Marketing Research Plan: NTUC Fair Price Xtr Shops, Singapore

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of marketing research, differentiating between qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Qualitative research, focusing on customer opinions and attitudes, is contrasted with quantitative research, which relies on numerical data and statistical analysis. The report details a two-stage research study design, incorporating both qualitative and quantitative methods to gain in-depth insights into consumer behavior. It proposes a focus group study for qualitative research, involving consumer interviews to understand brand perception, product quality, and pricing. Furthermore, a questionnaire survey is designed for quantitative data collection, employing sampling techniques to gather a broader perspective on consumer preferences and purchasing habits within the context of NTUC Fair Price Xtr Shops in Singapore. The report highlights the benefits and limitations of each research approach, emphasizing the importance of combining both methods for a thorough understanding of the market and effective strategy development.

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Market research plan for NTUC Fair Price Xtr Shops, Singapore
Market research is an essential activity of the organizations that are undertaken to get an
idea about various business factors, such as, the current market status, market opportunities for
business expansions, risk factors, rivals’ positions and customers’ tastes and preferences
(McDaniel and Gates 2012). This helps the businesses to make strategies for capturing a bigger
market share, and for increase profit. There are two types of business research, qualitative and
quantitative. Both types of researches have benefits and limitations. Those are discussed and
compared below.
Qualitative market research
Qualitative market research is conducted on the basis of the attitude, opinion, intentions
and beliefs of the customers (Bailey 2014). This type of research mainly deals with the questions
like what the customers are thinking, why they are making certain choices and how they feel
about a certain product. For example, in case of changing the branding of a product, the
manufacturer would perform a qualitative research to get an idea about the emotional reactions
that the customers might have about the new brand identity of the product and whether they are
going accept or reject it (Sarstedt and Mooi 2014). This research process is semi structured and
the output is not necessarily scientifically or statistically valid, as the opinions are generally
collected from a small number of people. Ormston et al. (2014) states that qualitative market
research is helpful in identifying the potential issues and challenges as well as scopes that can be
explored by using quantitative research method to find out the feasibility.
Qualitative research is mostly about people and not so much about the numbers. People’s
or customers’ opinions about the business count most in this research. This research is not used

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for predicting the future performance of the business; rather it gives an anecdotal perspective to
the business, which can be beneficial or challenging for the companies (Bernard and Bernard
2012). The questions in this type of research seek long answers to get the in-depth insights about
the perceptions on the business. It is usually conducted by using the Focus groups and interview
method. Questions are asked either one-on-one or to a focus group to learn about the beliefs,
opinions or attitudes of the customers about the particular product or service. The response data
is mostly revealing and beneficial. However, it is time consuming and expensive to collect,
especially for any small business or start up (Barnham 2015).
The benefits of this type of research are:
 The responses are usually recorded or transcribed via audio or video which can be
analyzed at the researcher’s convenience.
 It gives the scope and ability for exploring multiple research topics in depth
 It s comparatively cheaper than quantitative research using large samples and applying
extensive methods and software for analyzing (Punch 2013).
The major limitation of this process is that, it does not consider a large sample size and
use statistical tools for data analysis. The analysis is based on the interpretation and observation
skills of the researchers. The typical questions under qualitative market research include the
reason or opinion about the superiority of a product to other similar products, what steps to be
taken to improve the appeal of the product, opinion about the company’s new logo, opinion
regarding the advertisement etc. However, it does not focus on getting the numbers and analyze
those using statistical tools (Bernard 2017).

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Quantitative market research
Quantitative market research is the one that deals with large samples and numeric data. It
focuses on scientific data analysis by applying statistical tools on large dataset. This type of
research is more structured due to statistical nature (Mertens 2014). It addresses questions like
how many, how often, who, when, where etc. which mainly deals with numerical response
information. For example, a product company conducts quantitative market research to know the
percentage of customers finding the product attractive, number of people buying a particular
product from stores as well as from online retailers, how many among the total population will
try out a new cosmetics after giving a free sample etc. (Bernard 2017).
The businesses can get a precise snapshot of the target market, acceptance percentage of
their products, and can determine their strategies based on the numbers (Davies and Hughes
2014). A sizeable or large sample size is generally chosen and a list of close ended questions is
given to them with list of possible answers. Those responses are then converted into numeric
values for the purpose of applying statistical data analysis tools. The businesses can rank these
answers to get an idea of the market share and can plan accordingly. Questionnaires and surveys
are the most common methods that are used for quantitative market research. Often the results
are presented in the form of graphs and charts, making it easier to understand. It is a straight
forward approach and the reports are written in easy and language. There is no ambiguity in the
questions or answers (Punch 2013).
The major benefits of quantitative market research are:

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 It allows the businesses to collect large volume of data efficiently and quickly and
provides a generalized view of the demographics of the larger market beyond the target
participants.
 The analysis can be done very fast with the application of statistical tools, and results are
scientifically valid.
 Comprehensive results can be obtained, that provides a bigger picture of the industry.
This is beneficial for making future plans for the businesses.
 Questionnaires are anonymous in most cases, which give confidence to the participants
for discussing sensitive topics with transparency and honesty (Barnham 2015).
The questions that are mostly dealt in quantitative research are like the number of people
interested in a particular product, the level of market or brand awareness, number of visits to a
particular website or store, type of consumers, type of purchasing habits of the customers etc.
However, Brannen (2017) states that the major limitation of this type of research is the too much
dependency on the scientific application. It produces only numbers but ignores any qualitative
aspect of the market.
2 stage research study design
To conduct an effective marketing research, a business should always adopt for both the
qualitative and quantitative research methods. Combination of both the research types allows the
business to get an in-depth idea about the target market. Qualitative study helps the business to
know about people’s opinions and attitudes about the business and its products, while
quantitative study helps in getting the bigger picture about the industry (Bernard and Bernard
2012). Focus group study is chosen for applying qualitative research method and questionnaire

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method is chosen for the quantitative study for the consumer behavior for NTUC fair price shops
of Singapore. The detailed discussion about the research designs for the focus group and the
questionnaire method are as follows.
(i) Focus group
Focus group study is a very important and very commonly used technique for qualitative
research in marketing. A focus group refers to a small group of participants from within the
target market of a company. This group consists of demographically diverse people, whose
reactions and responses are studied by a product company for the purpose of having a bigger
picture of the potential reactions from the larger population (Gibbs 2012). This method consists
of conducting interview of the focus group on various aspects of the product or business. Focus
groups offer useful insights into how the people think and provide a much deeper understanding
of the research phenomenon (Cheng 2014). Focus group provides the scope for group interviews,
giving the opportunity to capture in depth information in a more economical manner than the
individual interviews. It also saves valuable time for the companies.
The major benefits of focus group include group interaction and non-verbal
communication. Group interaction among the members of the target population often encourages
the participants to engage in the discussions on variety of topic, which is not possible in an
individual interview. A skilled facilitator encourages the members to engage in useful
discussions on the relevant topic. Non verbal communication refers to the reactions of the
participants regarding a specific topic. This is more of observational data (Ryan et al. 2014).
Focus group discussions need to be facilitated. Themes of discussions should be triggered
by the facilitator, who is also responsible for capturing the valuable information coming out from

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the discussions. There are three stages in facilitating a focus group. Those are preparation, pre-
session and the session (Ritchie et al. 2013).
To study the behavior of the consumers of NTUC, the focus group has been chosen from
the consumers of NTUC. 5 consumers are chosen to be participants in the focus group. There
will also be an assistant who will take down the important notes during the session. In the
preparation stage, the questions should be memorized. A script of questions will be made for
verification but the questions should not be read from that as that would detract the conversation.
The themes for the focus group are chosen to find out the behavior of the consumers of NTUC.
The revenue from the NTUC Fair Price Xtr. sales has reduced recently. This is a matter of
concern for the company. Hence, the themes for the focus group have been chosen according to
the potential problem areas. The overall impression of the brand, product quality, price changes
and differences, logo, slogan, and concepts will be the themes of the focus group for NTUC Fair
Price Xtr. shops of Singapore.
Pre-session of the focus group is the time for being familiarized with the group dynamics.
Hence, engaging in small talks is beneficial during this session. This will help the participants to
be comfortable around the facilitator and can divulge important information through the focus
group.
While opening the session, the participants should be informed about the purpose and
consent will be taken from them. Introduction of all will take place. The ground rules will be
explained. The members will be asked open ended questions about the following themes:
 whether they prefer to shop from the NTUC Fair Price Xtr. shops,
 what factors they like and dislike about those shops,

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 how the service can be improved,
 Whether the quality of the products are up to the mark.
The session will be closed after taking down all the important notes from the discussion.
(ii) Questionnaire survey
A questionnaire survey will be conducted on the consumers of NTUC Fair Price Xtr.
Shops in Singapore to get the bigger picture about the fall in sales. After the important factors
have been noted down in the focus group, the survey questionnaire will be made on the basis of
those findings. The purpose of this survey is to get the factors that would be used to improve the
performance of the NTUC shops to motivate the customers.
Sampling method will be applied to choose the survey participants. Sampling is the
technique to choose a subset, called sample, from the larger population. It is not possible to study
the entire population, and hence sample is drawn. A sample is the subset of a larger population
with the same characteristics (Acharya et al. 2013). There are two types of sampling, probability
and non-probability sampling techniques.
Probability sampling is the technique of sampling where random sampling techniques are
used for creating a sample. The principle of probability sampling is that every member of a
population has equal and known chance of being selected (Levy, P.S. and Lemeshow 2013). The
major types of probability sampling are simple random sampling, stratified random sampling,
systematic sampling, cluster sampling and multistage random sampling. Each of these sampling
techniques has advantages and disadvantages. The primary advantages of using probability

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sampling are the absence of the sampling bias and systematic error, higher level of reliability of
the research findings, more accuracy of the sampling error estimation and the possibility of
making inferences about the larger population is high (Weiss and Weiss 2012). These sampling
techniques are convenient and easy to use, and create samples that are highly similar to the
population.
However, there are some disadvantages also. These techniques are more time consuming,
usually draw big samples, such as, in case of simple random sampling and stratified random
sampling, and comparatively more expensive than the non-probability sampling. Moreover,
cluster sampling does not work well when the members are heterogeneous, and systematic
sampling is not random like the simple random sampling (Uprichard 2013).
Non probability sampling is the one where the samples are selected on the basis of the
subjective judgment ability of the researcher rather than using random selection techniques. In
this method, the odds of any member of a population being selected cannot be calculated (Weiss
and Weiss 2012). There are many types of non-probability sampling, such as, convenience
sampling, purposive sampling, expert sampling, haphazard sampling, quota sampling, snow ball
sampling, heterogeneity or diversity sampling and model instance sampling (Acharya et al.
2013).
The major advantage of non-probability sampling is that it is comparatively time and
cost-effective than the probability sampling. It is easier to use and can be applied in those cases
when probability sampling is not feasible to be used, especially, when the population size is
small. On the other hand, the major disadvantage of non-probability sampling is that it is not

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possible to know how well the sample represents the population. There can be calculating and
margins of error or sampling biasness (Levy and Lemeshow 2013).
Considering the benefits and disadvantages of the two types of sampling, it can be said
that probability sampling would be more suitable to choose the sample for questionnaire survey.
Probability sampling allows the use of large samples. A large sample represents the population
more precisely and quantitative analysis method can be applied on the response data to get a
scientific result of the analysis (Ritchie, Lewis and Elam 2013). It helps in getting more unbiased
data and reduced margins of error in the outcomes and the results are predictable. Hence, for the
survey, a large sample should be chosen from the customer case of NTUC shops by applying
simple random sampling technique under the probability sampling.
Suggestions for NTUC loyal membership card scheme
NTUC can use the information on the loyalty membership to get an idea about the
number of memberships from the loyal customers. This gives an impression about loyal
customer base of NTUC. With the monthly and yearly sales data, it can analyze how much cash
and how many credit points are being used, which gives an indication about the size of the loyal
customer base. It can use this information to make strategies increase the customer base by
introducing new offers and benefit schemes.
However, the numbers may not reflect accurate information regarding the numbers of
loyal customers. The cards are transferable. One card may be used by many in a family or by
friends. This would reflect more sales but the size of customer base may not be increased. Hence,

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while making decision and strategies for implementing measures to increase sales and customer
base, NTUC should focus more on increasing the number of loyal members. There should be
more attractive offers for the loyal members so that word-of-mouth publicity happens and more
people become interested to purchase the membership. Moreover, the card should be non-
transferable, so that exact number of loyal members can be measured precisely and strategies can
be made to increase the membership.

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