Burberry Summer Shoe Market Research Project: Fall 2023

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MANAGING A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS
PROJECT
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Contents
INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................. 3
PART 1: RESEARCH PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN.......................................................................4
PROJECT TITLE............................................................................................................................4
PROJECT BACKGROUND.............................................................................................................4
PROJECT AIMS AND OBJECTIVES................................................................................................5
PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN..................................................................................................5
PART 2: CARRY OUT RESEARCH AND EVALUATION.......................................................................9
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHOD............................................................................................9
QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH METHOD........................................................................................10
PART 3: RESEARCH ANALYSIS AND PERFORMANCE REVIEW.......................................................11
ANALYSIS OF FINDINGS AND PRESENTATION..........................................................................11
CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................... 14
PART 4: REFLECTIVE STATEMENT.................................................................................................14
RECOMMENDATIONS.............................................................................................................. 14
PERFORMANCE REVIEW.......................................................................................................... 15
PART 5: EVIDENCE........................................................................................................................17
REFERENCES.................................................................................................................................23
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INTRODUCTION
Globalization can be defined as the process of interaction and integration of people, ideas,
goods, services or technology across the national border. Globalization is the result of opening
the economy of the different company for trade as well as foreign direct investment. The
countries liberalize their import rules and allow them to invest and free flow of goods and
services from one country to another. The process of globalization affects the political,
environment, economic development as well as the culture of different countries. Therefore
the government of the countries put some restrictions in their operations (Hirst et al., 2015).
The globalization has its various benefits such as it improves the standard of living, reduces
poverty, and provides employment opportunities, providing access to goods or services. The
companies get a bigger platform for expanding their business in other countries by following
different strategies such as joint ventures, exports, acquisition, and merger, etc. The companies
use globalization as a tool for gaining a competitive advantage over their competitors. With the
help of the globalization, the companies are able to reduce their costs with the availability of
low labor and raw material. They get raw materials at a lower rate because the government
does not put tariffs and taxes on them. In addition to this, the companies get millions of
customers as their target audience. Producing the goods according to the needs of the
customers helps the companies to survive in the competitive world (Steger, 2017). The same
strategy used by the Burberry to compete with the big-name brands. Burberry is the
manufacturer and retailer of the fashion-related goods and its headquarter is in London,
England. The company was established in the year 1856 by Thomas Burberry. The company
wants to add one more product in the existing product portfolio i.e. summer shoe and its
launching will be done in the London fashion week taking place on the 16th-20th November
2019.
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PART 1: RESEARCH PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN
PROJECT TITLE
“Developing and creating a market for the summer shoe of Burberry and represent it to major
industry representative during the London fashion week”
PROJECT BACKGROUND
Burberry is a well-known company manufacturing and selling fashion goods all across the
world. Burberry Group PLC is a British based company and its headquarter is in London,
England. The company deals majorly in trench coats, fashion accessories, sunglasses, cosmetics,
and fragrances. The company was established in the year 1856 by Thomas Burberry whose
initial focus on developing outdoor attire but later it changed its products to the high fashion
market. The vision of the company is to secure a top position in the luxury fashion. The
company makes efforts to strengthen its position in the most rewarding segment of the
marketplace. The company grows sustainably and regularly increases its profit margin over the
period (Straker and Wrigley, 2016). It consists of the team of 10,000 employees who design,
makes, develops and sells the products all over the world. Even the company is involved in
creative marketing strategy and programs to engage and attract more potential customers and
to maintain the loyalty of the existing customers. The company sells its product through its
stores, online platform as well as third-party wholesalers. In some of the countries, the
company uses licensed partners for selling their product. Recently the company decided to add
one more product category in the exiting product portfolio i.e. summer shoe and to give tough
competition to big giant companies of a shoe manufacturer. The company decides to launch its
product in the London fashion week by representing it to a major industry representative. The
reason behind using creative marketing channels is to attract luxury consumers through these
channels or through digital and social media (Weston, 2016). The raw material used in the
production of the shoe is of high quality and also due to availability of the manufacturing
facilities; the company is able to maintain its quality and design in the key essentials of the
supply chain. During the production of the shoe, the company makes the strategy to implement
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the zero-waste model. The production of the shoe focused on recycling, reusing and reducing
the waste by implementing the innovative solutions in the production process.
The distribution strategy will be the same as other fashion goods i.e. the shoe will be sold
through franchised and owned stores situated in different locations after launching the product
during the London fashion week. In order to improve the customer experience, the company
starts selling the product through a digital platform that gives positive experience even after
post-purchase. The testing of the product is done by giving some sample to loyal customers and
asks them for feedback. The necessary changes were made in the summer shoe so that it will
have a positive image at the time of representing it to major industry representatives (Peng and
Chen, 2017).
PROJECT AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
The research project is set to check and market a brand-new summer shoe by segmenting the
market and monitoring the production before it is signed off by the board. The time taken to
achieve the objectives of the research project is 10 weeks which is further classified into several
activities that are included in the project management plan. In order to achieve this aim, the
following objectives have been formulated:
 To identify and monitor the production of the shoe according to the needs of the target
market.
 To select the most profitable and rewarding segment from the large population.
 To differentiate the product from its competitors during the London fashion week.
 To select the sample population for testing the product before going to London fashion
week.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN
Project management is an approved and formal document defining how the activities of the
project will be formulated, executed and monitored for achieving the objective of the research.
It acts as a reference for making a decision or measuring the performance. The project
management plan is a document which is used as a reference during the project to ensure that
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project activities will be carried as per the plan (Kerzner, 2017). The project management plan
for this project to meet the objectives and timeframe is as follows:
Cost
Cost means identifying the requirement of financial assets to complete the project within the
time. The estimated budget for this research project will be £23,500. The budget includes all
the cost of labor, equipment, allocation of resources, etc. and it also includes the methods that
can help the company in avoiding some cost (Fewings and Henjewele, 2019). The estimated
budget of the project is presented in the evidence section.
Scope
The research project will support all the multinational shoe manufacturing companies for
understanding the importance of segmentation, testing and launching the product in a major
event. This research project evaluates the production process of the shoe, testing the product
and market and monitoring each aspect of the process before going to London fashion week. It
includes the strategies to monitor the production of the shoe and its quality as well as
techniques adopted by the Burberry for testing the product and market (Meredith et al., 2017).
However, this research project is only limited to finding the production and testing techniques
to launch a new product i.e. summer shoe for its target market and it does not include any
other product. The scope of the project is shown in the evidence section.
Timeframe
Time management is an important element for completing the research project on time.
Mismanagement of time leads to non-completion of various activities which is essential for
deriving the results after completing the research. The milestone schedule is presented in the
evidence section which shows that all the activities are efficiently completed within the time
frame.
Quality
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With the help of quality management, the manager of the research ensures that all the
activities must be completed efficiently and within the time limit. The manager pays proper
attention to each activity for maintaining the quality of the product. Quality of the project is
very important to measure the efficiency and time of each activity (Heldman, 2018).
Communication
Communication is necessary to maintain the support and coordination between the team
members. The data and information among the members are shared through relevant sources.
The members of the research use verbal as well as written method for sharing the information.
In addition to the modes described in the evidence, the other methods such as video call, etc.
are used in certain situations (Young, 2016).
Risk
The risks considered in this research project are lack of time or funds and technical issues. The
first one is the controllable risk while technical issues are not controlled by the researcher. The
risk of lack of time or funds can be minimized by proper planning (Burtonshaw-Gunn, 2017).
Resources
The essential resources required for completing the research are human resources, financial
resources and other materials such as the internet, stationery, etc. The financial resources are
estimated with the budget and £23,500 is required for completing the research and a team of
10 members is required.
Work breakdown structure
Work breakdown structure is the method of dividing the whole project into a simple task so
that it becomes simple in its execution. It also becomes easy for the manager to monitor and
supervise the small task (Siami-Irdemoosa et al., 2015). Even the manager can make the
required changes as per the need. The work breakdown structure of this project is presented in
the evidence section.
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Gantt chart
A Gantt chart is the visual representation of the schedules task over time. In other words, it is
the graphical representation of different activities against time. It includes proper planning,
synchronization, and implementation of research activities (Sharon and Dori, 2017). The Gantt
chart of this research project is known in the evidence section.
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PART 2: CARRY OUT RESEARCH AND EVALUATION
Business research helps in gaining the conceptual as well as practical knowledge related to the
research project. In this research project, mixed research approaches i.e. a combination of
qualitative and quantitative research method for gaining in-depth knowledge about the
research. The data of qualitative research is collected through journals or articles and
quantitative research data is collected through a survey questionnaire which is filled by the
members of the Burberry. This research method helps in achieving the objective and taking out
the meaningful results from the research (Huang and Chiu, 2015).
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHOD
The literature review is performed by collecting the data from the articles of different
researchers. The qualitative data helps the management of the Burberry in taking their
decisions and this data is collected through literature sources for instances, journals, books,
articles, annual report of the company and online blogs (Castillo and Gómez, 2016). All these
sources help in collecting sufficient and relevant data about the production and testing of the
market before launching it in any event.
According to Stark (2015), when the company introduces a new product in the global market it
must make sure that they only get one chance to launch it in the right way. Also, the production
of the companies must match with the demand generated through advertising. Many
companies make this mistake that they extensively advertise the product and did not pay
attention to the production of the product. The company must analyze the demand generated
before manufacturing the product so that they will have sufficient time to arrange the raw
material or other equipment for manufacturing the product. At the time of manufacturing the
product the company should make sure the numbers of target customers in each segment and
should manufacture the product accordingly so that they will be able to cater the needs of all
its target market (Fuller, 2016).
As per the research of Gaikwad et al., (2015) the ideas of launching a new product are
perceived every day but it will be successful only when they are launched and introduced
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properly. That is the reason why big multinational companies take the help of big events to
launch the product. Through such events, the product gets enough publicity and builds a strong
and positive image in the minds of the target customers. The company should follow these
steps before launching or testing the product: understand the market and competitors, select
the target market, defining unique selling proposition, defining the marketing strategy, testing
the product, prepare the marketing campaign and determining product lifecycle.
Schäfer et al., (2017), says that launching a new product in the big events can give a positive
strong image to the product. It is a form of publicity in which the company represents the
product in front of the major representative of the industry. In the current scenario, event
management is an important element of the marketing mix of big companies. Even they follow
the strategy to launch the product after introducing in the big event. And this is one of the best
methods of advertising the product as compared to other methods.
QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH METHOD
The quantitative research data is collected through a survey questionnaire. The data from
survey questionnaire is collected by sending the questionnaire to top executives of the Burberry
for getting the opinion about the production and testing the market before going to London
fashion week (Bryman, 2017). The data is collected with a set of 7-8 questions which is close-
ended so that the data should be systematic and easy to measure. The respondents were
decided before conducting the research and email is used as a medium for sending the email.
The sample of 20 respondents is taken for obtaining the result. The questionnaire of this
research is attached in the evidence section.
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PART 3: RESEARCH ANALYSIS AND PERFORMANCE REVIEW
ANALYSIS OF FINDINGS AND PRESENTATION
1. Your designation
Senior manager 15
General Manager 5
Ground staff 0
Total 20
Data analysis
As mentioned above the primary focus of the researcher is to target the senior manager
to get the relevant and correct information about the production of the shoe and to test
the market. Out of 20 respondents total 15 respondents are at the position of the senior
manager. Therefore this ensures reliability and accuracy of data. Out of this, 5
respondents are at the post of general manager.
2. Is the production capacity of the machines able to meet the demand of new target
market?
Yes 5
No 7
Maybe 8
Total 20
Data analysis
According to the survey, the majority of the top executives i.e. 8 respondents are not
sure that it is able to meet the demand of the new market and this may be to test the
success of the product in those market. 7 respondents are sure that the machines are
not able to meet the demand and 5 respondents are sure about this situation.
3. Is there is a need to test the product on a sample before launching a product?
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Yes 14
No 2
Maybe 4
Total 20
Data analysis
This is the expected answer that company should test on a sample before launching a
product and 14 respondents agree with this situation. The table shows that 4
respondents are not sure and only 2 respondents say that there is no need to test the
market because Burberry is a well-known fashion brand.
4. From where we should select the sample population to test the product?
Host countries 6
Home country 2
Both 12
Total 20
Data analysis
The sample population should be selected from both home and host country, this is said
by the majority of the people i.e. a total of 12 respondents. This is because the culture
or weather of each country is different from others. Other 6 respondent says that the
company should focus on host countries and rest agree with the only home country.
5. What will be the most rewarding and profitable segment of new summer shoe for
Burberry?
Men 8
Women 5
Both 7
Total 20
Data analysis
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