Service: Dissertation Writing
Number of pages: 44 pages (12100 words)
Topic of your paper: Influence of Marketing Strategy on Consumer Behavior Towards Selection of Fast Food Restaurants in Saudi Arabia
Subject: Marketing
NOW WE ARE WORKING ON 15 PAGES.
Also requires 20 questions questionnaire, data generation and analysis done with the help of SPSS.
Research Proposal (STRM044)
Prepared by: Saeed M. Hijjawi
ID: 14425386
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Table of Contents
Business Research Project Title …………………………………………………………………… 1
Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 1
Research Questions ………………………………………………………………………………….. 4
Literature Review …………………………………………………………………………………….. 5
Research Method ……………………………………………………………………………………… 7 Data Collection
………………………………………………………………………………………. 7 Data Analysis
…………………………………………………………………………………………. 8
Work Schedule ………………………………………………………………………………………… 9
References ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 10
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Business Research Project Title:
“Influence of Marketing Strategy on Consumer Behavior Towards Selection of Fast Food
Restaurants in Saudi Arabia.”
Introduction:
This research will be conducted in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as it is considered the largest food
and drink market in GCC, with 59 % share. (Figure 1)
Figure. 1: Food consumption growth in GCC
Saudi Arabia is the largest country in GCC in terms of area and population; the approximate size
of KSA is 2,240,000 sq. kilometers, moreover, as of January 2016, the population of Saudi
Arabia was estimated to be 32,248,100 people, and is expected to increase by 462,137 people
this year, however, 35 % of total populations are between 15-25 years’ old. (Figure. 2)
The country is experiencing a huge expanding in fast food sector; Saudi market has almost
reached USD 4 Billion in 2015 and expected to reach USD 6.9 Billion in 2017.
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The research will focus on this 35 % of the total population, since they are the people who
consume fast food the most in KSA.
Figure. 2: Saudi Arabia Population
The goal of this business research is to investigate the relation between marketing strategies
and consumer behavior and perception of the brand.
Finally, consumer behaviors in food decision making will be deeply investigated to see what
mostly affect the decision-making process and how it can be influenced.
Research Questions:
To support my research and to be able to get a clear idea about what am looking for, I will be
investigating the following issues:
How can marketing strategies influence consumer decision-making process? Can marketing affect the brand in a negative way? What usually attracts consumer to
newly established brands?
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How to meet customer’s expectation and preserve their loyalty? How health, price, convenience, and sensory appeal can influence consumer’s decision?
Literature review:
Nowadays, marketplace is very harsh and aggressive environment due to high level of
competition, rapidly changing customer needs, and short product life cycle. (Athanasopoulou,
Giovanis, and Avlonitis, 2015). This is the reason why all successful organizations resort to
marketing to distinguish their products from the ones their competitors have, and to introduce
new products to meet and even exceed customer needs.
Hence, marketing can be defined as “an organizational function and a set of processes for
creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer
relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders”. (Varadarajan,2010)
With regards to food industry; there are a huge variety of restaurants that consumer can
choose from, and these choices are increasing from day to day, however, according to studies
on consumer behavior; consumers make around 200 food decisions a day. (Sheibehenne,
Miesler, and Todd, 2007) and some more studies also state that consumer usually takes his final
food decision with less than a second.
Tran and Fabrize (2013) argued that customers have several ways to determine their choices
about a restaurant:
To go with the brand. Country of origin (COO) To decide based on the product itself. (product quality, value of money, etc.)
While Yong et. al (2012) discussed brand logo as an interesting aspect in which customers rely
on while selecting their restaurant, as brand logo inspire customers to believe the service or
product provided by this restaurant is trustworthy. Also, claimed that branding strategy can
positively influence consumer behavior.
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Moreover, packaging design can be considered as another important marketing tool to
influence customers, as packaging design contributes to increase product performance and
differentiate it from other competitors. (Bo, 2012)
It was argued by Phillips, and Hallman (2013) that food choices are very personal issue and have
a huge effect on health, therefore, it cannot be compared with other industries such as
technology, also, food requires a slight financial investment to change the purchasing behavior
than other industries.
Since food is related to health, requires low financial investment to change, and have a lot of
choices; food customers are considered one of the toughest customers to gain and preserve
their loyalty.
We can understand from the above that, developing a competitive marketing strategy is very
crucial to company’s success and survival.
Varadarajan (2010) has defined marketing strategy as a set of decisions that specify the
important choices of a company with regards to its products, markets, market resources, and
customers to ensure delivering the best value to customers, and eventually will help in
accomplishing organization’s goals and objectives.
Marketing strategy is a tool to communicate with the customer, a way to differentiate yourself
among other competitors, and a method to show what you have and create value for your
customer.
Organizations spend Millions every year to implement their marketing strategies just to
improve the brand performance and efficiency, on the other hand, it is very important to
measure the effectiveness of marketing strategy and brand performance; Ataman et. al (2010)
discussed several measures for brand equity, such as base sale, regular price elasticity, inertia
and feedback, however, inertia and feedback are considered very important measures to
calculate the returns from a specific marketing investment over long term. Moreover,
Athanasopoulou et. al (2015) claimed that a firm with a high brand equity will achieve a high
perception of the brand by customers, and it will have more loyal customers, more positive
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price elasticity, less complaint from the consumer about high prices and will certainly have
more brand extension possibilities.
Research Method:
“Theory is something that guides and influences the collection and analysis of data “(Bayman
and Bell, 2011, P.11), hence, the purpose of any research is to answer questions suggested by
theoretical considerations.
The aim of the research is to study the behavior in decision making process and brand
perception by customers. Moreover, several marketing strategies will be investigated and
discussed with specific restaurants owners and marketers to present the effectiveness of
marketing strategies.
Data Collection:
The quantitative and qualitative methods will be used to collect the data aiming to
answer research questions.
For the quantitative research method, the sample will be allocated based on non
probable convenience sampling due to the accessibility through universities, colleges,
and schools since, it is the most feasible way to reach the targeted participants.
Moreover, as stated above, 35 % of the population is 15-25 years old and the easiest
way to approach this category is through schools and universities, hence, a quantitative
self-completion questionnaire will be distributed to students to obtain the data needed
to evaluate consumers’ behavior.
In the other hand, a qualitative semi structured interviews will be conducted with
restaurant owners and marketing managers of interest to this research. This method will
be used to give more flexibility to the researcher to pick some points and reframe
further question for the interviewee, moreover, qualitative method will give more space
for the participant to explain marketing strategy, thus, will help the researcher to have
more insight on the implemented marketing strategy. On the other hand, having this
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research method to obtain the data from these participants will deliver a reasonable
amount of data which still feasible to be analyzed. These participants are reachable
through a data base list which was developed during the researcher career in this
industry, as a lot of connections were established.
Data Analysis:
All data will be analyzed to give the researcher an understanding to the first group
purchasing behavior toward fast food restaurants and the factors that could influence it.
Moreover, the qualitative data will be analyzed to understand how effective the
implemented marketing strategies to influence consumer’s purchasing behavior and
how far it could meet consumer expectations. Moreover, the analyzed data should give
an indication on the gap between the consumer and marketing manager perception
toward the implemented marketing strategy, which might highlight the effectiveness of
implemented strategy.
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Work Schedule:
My dissertation is due on May,2017, therefore, I will submit the first draft by mid of March,
2017 to my supervisor for review. I will be in short leave from mid of November till the end of
December, 2016 then I will resume my work activities.
Below Gantt chart illustrates my work schedule from the beginning till the completion of my
business research project.
Figure. 3: Gantt chart
ACTIVITY START DURATION COMPLETE PERIODS (Weeks)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
Formulate research questions 1 1 100% Research design and methods selection 2 2 100% Reading secoundary researchs related to my project 1 6 100% Writing my BRP
proposal 3 2 100% Submit proposal 5 1 100% Literature review 13 8 0% Questionnaire Design 17 2 0% Data collection 19 1 0% Data analysis 20 3 0% write first draft 23 3
0% write second draft 27 2 0% write final draft 29 3 0%
Apr-17 May-17Nov-16 Dec-16 Jan-17 Feb-17 Mar-17Oct-16
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References:
Ataman, M., Van Heerde, H., and Mela, C. (2010) The long-term effect of marketing strategy on
brand sales. Journal of Marketing Research (JMR). 47 (5), PP. 866-882
Athanasopoulou, P., Giovanis, A. N., and Avlonitis, G. J. (2015) Marketing strategy decisions for
brand extension success. Journal of Brand Management. 22 (6), PP. 487-514
Bo, Rundh (2012) Linking packaging to marketing: how packaging is influencing the marketing
strategy. British Food Journal. 115 (11), PP. 1547-1563
Bryman, A., and Bell, E. (2011) Business Research Methods. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 3rd edn.
Phillips, Diane M.; Hallman, William K. (2013) Consumer risk perception & marketing strategy:
The case of genetically modified food. Psychology & Marketing. 30 (9), PP. 739-748
Scheibehenne, Benjamin, Miesler, Linda, and Todd, Peter M. (2007) Fast and frugal food
choices: uncovering individual decision heuristics. Appetite. 49 (3), PP. 578-589
Tran, Trang and Fabrize, Robert (2013) The effect of foreign brand on consumer perception.
Journal of Marketing Development and Competitiveness. 7 (2), PP. 23-36
Varadarajan, Rajan (2010) Strategic marketing & marketing strategy: Domain, definition,
fundamental issues and foundational premises. Journal of The Academy of Marketing. 38 (2),
PP. 119-140
Yong, Jian Wang; Hernandez, Monica D.; Michael, S.; Jie, Wei (2012) Superstitious beliefs in
consumer evaluation of brand logo: implications for corporate branding strategy. European
Journal of Marketing. 46 (5), PP. 721-732
