pp. 38

Doyle, C. 2011. Finding and using information: Literature searching. University of West London.

Forwardanalytics. 2006. Benefits of customer satisfaction and loyalty programs: Forward analytics.

Gustavsson, S. 2005. Customer loyalty: Bachelor’s thesis, pp. 52.

Ialongo, D. 2001. Building customer loyalty: Destination CRM.com

Infoentrepreneurs. 2009. Customer relationship management: Info entrepreneurs. Retrieved from < https://www.infoentrepreneurs.org/en/guides/customer-relationship-management/>

Joseph, C. 2014. What are the benefits of delivering excellent customer service: Small business.

Marketingdonut. 2014. Using CRM effectively and building customer relationships: The marketing donut. Resources for your business.

Media.com. 2004. Apply the power of CRM to build customer loyalty: Chapter 8. No. 8, pp. 123.

Methodsofdiscovery.net. 2014. Chapter 4: Finding and evaluating research sources.

Nimer, A. & Som, A. 2012. Service quality management in hotel industry: A conceptual framework for food and beverage departments. Vol. 7. No. 14, pp. 33-81.

Northwestbusiensslife.co.uk. 2013. The importance of customer service in the hospitality industry: North west business life.

Prasongsukarn, K. 2014. Customer relationship management from theory to practice: Implementation steps.

Read, B. 2009. Top tips to build and keep customer loyalty with CRM: Customer interaction solutions.

Rigby, D. 2013. Winning customer loyalty is the key to a winning CRM strategy: Ivey business journal.

Songer, D., Molenaar, K. & Robinson, G. 2007. Selection factors and success criteria for design build in the U.S. and U.K: University of Colorado. Retrieved from < https://www.colorado.edu/engineering/civil/Design-Build/papers/usuk/>

Wetsch, R. 2008. Trust satisfaction and loyalty in customer relationship management: Journal of relationship marketing. Vol. 4. No. 4, pp. 29-42.

Please rate the level of ‘Importance’ effective CRM:-