Assignment guidelines
The module is assessed through a 2,000-word assignment.
Submission process: To be advised by the School of Management.
Assignment question (2000 words):
Anita’s Kitchen Restaurant Customer Survey
Anita’s kitchen restaurant was first established in Birmingham, UK in 2005. The restaurant serves foods of different ethnic origins, in particular Indian, Thai, Chinese and Italian foods. It is well located on Broad Street, the most popular street for dining, drinking and entertainment. Customer traffic is high but competition is intense.
The restaurant concept is based on the provision of a wide array of popular ethnic foods, cooked in an open kitchen so customers can see and smell their food as it is made. Customers can eat as much as they like at a fixed price. The interior emphasises the food’s exotic heritage by displaying maps, pictures and ingredients from the countries of origin throughout the setting. It aims to offer a fun, festive atmosphere. It is brightly lit and bustling with activity. Fast and friendly service is also part of the restaurant’s appeal. The target customers are mainly young professionals, university students and families looking for an enjoyable meal at affordable prices.
Many new restaurants have opened and aware that competition is intensifying Anita is constantly looking to evaluate and improve her restaurant’s offering to the customer. She needs information in order to better understand what aspects of the restaurant drive customer satisfaction and where it can be improved. She has outlined a few questions to be researched:
Are customers satisfied or not, and if not why not?
Are there problems with the food, the atmosphere, or some other aspect of restaurant offering (e.g. employees or service?).
What are the common characteristics of satisfied customers?
Is the target market correctly defined or does it need to focus on a different niche?
Are there sub-groups of customers that are more committed (loyal) to Anita’s Kitchen
Restaurant? And if so who are they?
Answering these, and other similar questions, will help Anita to focus the restaurants marketing efforts, and be in a clearer position to consider expanding the restaurant concept from the UK to other cities in Europe. In developing a five year plan Anita is considering opening two additional locations in the UK based on the success of the Birmingham location. She has identified Manchester and Edinburgh.
Anita has recruited a local marketing research company to conduct a questionnaire survey on customers. Anita’s Kitchen Restaurant customers who dine out in any restaurant once a week or more and who live in Birmingham are the population for the study. The sample was a convenience sample. Questionnaires were given to one member of a dining party. Questionnaires were collected each day over a 14 day period. In total 427 questionnaires were completed and the data have been collected and put into an SPSS data matrix.
The questionnaire used to collect the data, and final data set (anita.sav) is available on blackboard. Data has been collected on demographics including gender, number of children in the household, age, annual household income; there are eleven questions that capture customer perceptions of
Anita’s restaurant; eleven questions to capture consumer lifestyles; four relationship/loyalty questions (although one question #25 is only a basic question); four questions on factors important to restaurant choice; behavioural questions related to dining at Anita’s including distanced travelled and frequency of visits.
You are required analyse the survey data and to write a 2,000 word research report for Anita. This is not an essay and should be in report format. Your report should include:
An executive summary
Overview of the study background and research design
The main findings reported from you analysis of the data set anita.sav and your conclusions.
A ‘Limitations and proposals for future research’ should also be included. In this section you should:
o Identify any weaknesses in the survey that Anita needs to be aware of.
o Identify to your client any possible weakness in research design and analysis which
a)might suggest caution in reading the results and b) where you would suggest changes in the research design (questionnaire, sampling, analysis plan) in future
research.
oBe careful to write this section appropriately for the client – i.e. as ways to improve the survey for a future study but without completely discrediting the current research.
The report should have an appendix where additional information and research resources are collated. The appendix is not included in the word limit.
General assignment advice:
1.It is really important to remember that this is a report for a client and needs to be written in an appropriate style.
2.Use headings and sub-headings. Statistical results need to be reported in an appropriate format for the audience. Remember Anita is not a statistics specialist. You should write out the findings in appropriate and clear language, provide statistical information in brackets and use graphics such as charts to illustrate key findings. You should not just cut and paste SPSS output into the main body of your report.
3.Remember that not all of the data, even if it happens to be statistically significant, needs to be reported. Good reports are based on an analysis plan which is directed by the research questions.
4.The section of the report titled ‘Limitations and proposals for future research’ should also be written in report format. However, here it is appropriate to reference/cite books or journal articles to provide support for your observations and recommendations.
5.The report will be marked as a whole document. There is not a set amount of marks awarded for each section of the report. You are being assessed on your ability to undertake, report and reflect on quantitative data analysis for Anita’s Kitchen restaurant. This is an
applied and commercial piece of research. The section ‘Limitations and proposals for future research’ should not dominate your report.
6.Please make sure you are familiar with School of Management policies on plagiarism and poor scholarship. All assignments are checked for plagiarism and poor scholarship. Do not cut and paste from websites, or include extracts from any source without full and proper citation in line with the Harvard Referencing System.
7.Stick to the word limit. The word limit does not include references or direct quotes or the content of tables. However, please use tables and graphics carefully as you will be assessed on how you combine graphics and texts in communicating to the client.
