Customer Satisfaction and Brand Loyalty in Argos: A Case Study

This case study investigates customer satisfaction and brand loyalty within the context of Argos, a major UK online retailer. The research explores the background of Argos, its digital presence, and its customer-centric initiatives, including the use of social media and customer-generated content. The study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of customer satisfaction and brand loyalty strategies, analyzing factors impacting consumer behavior and providing recommendations for improvement. The methodology employs an interpretivist research philosophy and a deductive approach, utilizing a descriptive research design to analyze both primary and secondary data. The literature review examines the influence of social media on customer satisfaction and the effects of brand loyalty on consumer behavior. The research questions address customer satisfaction, brand loyalty, employee opinions, and strategies to enhance these aspects. The significance of the research lies in understanding consumer engagement in digital retailing and providing insights to enhance customer service and minimize problems. References from Ramanathan et al., Agnihotri et al., bin Zakaria et al., and Neupane are used to support findings.

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AND BRAND LOYALTY IN
CASE OF ONLINE RETAILING COMPANIES - CASE STUDY
OF ARGOS

Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................3
1.1 Background and Context..................................................................................................3
1.2 Problem Statement...........................................................................................................3
1.3 Research Aim and Objectives..........................................................................................4
1.4 Research Questions..........................................................................................................4
1.5 Significance of the Research............................................................................................4
2. Literature Review...................................................................................................................5
2.1 Customer satisfaction through social media in retail network business..........................5
2.2 Effects of consumers’ brand-loyalty................................................................................5
3. Methodology..........................................................................................................................6
3.1 Research Philosophy........................................................................................................6
3.2 Research Approach..........................................................................................................7
3.3 Research Design...............................................................................................................7
3.4 Methods & Sources..........................................................................................................8
3.5 Ethical Consideration.......................................................................................................8
3.6 Research Schedule...........................................................................................................8
References................................................................................................................................11
Page | 2

1. Introduction
1.1 Background and Context
Argos, mostly throughout its official website, mobile platforms, 850+ outlets as well as
across the internet, has become a major UK virtual retailer offering over than 60,000 items.
Argos has been the biggest toy retail company throughout the United Kingdom as well as a
pioneer in home products and electronic items across the marketplace.
Official website of the Argos is become the 3rd most accessed website within the United
Kingdom, with about a billion visits annually. Over than 50% of Argos' purchases are
digitally and about 120 million consumer purchases actually occur annually in retail outlets.
For over 90 percent of UK postal codes, 7 days per week, Argos' Fast Track distribution
network is open, and it already becomes the market leading facilities for the customers, as
well as Fast Track Collection provides pick-up without any cost from any supermarket within
60 seconds, deliver within the same day of order (Argos.co.uk., n.d.).
1.2 Problem Statement
Argos acknowledged that buyers want social encouragement from common networks with a
large foundation of digital consumers as well as greater than 850 shops, and also that soaking
throughout the integrated opinions and reviews is necessary to grow customer purchasing
activities across the entire year. Argos has established a significant Customer-generated
content (CGC) venture in collaboration with Bazaarvoice from 2008, collecting suggestions
and experiences to perform consistently and helping other customers make good buying
choices for all of their products (Bazaarvoice., n.d.).
Effective brand equity retention generates visibility and develops client loyalty-in many
instances as the 2 are interconnected, as well as for that purpose, while activities are
important for each and every phase of the customer journey, this reflects the starting point
and endpoint of the feedback loop of a business. Validating customer trust enhances the
strength of a company's consumer experience, and that is for which, Argos tried to address
most of certain questions about customer loyalty previously with a restructuring campaign
that sought to articulate the brand's individuality and spirit (Hong, 2015).
Page | 3

1.3 Research Aim and Objectives
The research will be aimed at finding different effects of customer satisfaction and brand
loyalty throughout the business process of the digital retailing organization named Argos for
Business, UK.
The research objectives will be:
 To evaluate effectiveness of customer satisfaction by analysing the Argos
 To evaluate the brand loyalty of customers towards the Argos
 To implement primary research process to understand the perception of the employees
of Argos
 To find the issues impacting the consumer satisfaction and brand loyalty for Argos as
well as other online retail companies.
 To provide the proper strategies to enhance the customer satisfaction and brand
loyalty for Argos and other online retail brands.
1.4 Research Questions
The research questions will be:
 Are the customers of Argos satisfied with the products and facilities?
 Are the customers loyal to the brand of Argos?
 What are the opinions according to the employee of the Argos about those facts?
 Which factors are impacting the customer satisfaction and brand loyalty of Argos and
other online retail brands?
 How Argos and other online retail companies can improve the strategies to improve
the customer satisfaction and brand loyalty of customers?
1.5 Significance of the Research
Importantly and exponentially, the idea of digital retailing as well as the use of the web as a
medium to promote and purchase goods and facilities has grown. With these kind of fast
growth of the dimensions, however, consumers experience certain beneficial and detrimental
consequences in comparison to these. While there is many significant research related to
digital purchasing and consumer service, the equivalent is not apparent throughout this area
from the viewpoint of every company 's staff members. The study which will be involved is
therefore special and also relevant. The key aim of the study will be to consider the
organizational dimensions of digital retailing firms and also to analyse the consumer
engagement throughout the context of that as well. After all, mostly with exponential growth
Page | 4

of digital retailing, the research would be not only accurate, but also beneficial and relevant
with the goal of enhancing consumer service across the research is concerned. The primary
explanation for undertaking the analysis in the research should be to recognize the particular
features that are common with consumers; the variables that influence the facility of customer
support can also be identified through the research. Therefore, the report and its suggestions
will be useful on the foundation of the very same, also to minimise the problems and fully
enhance the consumer interaction.
2. Literature Review
2.1 Customer satisfaction through social media in retail network business
According to Ramanathan et al., (2017), customer loyalty is significantly influenced by social
media feedback. Similarly, the longitudinal study describes the essential and constructive
function performed for customer satisfaction standards by operations management.
Surprisingly, the researcher did not notice unambiguous brand loyalty service that had an
influence to customer gratification. However, the degree of consumer loyalty is greatly
influenced as advertisements connect well enough with business activities. Agnihotri et al.,
(2016) stated that whenever there's an association between marketing and social networking
sites feedback, the researcher has not seen a favourable result. Any prospective shoppers
undertake a store journey after having read the feedback before deciding final choices and,
interestingly, advertising results do not alter their attitude after studying the feedback. Since
social networking sites is rapidly playing a significant role in certain companies, business
effectiveness or loss is dependent on the firm's review of consumer input and relevant
decision-making.
The customer experience-based empirical findings can be useful for businesses to align their
processes and promotional strategies to turn multiple customer groups, like 'free riders
(greater fulfilment and poor profitability)' or 'vulnerable consumers (poor fulfilment and
greater profitability)' towards 'star consumers (greatest satisfaction and strong profitability).'
(Wang and Kim, 2017) Companies would be best placed to succeed throughout the
increasingly aggressive social media-influenced period with a measured framework:
balancing social media ratings, marketing and activities.
2.2 Effects of consumers’ brand-loyalty
As per bin Zakaria et al., (2019), brand loyalty seems to be a consumer's allegiance to a
company, store, dealer, service providers or other entity dependent on favourable attitudes
Page | 5

and cognitive reactions, like repeated transactions. Brand loyalty has been essentially defined
as consumer activity marked by frequent sales, tendency to recommend others to a specific
item or facility, likelihood to persuade others for using a facility or item, as well as eagerness
to recommend brand and product enhancement.
Neupane, (2015) identified that brand loyalty remains essential for a business to maintain its
existing consumers. This is just for; brand loyalty will have many incentives for the
consumer. To draw new consumers, existing consumers are much less price-sensitive,
promotional expenses are significantly lowered as well as corporate effectiveness is
improved. 95% of the turnover was compensated for by the rebuying operation of faithful
clients. Satisfied customers serve mostly as 'fantastic marketing force' with providing
suggestions and encouraging positive brand image. Satisfied customers for all the company
are quite useful marketing resources. Satisfied customers shared their good encounters with
their family members and friends as well as helped to build new companies and to constantly
raise the organisation's income. Through making regular transactions, potential customer
buys a large variety of goods and facilities. Satisfied customers don't really turn to other
competitors in consideration of pricing because they render more purchases relative to other
consumers (Hemsley-Brown and Alnawas, 2016).
3. Methodology
3.1 Research Philosophy
Academic research philosophy appears as a mechanism that, once applied, stimulates
researchers to develop ideas into knowledge within the context of research. There were four
major trends for research philosophy that many researchers recognise and discuss throughout
their studies: positivist, interpretivist, pragmatist and realistic. Across the positivist
philosophy of research, the author is an unbiased investigator and, mostly on basis of it,
translocate himself toward personal convictions and also works in totally independent way.
The philosophy of interpretivist analysis indicates that it is important to view the outer world
in even a qualitative way. Throughout the pragmatist philosophy of research, the practical
implications are considered to be important. Realistic research philosophy tends to be based
on findings that are suitable for the comprehension of the perceptual life of humans
(Žukauskas et al., 2018). The following research will implement the interpretivist research
philosophy as the research will deal with the quantitative information and analysis of those
data. The research philosophy will not be positivist as there will be no statistics or figures
throughout the research. The philosophy will also not the pragmatist as the research will not
Page | 6

have mixed research methods and also for this topic of research realistic philosophy will not
be applicable.
3.2 Research Approach
Research approaches usually involve research methodology and procedures that range from
broad assumptions to systematic methods of data collection, evaluation, and presentation. The
research approach has been divided into 3 types: inductive, deductive and abductive. When
the researcher has formulated a set of hypotheses about the research study that should be
confirmed or rejected within the research process, the researchers would follow the deductive
method (Rahi, 2017). The inductive method does not include formulating hypotheses. It starts
with objectives of the research and targets and expectations which should be followed within
the research procedure. The method of analysis is dedicated to explaining incomplete
findings, surprising facts, or contradictions described by the abductive approach during the
beginning of the research project. As the researcher will work with existing hypothesis during
the research, the approach will be deductive. The researcher will not adopt any kind of own
hypothesis or surprising hypothesis as per the research topic, therefore the inductive or
abductive research approach will be inapplicable for the relevant research.
3.3 Research Design
Research design is defined as the scheme of research methods and techniques chosen by the
researchers. The framework helps researchers to focus on experimental methods that are
applicable to the subject as well as to improve their output studies. Exploratory, experimental,
descriptive, correlation and explanatory are indeed the essential forms of study design.
Exploratory research is described as a thesis carried out to investigate a topic which is not
clearly described. It is undertaken to provide a better picture of the existing issue, but does
not produce conclusive results. Explanatory analysis is conducted, involves targets, develops
operational principles and generates a stronger-researched structure for a subject which has
not been thoroughly researched before. Throughout the descriptive design of the research
study, a researcher is mainly engaged in describing the situation or circumstance (Leavy,
2017). This is really a theory-based design method that is created by processing, analysing,
and presenting collected knowledge. Via experimental research practice, a relation between
the behaviour and response of a situation is described. This is a forecasting framework where
even the researcher examines the effect mostly on exponential function-induced conditional
component. A non-experimental method of study design that helps researchers to establish a
connection between some closely related variables seems to be correlational analysis. For the
Page | 7

following research the descriptive research design will be appropriate as the researcher will
work with the primary data. The researcher will not employ any kind of secondary data or
experimental data, therefore, the exploratory and experimental design will not be applicable
for the research. Also, the research will not find the relation between data and many research
already conducted regarding such topic, therefore, the explanatory and correlation design will
also inapplicable for the research.
3.4 Methods & Sources
The research will deal with primary data which will be gathered through a survey of multiple
choice questions regarding the customer satisfaction and brand loyalty of Argos. The
participant for the survey will be the employees of Argos. The sampling technique will be
random for the mentioned research to maintain transparency of the process. The initial mail
will be sent to 70-75 employees of the organization. For the basis of first come first serve 50
employees have to be selected after getting the confirmation from them. The survey process
will be implemented through online Google Forms. The communication process with
participants will be confidential and through the mailing process. After gathering all survey
results of 50 employees, the researcher has to evaluate the data and forward the research
process to determine the final findings and establish conclusion and recommendation
accordingly. The significance of the research always relies on the data analysis process of the
research.
3.5 Ethical Consideration
For the survey, the two important ethical considerations are confidentiality of the participants
and informed consent (Evans and Mathur, 2018). The information of the participants and
communication with them have to be conducted with proper privacy techniques. Also, the
participants have to be informed about the goal and objectives of the research. The researcher
will not influence any participant to join the survey forcefully. The researcher will introduce
consent form to every participant, after filling those up the participants will join the survey
process. The consent form will include that the participants are involving with the research by
their own choice and they are not influenced by anyone. The improper ethical considerations
can be the reason for failure of a research, therefore, the researcher have to pay more
attention to this.
Page | 8

3.6 Research Schedule
Tasks Weeks
1 2 3 4 5 6
Identifying
the
research
problems
Preparing
a proposal
for the
research
Conductin
g
Literature
Review
Designing
a
conceptual
framewor
k
Selection
of
Page | 9

research
methodolo
gy
Collecting
data
Conductin
g Data
Analysis
Preparing
a draft for
the final
report
Completio
n of the
data
analysis
Interpreti
ng the
findings
Concludin
g the
research
Page | 10

Project
Page | 11

References
Agnihotri, R., Dingus, R., Hu, M.Y. and Krush, M.T., (2016). Social media: Influencing
customer satisfaction in B2B sales. Industrial Marketing Management, 53, pp.172-180.
[Accessed 7 November 2020].
Argos.co.uk. (n.d.) About Argos. [online] Available at:
<https://www.argos.co.uk/static/StaticDisplay/includeName/AboutArgos.htm&amp;gt;>
[Accessed 7 November 2020].
Bazaarvoice. (n.d.) Argos | Bazaarvoice. [online] Available at:
<https://www.bazaarvoice.com/uk/success-stories/argos/> [Accessed 7 November 2020].
bin Zakaria, I., bin Mohd Salleh, M.Z. and Kozako, I.N.A.M.F., (2019). The Impact of Social
Media Marketing on Brand Loyalty Among Generation Y Towards Luxury Fashion Brands.
Malaysian Journal of Business and Economics (MJBE), pp.25-25. [Accessed 7 November
2020].
Evans, J.R. and Mathur, A., (2018). The value of online surveys: A look back and a look
ahead. Internet Research. [Accessed 7 November 2020].
Hemsley-Brown, J. and Alnawas, I., (2016). Service quality and brand loyalty. International
Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management. [Accessed 7 November 2020].
Hong, P., (2015). Argos Case Study: Mapping The Consumer Journey To Purchase. [online]
Linkdex. Available at: <https://www.linkdex.com/en-us/inked/argos-case-study-mapping-
the-consumer-journey-to-purchase/> [Accessed 7 November 2020].
Leavy, P., (2017). Research design: Quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, arts-based,
and community-based participatory research approaches. Guilford Publications. [Accessed 7
November 2020].
Neupane, R., (2015). The effects of brand image on customer satisfaction and loyalty
intention in retail super market chain UK. International Journal of Social Sciences and
Management, 2(1), pp.9-26. [Accessed 7 November 2020].
Rahi, S., (2017). Research design and methods: A systematic review of research paradigms,
sampling issues and instruments development. International Journal of Economics &
Management Sciences, 6(2), pp.1-5. [Accessed 7 November 2020].
Page | 12