Consumer Behaviour and Grocery Retail

This assignment delves into the dynamics of consumer behavior within the grocery retail sector. It explores the multitude of factors that influence consumers' purchasing decisions when it comes to groceries, such as brand loyalty, price sensitivity, product quality, and social influences. The assignment also examines current trends shaping the grocery retail landscape, including the rise of online shopping, sustainability concerns, and changing consumer demographics.

MARKETING INTELLIGENCE

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................................3
TASK 1..........................................................................................................................................................3
A. Explaining the process of consumer buying decision-making.............................................................3
B. Theories of buying behavior................................................................................................................4
C. Different types of factors that influence buyers’ decisions.................................................................6
D. Interrelationship between loyalty, repetitive buying & corporate reputation....................................7
TASK 2..........................................................................................................................................................8
A. Objectives/purpose of market research..............................................................................................8
B. Techniques of market research...........................................................................................................8
C. Importance of secondary investigation for carrying out a market research........................................9
D. Reliability & validity.............................................................................................................................9
E. Constructing a market research plan.................................................................................................10
TASK 3........................................................................................................................................................11
A. Trends & size of the market..............................................................................................................11
B. Key competitor of the business & its analysis....................................................................................12
C. SWOT framework for identifying opportunities & threats................................................................13
TASK 4........................................................................................................................................................14
A. Different types of methods to evaluate buyer responses.................................................................14
B. Carrying out a satisfaction survey......................................................................................................14
C. Reviewing & analyzing the success of the survey..............................................................................15
CONCLUSION.............................................................................................................................................16
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................................17

INTRODUCTION
Now-a-days, marketing became one of the most imperative integral facets of the
organization that greatly assists corporations to drive competitive success. Marketing manager
plays a major role in this that makes rational advertisement & promotional decisions after
surveying the target audiences to determine their preferences, attitude & choices, called
marketing intelligence. Sainsbury is the second largest supermarket chain of UK and a public
limited company founded in the year 1869.The aim of the present assignment is to emphasizes
upon creating the best marketing plan for Sainsbury through a thorough and in-depth
examination of the target audiences buying behavior, influencing factors & satisfaction survey.
This will enable Sainsbury to maximize competitive position in the marketplace.
TASK 1
A. Explaining the process of consumer buying decision-making
Perception of need/Need recognition: Inaugural stage is a process of awareness of unmet
desires, needs & wants. Human needs are unlimited and continuous; therefore, before buying any
product, they first determine that what they want (Lysonski and Durvasula, 2013). It is important
for the Marketing Manager of Sainsbury because audience can be satisfied by delivering goods
as per their need such as freshest grocery items.
Information searching: User or buyer identify sources from where they can buy items or
services to satisfy their determined need. Here, the focus of marketing manager is to publish or
advertise their grocery product where customer can easily communicated like social media
marketing, mobile-apps & website as well.
Evaluation of alternatives: After it, consumer evaluates the items on the basis of product
quality, price, convenient availability & many others (Natarajan, Soundararajan and Jayakrishnan,
2013). Therefore, it is necessary for the Sainsbury to give healthier and nutritional quality food
items at economical charges. Moreover, its convention & supermarket stores are located at
convenient places & innovative and unique promotional campaign is also of equal importance.

Purchase decision: Here, if Sainsbury’s offered goods is considered as of the most
effective quality at reasonable charges via unique marketing, then finally, customer choose the
same & purchase it.
Post-purchase evaluation: Finally, product user match their expectation with the
satisfaction level & if buyer’s desires have been met appropriately or with very little deviation,
then Sainsbury’s customer will be definitely encourage buying the same brand again in future.
B. Theories of buying behavior
Buyer behavior theories describe or explain that how an audience behave or make buying
decisions in different situations, narrated hereunder:
Cognitive dissonance theory: This model states that user’s buying behavior can be
changed due to many forces such as belief, opinion & attitude. Here, dissonance i.e. conflicting
beliefs needs to be eliminated to improve consistency so that they will surely buy Sainsbury’s
goods (Chung, Song and Lee, 2017). For instance, a person prefers healthier quality grocery items
but he or she is confused about the product, then in such situation, sales personnel needs to
influence buyer and explain the quality of the item to convince them.
Diffusion of innovation model: This theory states that each & every goods tends to move
through a cyclical chain, i.e. introduction, growth, maturity & decline/diffused. Therefore,
innovation seems important to retain consumers. In the presented diagram, the highest point
states 100% saturation and afterwards, the utility of the items will be definitely goes down
(Horner and Swarbrooke, 2016). Therefore, Sainsbury’s marketing manager needs to keep focus
over the satisfaction level of the user, and at maximum satisfaction, they must introduce a new
product with high nutrition.
Howard Sheth model:

(Source: Lysonski and Durvasula, 2013)
This model states that stimuli, that are symbolic, significant (quality, price & others &
social (family, reference group & othter) influence buyer’s decisions. Therefore, Sainsbury must
focus towards quality, pricing policy, uniqueness & its availability of goods to encourage buyers.

C. Different types of factors that influence buyers’ decisions
(Source: Bhatti, 2015)
Cultural: A set of values, cultural preferences, attitude, belief, ideologies related to
community are called cultural factors. For instance, Indian people resides in UK prefer
vegetarian items from Sainsbury, however, British citizens will demand non-vegetarian food
items as well.
Social: Elements that are concerned with the society like reference group, families,
friends, colleagues & others are called social factors (Kumar, Manrai and Manrai, 2017). Suppose,
reference group or leaders of the society prefers particular items, then, it will encourage others to
choose the same.
Personal: Factors that are only related to an individual are called personal factors like
age, gender, income, lifestyle, desires & expectations. An improved lifestyle person will prefer
Sainsbury’s best quality grocery product without addressing price or vice-versa.

Psychological: Motivation (Maslow’s hierarchy), conditioning, attention, perception,
distortion & others are psychological factors (Bhatti, 2015). For instance, if an individual feel
hungry, then he will prefer any grocery items to satisfy their need without making comparative
evaluation of various items that time or vice-versa.
Economic: There are so many economic factors like income of individual, savings, liquid
assets, consumer credits and many others who influence individual behavior. For instance,
financially strong person can easily buy costly goods whilst poor person will demand cost-
effective grocery items from Sainsbury.
D. Interrelationship between loyalty, repetitive buying & corporate reputation
Repetitive buying/business: Purchasing products and/or services from Sainsbury
repeatedly is called repetitive purchasing (Solomon, Russell-Bennett and Previte, 2013).
Brand loyalty: Preferring a same brand without considering any other brand’s denotes
that user is loyal towards Sainsbury.
Corporate reputation/image: The way how consumer perceives a business or in other
words, psychological picture or status of an organization in people is called reputation or image.
All the above components are interrelated to each other in varied ways. Suppose, a
consumer goes to the Sainsbury’s supermarket store and purchase any item, if it perfectly
satisfied his or her need, then it will encourage and promote repetitive business. It is because,
after satisfaction, user will be willing and desire to buy again Sainsbury’s offering to satisfy the
expectation (Solomon, 2014 ). Thus, it can be interpreted that satisfaction leads to bring repetitive
business. Now, suppose a consumer is using Sainsbury’s deliveries from a long time duration
and feel highly satisfied every time, then, over the period, he or she will become loyal and
purchase only firm’s offerings without considering other offerings like Tesco & others. It is also
related to image because qualitative, healthier & nutritional items at affordable charges, effective
compliant resolution system, offers & environmental sustainability initiatives and so on create a
good image in the mind of audiences, called corporate image.

TASK 2
A. Objectives/purpose of market research
Market research refers to the proposed plan or activities that will be carried out by a
marketing manager to fulfill the marketing objectives. In the current period, the level of
consumer satisfaction in Sainsbury is declining; therefore, marketing planner has decided to
conduct a research that has following aims and objectives:
Aim: To investigate the reasons behind decreasing satisfaction level of target audiences
Objectives:
 To investigate the factors that influences consumer satisfaction level
 To determine that how effectively audiences are satisfied with the quality of services
offered
 To examine that to what extent people are loyal towards Sainsbury’s offerings
 To suggest or recommend various strategies to Sainsbury for maximizing consumer
satisfaction level
B. Techniques of market research
There are two techniques of market research that are primary versus secondary methods
that are described hereunder:
Primary technique: This is typically used by the investigators to gather new facts &
figures by conducting original survey. It is of huge importance so as to tailor specific need and
demands of the researchers (De Vaus, 2013). There are following techniques that can be used by
Sainsbury to collect following information, described hereunder:
Survey: Under this, Sainsbury’s marketing manager can design a questionnaire
containing necessary demographic information as well as various content-specific questions i.e.
open-ended, close-ended, multiple-choice & others (Blair, Czaja and Blair, 2013). In this regards,
investigator can conduct field & online survey.
Interview: Permanent or regular audiences can be interviewed by the marketing manager
through either face-to-face or telephonic factors.

Observation: CCTV camera arrangements & other techniques can be used by Sainsbury
for the original observation of the audiences (Ozer and et.al., 2015).
Secondary technique: In opposed to the above, this research use tools that are already
generated by any other scholar, henceforth, Sainsbury’s marketing manager will not need to
carry out an original investigation thus saves time plus money in research.
Quantitative versus qualitative techniques: Quantitative researches used to gather
numerical information whilst qualitative techniques are used to investigator respondents belief,
attitude, perception & other non-numerical information (Creswell, 2013).
C. Importance of secondary investigation for carrying out a market research
As said earlier, that in this, investigator uses already gathered information from either
published or unpublished source. Before using secondary data, marketing manager needs of
Sainsbury needs to take proper precaution so as to eliminate the use of outdated data and
information that are irrelevant to the current research objective (Ozer and et.al., 2015). In the cited
case, Sainsbury can acquire necessary information from the below mentioned sources:
 Internal data base to collect data regarding number of buyer, frequency, compliant & etc.
 Annual accounts can be used to generate data about turnover & net profitability.
 Published researchers reports of UK retail sector
 European directory on marketing functions
 Web or internet sources
 Published governmental reports of retail industry
 Previous scholarly articles
 Other published or non-published resources
Considering the current objective, data will be collected from the annual accounts for
sales and profit performance analysis & web resources as well.
D. Reliability & validity
Validity & reliability are the key of concern & most important facet that needs to be
considered by the investigator while doing any survey. Here, with the prospective marketing
plan, a proper size plus representative sample of 100 customers has been chosen for the survey.

In this, random sampling method is also a better technique because it eliminated biasness in the
selection process of respondents. Moreover, response rate of the surveyed people were reported
too high to 100%, therefore, it is a sign that it helps to generate valid results (Read, 2013). On the
contrary to this, cross-checking questions was developed to assess that whether respondents gave
authentic responses or not, but, majority of the answers founded right and signifies the findings
of the investigation. In addition to this, all the participants were said to voluntarily participate in
the survey to meet the defined objective, helps to gather authentic and prominent information.
E. Constructing a market research plan
Background: In the dynamic period, it is important for the retailers to measure their
customer satisfaction level to maximize competitiveness & ensure sustainability.
Rational: Fall in Sainsbury’s customer satisfaction score make it necessary for the
marketing planner to investigate the reasons behind declined satisfaction level.
Objective: To analyze the reasons for decreasing level of consumer satisfaction level
Type of investigation: Quantitative and qualitative investigation are the two type of
researches. Considering the current marketing objective, qualitative research has been
incorporated to obtain and acquire information about customer belief, attitude, preferences and
their satisfaction level as well (Ritchie and et.al., 2013).
Data collection: Primary technique will be used, in which, web survey will be made by
the marketing manager. It is selected because provides valuable insight & information about
users that are highly reliable and authentic.
Sampling method & size: It is an impossible task for the investigator to conduct survey
of all the Sainsbury’s customers, therefore, sample size of 100 customers using simple random,
also called non-probabilistic sampling method has been used free of bias selection.
Research instrument: A well structured web questionnaire technique will be prepared
for the internet survey.
Data analysis: Thematic research approach will be used for the interpretation and
evaluation of the results.

Budgeting & time: Investigator will need 200 GBP for the survey and it will take time
period of 2 month for completion.
TASK 3
A. Trends & size of the market
(Source: Kumar, Manrai and Manrai, 2017)
Considering the above table, it can be seen that there are many companies who are
operating in the retail industry of UK such as Lidl, Waitrose, Aldi, Morrisons, Tesco, Asda,
Sainsbury, Iceland & others. Out of these, Tesco is the key industry player, in 2015, its total
market size was 6975m GBP got declined to 6962m GBP by 0.2% only. Sainsbury stood at
second position as its total share was 4007m GBP dropped down to 3963m GBP by 1.4% greater
relatively to that of Tesco Plc. However, total grocery market size got improved from 24717m to
24795m in this year 2016 by 0.3%. Sainsbury is operates at multinational level like Hungary,
United Kingdom, Ireland, US & many other countries of the world, thus, it is clear that it serves
global consumer base & has a strong market presence. Digitalized era, online deliveries, rising
awareness towards healthier and nutritional food items, higher disposable income, movement in
lifestyle etc. bring substantial growth in the retail industry.

B. Key competitor of the business & its analysis
(Source: Kumar, Manrai and Manrai, 2017)
Looking to the graph, it can be seen that in 2016, Sainsbury’s total market share was
reported to 16% less than Tesco Plc, whereas Morrison & Asda’s share were comparatively
lower to 11% & 16% respectively. It indicates that company is threatening challenges from
Tesco, as it has strong competitive position in the retail industry. Top quality, diversified product
portfolio, strong global audience base, reasonable charges are the reason behind larger market
share.
(Source: Tesco: trouble at the tills, 2016)

The above graph illustrates that although Tesco has strong market share, still, in 2015, its
profitability performance goes down due to excessive cost. Thus, it can be said that Sainsbury’s
competitor, Tesco has very larger audience base worldwide and generate maximum turnover,
still, it does not generated adequate return on their sales and also its profitability dropped down
in 2015.
C. SWOT framework for identifying opportunities & threats
SWOT analysis is a framework used for both the internal (strength & weakness) as well
as external (opportunities & threats) analysis.
Strengths:
 Biggest supermarket chain and global presence through 350 convenience & 550
supermarkets
 Talented or highly-skilled employee base
 Extremely experienced team of leaders
 Strong branding & promotional campaign across worldwide
 Own-packaging or labeling
Weakness:
 Increasing rate of inflation results in less demand
 Intense competitive pressure within retail sector (Sainsbury’s SWOT analysis, 2016)
Opportunity:
 Emergence into growing economies like Asia, Africa
 Global expansion into new markets through partnership & joint venture
 Advanced technologies like 24 hours self-checkout machines
Threats:
 Tough competition from Marks & Sainsbury, Tesco & others
 Environmental hazardous or wastage
 Rising rate of inflation
 Change in taxation rates (Sainsbury’s SWOT analysis, 2016)

 Volatility in people’s behavior, perception and preferences
TASK 4
A. Different types of methods to evaluate buyer responses
Questionnaire, interviews, social-media network, online polls & others are the most often
use techniques of assessing and examining consumer responses, narrated here as under:
Questionnaire: Under this technique, Sainsbury’s marketing manager needs to design a
multitude of questions targeting the aims and objective and gather information. There are two
ways to fill questionnaire that are field survey or online survey (Vukasovic, 2014). Out of these,
online survey is highly used because it provides advantage of save times plus monetary
requirement as researcher do not require meeting physically to the audiences through the use of
web technology:
Interview: In this, planner asks set of developed questions to the respondent directly (face
to face or telephonic) used majorly for the permanent or loyal audiences (Ritchie and et.al.,
2013). The advantage of this method is that questions are asked directly from the participants;
however, drawback is that Sainsbury needs to recruit a skilled and talented interviewer for asking
questions from the people.
B. Carrying out a satisfaction survey
Survey
Demographic information:
Name:
Gender:
Occupation:
Age (In years):
Q.1. How frequent do you often visit to Sainsbury’s superstores?
 Regularly
 Once in a week
 Once in every month
 Twice in a month
 Don’t visit
Q.2. From how long, you are a customer of Sainsbury?
 Less than 1 year
 1 – 2 year
 2 – 4 year
 Above 4 year
Q.3. Which kind of goods you often purchase from its retail stores?

 Home ware
 Grocery products
 Clothing items
Q.4. How extremely you are satisfied with the quality of products and services of Sainsbury?
 Extremely satisfied
 Satisfied
 Neutral
 Dissatisfied
 Extremely dissatisfied
Q.5. Do you think that Sainsbury offered goods & services at an economical rates?
 Yes
 No
Q.6. How would you rate the prices charged by Sainsbury?
 Very high
 Little bit high
 Economical charges
 Low charges
Q. 7. Is our sales personnel effectively deal with your complaints?
 Yes, very well
 Not at all
Q.8. Which factors encourage & motivate you to purchase Sainsbury’s offerings?
 Quality
 Prices
 Availability
 Discounting offers
 Advertisement
 Others
Q.9. From which of the above marketing campaign, you are greatly influenced?
 TV ads
 Social-media marketing
 Mobile apps
 Website marketing
 E-mail marketing
 Billboards
 Others (kindly specify)
Q.10. Kindly give your valuable suggestions & advices to serve you better?
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C. Reviewing & analyzing the success of the survey
The survey proven really successful for the Sainsbury because, in the survey, it is
founded that quality and prices are the two extremely important elements that plays a major role
in the buying decision. It is because, in the survey, 48 and 33 people replied this, thus, it
indicates that Sainsbury must offer best quality nutritional grocery items at economical rates to
the audiences (Solomon, 2014). Moreover, it is founded that majority of the people are just
satisfied with the goods sold by Sainsbury as it was responded by 62 respondents, however, only

few of the audiences are strongly satisfied replied by 14 people. Thus, it indicates Sainsbury
needs to put attention towards quality of offerings so as to maximize customer traffic. Further, it
is also founded that majority of the users are highly influenced through social-media & mobile
marketing practices. Therefore, it can be advised & recommended to the Sainsbury to advertise
grocery products & services at social media network like Facebook, Twitter & others. Moreover,
mobile app needs to be developed under the promotional campaign.
CONCLUSION
The findings of the report concluded that marketing functions are really extremely
important because it assists firms to identify the demand and needs of the target consumers. With
the help of this, marketing planner can set suitable set of policies and create an excellent
marketing framework for influencing target audiences to come and visit to Sainsbury’s
supermarket store. Thus, it drives crowded audiences or traffic, which results in maximum
turnover and net profitability as well.

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