Background

Discuss about the Research Proposal Customer Satisfaction for McDonald.

McDonald’s is a reputed American fast food chain that is headquartered in California United States of America. Currently the business of McDonald’s is spread in more than 35000 locations in different parts of the world and the company is currently world’s second largest private employer after Wal-Mart as more than 1.5 million individuals work for McDonald’s. McDonald’s is an American fast food company that was founded in the year, 1940 as a restaurant operated by Richard and Maurice McDonald in San Bernardino California, United States(“McDonald’s Menu & Info | McDonald’s UK”, 2018). It has many branches in all the parts of the country. It does business in the global world. McDonald’s is the world’s second largest private employer having more than 1.5 million franchisees. It was started by the siblings named, Richard and Maurice in the year 1940. It was different from the McDonald that is recognized now. It was developed into a speedy business with the gradual progress. It was known that the original mascot of McDonald was a chef with a hat on the top of hamburger who was referred to as ‘Speedee’ (Agnihotri et al., 2016). At present it is found to run successfully in all the countries. The company owns a rental payment from their franchisee that adds to the revenue of the company. However the company had to face some serious issues regarding the customer satisfaction that has been dealt in the report.

The company is facing few issues regarding the customer satisfaction. There are three major issues that have been recognized in the organization. It is prevalent in the South Wales store in Australia.

• The quality of the food is the first and foremost issue that have been recognized in the organization. The customers were found to complain about the quality of the food. The quality of the bread and the chicken were not good that the company used (Dhar, 2015).
• The behaviour of the staffs with the customers was another recognized issue. While the customers visited the stores they were treated badly by the staffs. The customers were not entertained rather they were misbehaved like their quarries were answered rudely by the staffs. This occurred to be a serious issue of the company (Cook, 2017).
• The other problem was the inconvenience that the customers faced while they took food from the take away counters of the company. In case the customers found some kind of fault in the food, they called up in the store and the staffs made no efforts to resolve their confusion rather they misbehaved with the customers. This turned out to be a serious issue as it effected the sale of the company that affected their revenue. Therefore this was considered to be a problem that affected their position in the market (Kobayashi, 2018).

The problem is considered to be a significant problem as customers are the pillars of every organization. They are considered to be the most important part of an organization. It is extremely important to satisfy them. There are many competitors of the company in the market. If McDonald is unable to satisfy their customers and make them happy they will have to face the threat of losing their potential customers (Lee, Back & Chan, 2015). The customers have the choice to shift their choices and select some other organization in order to attain the product or service from the organization. Therefore in the contemporary world it is extremely important to make the customers happy to attain the competitive edge. (Goetsch& Davis, 2014)

Problem Statement

The aim and objective of the research is to understand the importance of the customer satisfaction in the organization. The objective of the research is to find out the ways in which the problems of customer dissatisfaction can be solved. This can be done through trainings that should be given to the staffs. The research aims at understanding the need of the trainings and the way it might help the staffs to resolve the issue of customer dissatisfaction.

R1. What is the need of customer satisfaction in an organization?

R2. What are the factors to develop the customer satisfaction in an organization?

R3. Can the training of the staffs lead to the development of the factor of customer satisfaction?

R4. What are the consequences of the customer dissatisfaction?

H0: The training and developmental programs are not effective to sustain customer satisfaction.

H1: The training and development programs are effective to sustain customer satisfaction.

In order to conduct the research the help of qualitative as well as the quantitative process has been taken into account. It is also known as the primary form of research as well as the secondary form of research. A survey has been conducted among the customers who were not satisfied with the company. The factor were analysed that was the reason of their dissatisfaction. A research was conducted on the employees who needed training. The secondary research included the research journals and books of the positive effects of training and the ways it was effective.

The Australian franchise of McDonald’s that is located in New South Wales is facing some challenges regarding customer satisfaction which is significantly lowering the profitability of the company as well as the management of the organization is losing their reputation in that particular area due to the negative feedbacks received from the customers regarding the satisfaction. As the business is expanded in more than 100 countries across the world and serves more than 15 millions of people on a daily basis it is a problem for the management of McDonalds to satisfy the requirements of each and every customer but this is also important in order to sustain the profitability and the reputation of the organization in the market full of competition. 

To define customer satisfaction it can be said that it is a measure of how the services and the products offered by the business organizations can satisfy the Expectations of the target customers are to be precise it can be said that the number of the Client or the percentage of the total customer base was reported experience with a particular business organizations products and services exceeds the satisfaction bulls it can be said that the management has been successfully meeting the requirements of the target customer base.

Significance

In today’s world the market has become full of rivalries and competition and therefore it is important to satisfy the demands and the requirements of the customer base in order to keep them loyal towards the organization to ensure profitability in the most adverse situations. In today’s world maintaining customer satisfaction can provide an indicator of the Purchase intentions and the loyalty of the consumers and it can also be said that customer satisfaction is one of the most vital aspects of ensuring the profitability of the organization as satisfied customer base can maximize the profitability of a business organization (Hwang & Suh, 2017).

The target customers of McDonalds which is located in New South Wales not providing positive feedback in the feedback forms as the quality of the foods that they were purchasing from that particular franchised was not up to the mark in terms of quality and if there are evidences of people getting sick after consuming the products sold by this particular franchise of McDonald’s (Hill & Alexander, 2017). Not only that the behavior of the staffs of this particular franchise has not been satisfactory and that has effectively caused a disruption among the target customer base of the company. It has been seen that as a company operates in hospitality business sector exhibiting friendly approach towards the customer is an integral aspect that determines the success of the company and when the staffs of the company is failing to provide the satisfaction to the customers by not exhibiting friendly and cooperative behavior towards them it can potentially reduce the reputation of the brand that can affect the profitability of the company. Currently the management of McDonald’s is facing major challenges in the international market of operations due to strong competitors like KFC Burger King Subway and many other business organizations which are expanding in a significant rate and causing serious challenges by acquiring a fair share of the market of operation (Ennew, Binks & Chiplin, 2015). 

According to Harrington, Ottenbacher & Fauser, (2017), the idea of service gives a comprehensive account of the requirements of the customer base and how the management of the organization will be able to deliver those particular services. It can be said that the study of satisfaction of the customers in the area of general marketing has developed into a major parameter that needs to be found out and comprehended in order to satisfy the requirements of the customers of the chosen company. It is a matter of fact that the success of a particular business organization is significantly associated with the level of customer satisfaction as without satisfying the requirements of the customers business organization would not be able to build a reputation in the operational market and to ensure profitability and developing salability of a business corporation sustaining customer satisfaction is an integral part. Therefore the management of the franchise of McDonald’s should stress on developing the professional skills of the front desk employees by introducing new models training and development programmers for them and the new joiners of the company so that the organizational performance gets enhanced as that is a contributing factor to the satisfaction of the customers (Keiningham et al., 2014). It has also been observed that as the customer service of the company is not up to the mark: as when the customers of the business organization raise voice against the issues caused harm to them by the employees of McDonald’s the customer service executives did not respond in a way that could have satisfied the demands of those customers and this has significantly affected the reputation of the business organization in the market of New South Wales which is concerning.

Aim and Objective

Therefore, as stated by Blut et al., (2015), it can be said that the importance of sustaining customer satisfaction cannot be denied as it plays a vital role in determining the success of a business organization. It is a matter of fact that the satisfaction level of the customers indicates the quality of the organizational performance and when the management is failing to do so; clearly it can be said that there are numerous areas of improvements for the management of the business organization and by effectively implementing numerous training and developmental programs for the existing employees, the management of the business organization will be able to fight these challenges that are affecting the salability as well as the reputation of the business organization.  

This chapter will throw light on the tools utilized by the researcher to conduct the entire research in an appropriate manner. The positivism philosophy, mixed research design, deductive approach and explanatory research type has been utilized by the researcher in order to conduct the research. Moreover, the secondary data collection method has been utilized by the researcher in order to collect relevant information from books, journals and company’s official website available regarding the topic of research. In addition to this, primary data collection method of surveying the target customers of McDonalds has been done in order to gain direct feedback from the individuals of New South Wales.

Relevant data and information has been collected from authentic sources in order to relate it with the research topic. According to Hughes & Sharrock (2016), there are three types of research philosophies, which are interpretivism, realism and positivism. The interpretivism philosophy of the research method allows the researchers to use available information that are constructed in the social manner. On the other hand, positivism philosophy allows the researchers to gather information, which are based on facts and can be easily related to the research topic in an appropriate manner (Bryman, 2015). In addition to this, the realism philosophy helps the researcher to combine all the above philosophies and present the relevant data in a socially constructer manner (Saunders et al., 2015).

The research procedure is totally based upon the post-positivism philosophy as it has allowed the researcher to gather relevant information regarding the topic. However, survey method has been carried out by the researcher, which has also influenced the research quality and thus, affecting the overall research. The post-positivism research method helps the researcher in recognizing that all gathered observation can change over time and therefore, this particular method has been utilized by the researcher in order to present a clear picture.

Research Questions

Research approach will allow the research in gathering knowledge regarding the research topic in a proper manner. However, there are two types of research approaches as per Sekaran & Bougie (2016), one is the inductive approach and the other one is the deductive approach. The deductive research approach helps the researcher to study the overall research procedure with relevant models as well as theories, which are already being established by the scholars. On the contrary, the inductive research approach allows the researcher in using the theories and models which are being formed newly (Marczyk, DeMatteo & Festinger, 2017).

The researcher has utilized the deductive research approach as it assisted in collecting the relevant theories as well as models available over authentic sources. Moreover, it has been chosen as the researcher was able to reduce the research time and conduct it successfully, within the limited budget available.

According to Creswell & Creswell (2017), a research design helps the researcher in undertaking the research design for completing the overall procedure in a successful manner. There are generally three different types of research design namely, primary, secondary and mixed method design. The primary research design allows the researcher to conduct the overall research by undertaking survey methods, interviewing others and focus groups. The secondary research design enables the researcher in conducting the overall study by getting assistance from the secondary sources available such as magazines, journal articles, newspapers, websites and relevant authentic articles. On the other hand, the mixed method of research design can be defined as the mixture of both the primary as well as secondary design research type (Lewis, 2015).

In this particular research of customer satisfaction at McDonalds, the researcher has selected the mixed research design type in order to gather both primary and secondary information. In the mixed research type, the researcher is allowed to collect both primary information and secondary information from the authentic sources. The primary data has been gathered by the researcher through conducting a customer feedback survey and the secondary data is being collected through company’s official website and balance sheet. Both the research type has given authentic information to the researcher, which established the study in an appropriate manner. The company’s balance sheet has given the information regarding customer satisfaction and how it can affect the company’s sales. In addition to this, surveying the customers has given the researcher in gaining valuable feedback regarding the conceptualization.

The research has been established by conducting a survey and gathering responses from 50 customers of McDonalds, situated at New South Wales.

Hypothesis

The primary data collected, allowed the researcher in establishing the study in a quantitative manner, taking the customers’ feedback or responses into consideration. On the other hand, the secondary data has enabled the researcher to conduct a literature review in an appropriate manner, by taking the existing literature or information into consideration. After gathering the information from all the relevant sources, it has been found that the customers are highly dissatisfied with McDonalds’ services at New South Wales. From the analysis, it is evident that the customers are facing sever issues related to the quality of food and behavior of the employees (Blut et al., 2015). In addition to this, when the customers are giving their valuable feedback to the company’s official personnel, it is not being taken seriously. Therefore, these are the major issues faced the company and are leading to customer dissatisfaction.

How do you know McDonalds?

1. Family
2. Advertisements
3. Friends 

Answers	responses	No of respondents	Percentage
Family	10	50	20%
Advertisements	20	50	40%
Friends	20	50	40%

Therefore it can be seen that 40% of the customers got to know about the restaurant chain from their friends, 40% of the customers got information about the company from advertisements and 20% got the information from their family members.

Are you satisfied with their food presentation and services?

1. Very Satisfied
2. Satisfied
3. Not Satisfied
4. Not at all Satisfied

Answers	responses	No of respondents	Percentage
Very satisfied	10	50	20%
Satisfied	20	50	40%
Not satisfied	10	50	20%
Not at all satisfied	10	50	20%

Therefore, from the graph it can be said that 60% of the customers of the company are somewhat satisfied with their experience but 40% of the customers are not at all satisfied with the food they received.

The researcher has followed all the rules and regulations as per Data Protection Act, 2009 for conducting the research in an appropriate manner (Roberts, 2015). The responses were gathered and published after getting the consent from all customers and the researcher has not influenced any respondent.

Attributes	1st-2nd week	3rd-5th week	6th-8th week	9th-10th week
Literature Review
Research Methodology
Sampling and Data Collection
Data Analysis

(Figure: Gantt chart

Source: Created by Author)

Literature review	1st-2nd week
Research methodology	3rd-5th week
Sampling and data collection	6th-8th week
Data analysis	9th-10th week

Literature review	50 Australian $
Sampling and data collection	100 Australian $
Data analysis	50 A$

References

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Blut, M., Frennea, C. M., Mittal, V., & Mothersbaugh, D. L. (2015). How procedural, financial and relational switching costs affect customer satisfaction, repurchase intentions, and repurchase behavior: A meta-analysis. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 32(2), 226-229.

Bryman, A. (2015). Social research methods. Oxford university press.

Cook, S. (2017). Measuring customer service effectiveness. Routledge.

Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2017). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications.

Dhar, R. L. (2015). Service quality and the training of employees: The mediating role of organizational commitment. Tourism Management, 46, 419-430.

Ennew, C. T., Binks, M. R., & Chiplin, B. (2015). Customer satisfaction and customer retention: An examination of small businesses and their banks in the UK. In Proceedings of the 1994 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 188-192). Springer, Cham.

Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2014). Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson.

Harrington, R. J., Ottenbacher, M. C., & Fauser, S. (2017). QSR brand value: Marketing mix dimensions among McDonald’s, KFC, Burger King, Subway and Starbucks. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 29(1), 551-570.

Hill, N., & Alexander, J. (2017). The handbook of customer satisfaction and loyalty measurement. Routledge.

Hill, N., & Brierley, J. (2017). How to measure customer satisfaction. Routledge.

Hughes, J. A., & Sharrock, W. W. (2016). The philosophy of social research. Routledge.

Hwang, S., & Suh, E. K. (2017). An Empirical Study on the Nonlinear Relationship between Product Modularity Strategy and Customer Satisfaction. ??????? ???? ???, 325-328.

Keiningham, T., Gupta, S., Aksoy, L., & Buoye, A. (2014). The high price of customer satisfaction. MIT Sloan Management Review, 55(3), 37.

Kobayashi, I. (2018). 20 Keys to workplace improvement. Routledge.

Lee, J. S., Back, K. J., & Chan, E. S. (2015). Quality of work life and job satisfaction among frontline hotel employees: A self-determination and need satisfaction theory approach. International journal of contemporary hospitality management, 27(5), 768-789.

Lewis, S. (2015). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Health promotion practice, 16(4), 473-475.

Marczyk, G., DeMatteo, D., & Festinger, D. (2017). Essentials of research design and methodology. John Wiley.

McDonald’s Menu & Info | McDonald’s UK. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.mcdonalds.com

Roberts, L. D. (2015). Ethical issues in conducting qualitative research in online communities. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 12(3), 314-325.

Saunders, M. N., Lewis, P., Thornhill, A., & Bristow, A. (2015). Understanding research philosophy and approaches to theory development.

Sekaran, U., & Bougie, R. (2016). Research methods for business: A skill building approach. John Wiley & Sons.

Sengupta, A. S., Balaji, M. S., & Krishnan, B. C. (2015). How customers cope with service failure? A study of brand reputation and customer satisfaction. Journal of Business Research, 68(3), 665-674.