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Research Title: Investigating Expectations of customers and Service Perceptions for New Coffee Bar in Adelaide
Research Questions
The current research is aimed to answer the following research questions:
- What will be the customers’ expectations regarding delivery of services in Adelaide coffee bar?
- How perceptions regarding services in Adelaide coffee bar can be assessed?
- How understanding of customers’ expectations and service perceptions will contribute to success of Adelaide coffee bar?
Literature Review
The current section is aimed at reviewing the research in terms of customer expectations and quality of service in the area of restaurants and coffee shops. It is highly important for a new business to consider the aspects of customer’s expectations in terms of service quality and customer satisfaction with the purpose of generating significant success from new business. It has been highlighted by the Grundey (2010) that before pursuing new set of ideas and introducing new services it is important to understand the concerns of customers. The business which recognizes expectations of customers in effective manner are more likely to transfer this understanding into the success of their business.
1.1 Customer’s Expectation and Services Perceptions
The customers expect in time delivery of services in return of the premium they pay against services. It has been evinced by the research of Bojanic & Rosen (1994) that customer who needs to await for the services are mainly termed as the lost customer. The justification of this argument lies in the notion that when customers are put in the situation where they need to wait longer for the delivery of services are more likely to find their business elsewhere (Brady & Cronin, 2001). The coffee shops and small restaurants need to have strong base of customers with an aim of surviving in highly competitive market. The effective delivery of services can help in maintaining the substantial customer base. It is important to note by the practitioners that expectations of customer regarding service delivery is noteworthy for offering strong competitive advantage to service businesses (Lowe, 2013). The services are mainly of intangible nature and understanding of customer’s perceptions can play vital role in managing the expectations of customers regarding service quality and delivery.
It has been mentioned by the Caruana (2002) that nature of services is different in terms of intangibility, perishability and heterogeneity that offers higher level of applicability of quality concerns for service providers. It has been argued by Cronin, Brady & Hult (2000) that when customers are offered discretion in terms of self-service then the acceptance of customers can be enhanced. The reason for greater acceptance lies in the fact that self service allows customization, greater level of convenience and increases level of speed in the delivery of service (Sureshchandar, Rajendran & Kamalanabhan, 2001). Therefore the increased customer satisfaction can be obtained and service providers may gain competitive edge in long run.
Along with this, it is note able that due to intangible nature of services there is little evidence to suggest satisfaction of customers. However, the repeated customers are likely to serve as the evidence of business competence. Likewise, the measurement of customers perceptions in service business are hard to trace by the practitioners, due to unavailability of any tangible tool. However, it has been highlighted by the Wall, & Berry (2007) that availability of high quality service can be ensured by combining individual operators, marketing strategy, human resources and other perspectives of management for a specific restaurant of coffee shop. Likewise, the Analytical Hierarchy Process for service quality (AHP-SQ) can assist in measuring the quality of services and it can also help in measuring the improvement in service quality (Kueh & Ho Voon, 2007). There are five core dimensions or AHP-SQ including; tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. The AHP-SQ framework is highly effective for measuring the quality of services and it can also guide the decision making of service providers (Helms & Mayo, 2008). The in depth investigation on AHP-SQ dimensions’ can be of huge importance in recognizing that whether the services re accomplishing customers concerns or not. Therefore, the coffee shops can rely on realizing the higher level of all service dimensions with an aim of meeting the expectations of customers regarding service perceptions.
1.2 Three factor Framework of Customer’s Quality Expectation
The intangibility of the services make it difficult to identify the expectations of customers in terms of quality. However, the research has provided three factors framework for identifying the quality expectations of customers in service business, which can be a coffee shop (Monirul & Han, 2012). The three factors include the following; search qualities, experience qualities and credence qualities.
Search Qualities: Search qualities pertain to the experience of customer prior to taking any service or purchasing a product (Kueh & Ho Voon, 2007). In case of coffee bar the search qualities can refer to smell of the coffee and other eatable being offered at the bar. It has been mentioned by the researchers that expectations of customers regarding usage of service are solely subjective and they depend on needs of customers which they want to accomplish through utilization of services (Lowe, 2013). The service organizations that want to satisfy the needs of customers may face difficulty to deliver services in compliance with the customers’ expectations (Helms & Mayo, 2008). For opening a new coffee shops nearby at Adelaide it is highly important to investigate the search qualities with the purpose of recognizing desires and needs of target customers.
Experience qualities: The experience qualities refer to the experience of consumers after tasting or experiencing the service. It has been asserted by Sureshchandar, Rajendran & Kamalanabhan (2001) that service organizations need to focus on experiential services, which focuses on enhancing the experience level of consumers rather than just functional benefit of the service. The experiential services help to create strong connection with the customers. It is evident that every touch point between the organization and the customer can create experience (Snipes, Oswald, LaTour & Armenakis, 2005). In case of current research, the researcher cannot evaluate the experience qualities prior to establishment of coffee bar in Adelaide. However, the efforts can be maintained for designing services in the way that can enhance experience of customers and can strengthen the bond of customers with coffee bar.
Credence Qualities: The credence qualities termed as the extent to which customers are not able to evaluate the aspects before consumption of the service (Wall & Berry, 2007). It is important to note that customers cannot judge the taste of food or drink prior to tasting it, therefore, the menu should have necessary description of food items. It is basically the expectation of customers during the service experience and also refers to the pre purchase evaluation of the customers (Sweeney, Johnson & Armstrong, 1992). Therefore, the efforts are needed by the service organizations to increase the level of credence quality by offering necessary level of prior purchasing experience to the consumers. The coffee shop that is aimed to open in the city of Adelaide, needs to consider the aspects of credence qualities into account while focusing on design of services.
The notion of customer expectations and service perceptions provides that essence of service business lies in the satisfaction of customers. The desire to open new coffee bar in city of Adelaide can be realized by relying on ways that can help to gain higher level of customers’ satisfaction. Therefore, it is important to design the services in the way that can not only enhance the experience of customers but enhance their loyalty for making them a repeated customers. The evidences from literature can be of huge importance for underlying research project and it can shape the success factors of new coffee bar to be opened in Adelaide.
Research Methods
The selection of effective design of research is mainly important for appropriately answering the underlying research question. There are two research philosophies that can be relied by the researcher including positivist and interpretivist (Kumar & Phrommathed, 2005). The positivist philosophy relies on considering the researcher as a separate entity and lowers the involvement of researcher. The interpretivist philosophy focuses on multiple interpretation of the research issue. The current study will rely on interpretivist philosophy as it will allow the in depth investigation of and will offer the detailed insight regarding expectations of customers and perception of services for new coffee business in the city of Adelaide. In terms of research design, the researcher can rely on either quantitative or qualitative design. There are numerous benefits as well as drawbacks associated with both types of design (Kothari, 2004). The current research study will imply qualitative research method. The qualitative research design will provide an opportunity to investigate the research issue with greater depth (Neuman, 2002). The incorporation of qualitative design can be justified by the fact that Adeliade coffee bar has not opened yet and in order to establish ground for establishment of new coffee bar, the qualitative data will offer significant support. The current research is relying on a complex phenomenon that is aimed at investigating the market conditions for opening up new coffee business in terms of customers’ expectations and perceptions of services. Therefore, the qualitative data will help in gaining in depth investigation of the research issue (Marczyk, DeMatteo & Festinger, 2005).
Data Management
Data Collection:
The current research will rely on secondary sources of data. The secondary analysis refers to the reliance on already researched data for the purpose of answering the research questions. There are number of benefits associated with secondary data to which the most important advantage pertains to the minimum required resources including time and money (Newman & Benz, 1998). The secondary data is easy to access by the researchers and marketers through online access. Likewise, the secondary data has already been implied by other researchers and it is feasible to consider for answering the research question (Kumar & Phrommathed, 2005). The administrative and consensus data can help in gaining insight from larger population. Along with this, the background work that is needed for research has already been considered in secondary data such as literature review. Likewise, the published data and has already been considered as valid and it provide evidence of greater generalizability that does not demand for re-examination of validity while carrying out research.
The data will be acquired by conducting an extensive review of the literature on the underlying phenomenon with the purpose of gaining insight of the underlying research issue. The reliance on literature review is considered as an important method of data collection as it allows the researcher to extend study on the data that has gained consensus of numerous researchers (Bryman, 2006). The literature review is also important as the data has been tested and re tested and it can be considered as highly reliable and valid. Following by this, the literature as secondary source of data can be easily accessed by the researchers. In accumulation to literature review, the researcher will also rely on published reports of the organization, that is case of current research will be the reports of coffee shops. The published reports will offer significant insight on the focal research issue by providing extensive information of intricacies of coffee business. Following by this, the publicly available data will also be considered substantially in the current research that could be in the form of statistics, demographic or visual.
Data Analysis
The type of the data that will be implied in current research is qualitative. The qualitative data will be in the form of description of coffee business in terms of customer’s expectations and perceptions of customers about quality of services.
In order to carry out analysis of qualitative data, the reliance will be maintained on content analysis. The content analysis is considered as an effective method for analysing qualitative information as it may allow to view data in the form of patterns (Patton, 1990). The interpretation of content can help in gaining detailed view of the underlying research issue. The reliance on content analysis is reflected as an important perspective for understanding the patterns in data and for answering the research questions in appropriate manner (Strauss & Corbin, 1998).
2.2 Ethical Responsibilities
The research needs to consider aspects of ethicality with an aim of avoiding research issues. There are number of ethical aspects associated with the secondary data. One of the significant concern regarding ethicality of secondary data is the likely harm to the research subjects, which requires significant reliance on consent for gaining access to data (Kumar & Phrommathed, 2005). The review of ethical board prior to usage of secondary data depends largely on the amount of useable information in secondary data. The data with lower level of identifying information is less likely to be exposed to the ethical review board, while data containing codes is more likely to require information of board for interpretation of codes (Bryman, 2006). Likewise, the data that has substantial amount of identifying information is susceptible to be exposed in front of board with an aim of protecting linkage of information with participants. Followed by the fulfilment of board conditions regarding usage of secondary data, the researcher can request for consent weaver.
Along with this, the secondary data that is readily available for public on internet in the form of books and published reports of the organization, the ethical concern may requires acknowledgement of the original sources by the researcher (Attride-Stirling, 2001). In case, the current research uses information of the data that has already been collected by another research team, then written permission will be obtained by the owning entity of data. Likewise, after obtaining permission regarding usage of data, it is the ethical responsibility of the researcher to use data only for underlying research purpose along with protecting it from harm and damage by other entities (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Along with this, the research participants must be well aware of the usage of data and their consent in required every time when the data is used. Finally, in case of published reports of any organization, it is important to consider that results of study are not aimed at harming the image of that organization. Therefore, by being relying on secondary data, the current research will consider the mentioned ethical concerns into account and it will not violate ethical rules in any manner.
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