Marketing Problems Faced by Tesco in the UK Retail Market

This research proposal investigates the marketing issues faced by Tesco, a prominent UK retailer, within the context of the broader UK retail market. The study aims to identify key marketing challenges, evaluate the impact of marketing activities on company growth, and propose effective strategies to address these issues. The research employs a mixed-methods approach, including both primary and secondary data collection techniques. Primary data will be gathered through questionnaires, while secondary data will be sourced from a comprehensive literature review. The collected data will be analyzed using thematic analysis to gain in-depth insights into the challenges and potential solutions. The proposal outlines a detailed research plan, including the rationale, significance, and methodology, to ensure the research objectives are achieved. The expected outcome of this research is to provide valuable recommendations that will assist Tesco and other UK retail firms in navigating the complex marketing landscape and enhancing their competitiveness. The research also explores various aspects of marketing, including product, price, place, and promotion.

RESEARCH PROPOSAL

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................................3
Aim & Objectives........................................................................................................................4
Research Question.......................................................................................................................4
Background..................................................................................................................................4
Rationale......................................................................................................................................5
Significance.................................................................................................................................5
Literature Review........................................................................................................................6
Research Methodology................................................................................................................8
Research Plan.............................................................................................................................12
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................14

ABSTRACT
The research will completely be based on the marketing issues arising in the retailer firms
of UK including Tesco which is considered as the market leader in retailer market of UK. The
marketing activities affect the growth and the success of the companies greatly which is why the
topic of the research will going to help all the retail firms and the stakeholders involved in them.
The primary and secondary data collection methods are used including the questionnaires for
collecting primary data and literature review for presenting the secondary data. This data is
analysed through thematic analysis. These methods prove to be helpful in achieving the research
objective and gaining in-depth insights about the marketing issues and the ways in which they
can be resolved. Various recommendations are highlighted which will help the retail firms of UK
including Tesco to meet up the marketing challenges.
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Title: Marketing Problems in Tesco
Aim & Objectives
Aim: To explore the marketing issues faced by the well-known retailers in UK. A study on
Tesco.
Objectives:
 To evaluate the concept of marketing in the retailer firms of UK.
 To examine the marketing issues faced by UK retailers like Tesco.
 To analyse the challenges which are faced by the retail companies while doing the
marketing.
 To recommend various strategies which can be used by the retailers of UK in order to
meet up the challenges (Pantano and et.al., 2020).
Research Question
What are the marketing issues faced by the well known retailers of UK such as Tesco and the
recommended strategies to solve those issues?
Background
Marketing is the process which includes the activities undertaken by the company for
promoting the selling or buying of particular product or service. This includes the selling,
advertising as well as delivering the products to other businesses or consumers. It helps in getting
the customers or potential clients who are interested in the products and services of the company.
This mainly focuses on the market study and the consumer behaviours which help in analysing
the commercial management for attracting, acquiring and retaining the customers by fulfilling
the needs and wants of the customers. Marketing plays a very important role in increasing the
profitability of majority of the companies. Though, marketing contributes in the success of the
companies but there are various issues faced while marketing of the products and services
(Vasiljevic and et.al., 2018). Marketing issues or the problems are basically the choices of
fundamental policy or the challenges which are critical and these are addressed for helping the
company to achieve its vision. Tesco is the largest food retailer in UK and is based in UK. It is
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the largest British sellers which hold third rank in the retail industry of the world in terms of
sales. Tesco deals in varieties of food and non-food products including the home entertainment,
clothing, stationary, electrical goods, beauty and health, soft furnishing, kitchen stuff etc. The
main aim of the company is creating value for the customers and earning lifetime loyalty (Tesco,
2021). Tesco implements various marketing activities online and offline and also faces various
issues. The report will be based on the marketing issues faced by the retail firms like Tesco and
various recommendations will be given to cope up with these issues. Proper research
methodology will be used which will help in gaining in-depth insights about the marketing issues
faced by the retailer firms in UK.
Rationale
The main rationale behind choosing the issue of marketing in context of the retailer firms
in UK is that marketing contributes greatly in the success of retail firms as it affects and
influences the customer behaviour which will help in increasing the customer base. The retailers
use marketing functions in order to distribute the goods to the customers. The retailer firms strive
much hard to develop the marketing strategies to compete with the competitors by reaching to
large number of customers (Singh and et.al., 2019). Marketing consists of the most important
functions such as banking, warehousing, insurance, promotion and transportation. The
companies are facing various marketing issues to target the maximum number of customers and
to gain competitive advantage among the competitors like ASDA, Sainsbury, Morrison etc.
Tesco also faces various marketing issues such as analysing the customer behaviour, building
trust between the brand and the consumers, establishing the loyalty of customers, evaluating the
data to be captured, using the advanced technologies to bring innovation in order to become the
market leader (Fuseini, Hadley and Knowles, 2020). Therefore, the major reason behind
selecting this topic is to cope up with the issues faced by the retailers and to attract the majority
of the customers by developing and implementing the marketing strategies.
Significance
This research will especially benefit the company Tesco by making the company aware of
the marketing issues and the ways in which they can be met. It will also benefit the other retailer
companies of UK as they also have to face the similar marketing issues as compared to Tesco.
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They will also need to develop and implement the innovative marketing strategies to compete
with the other retailer companies along with leading the market players like Tesco. This will help
in reaching to larger audience and increase the overall customer base leading to increased
profitability (Welch, Swaffield and Evans, 2018). The research will also benefit these companies
to create a sense of trust among the stakeholders and they will tend to invest more in the
companies making easy for the companies to implement the innovative and advanced strategies.
Literature Review
According to Nash (2019), marketing is the most important concept because if the retailers
even produce the quality products and services and sells them at affordable cost then also it is
necessary to market those products and to make the customer aware of the products and services
provided by the company. This process seems to be easy but massive energy and cost is required
by the companies. This is because there is a need to get the product, advertise it and selling it to
the consumers.
Building blocks to the above points, Chow (2018) evaluated that systematic process needs
to be adapted by the companies which includes the Product, Price, Place and Promotion. The
authors described each factor in this process as the products deals in what the company sells and
in which sizes and amounts. It is must for the company to market the different versions of the
product in order to give variety of choices to the customers and make them aware about the
same. The company needs to set an appropriate price for the products and services by ensuring
that optimal profit can be made from the purchase and the company can compete with the other
companies (Vasiljevic and et.al., 2018). Furthermore, for the retail marketing process a specific
place is to be decided from where the customers can buy the products which can be online as
well as physical stores. The companies ensure that the customers are aware of all the places from
where they can make the purchase.
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Figure 1: Process of marketing
Source: The Fundamentals of Retail Marketing, 2020
The above points were further elaborated by Jones and Comfort (2018), that along with the
price and products, the promotional activities also play a major role for informing the customers
about any changes and the new innovations made. Through this, the company needs to aware the
customers about the upcoming deals through physical advertisements and online platforms.
Marketing issues are also observed in this stage as the company needs to analyse all the internal
and external factors before promoting the products and services. The company cannot ignore the
online advertising as well and must simultaneously advertise its products and services physically
along with using online platforms. Therefore, there are various issues while deciding the
appropriate platforms for advertising.
Furthermore, Souza-Monteiro and Hooker (2017), also elaborated that the retailer
companies also face various issues while deciding the data to capture. The companies need to
take the decision regarding the right data. Also, while marketing the products and services the
customers’ behaviour must be analysed completely. The customers now are using various
options like tablets, laptops, mobile phones, which is why the companied need to mix the online
activities as well as offline CRM irrespective of the device or the channel. The companies also
face problems in building trust between the brand and the customers. They need to invest in the
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transparency-inspired programs which can help in educating the consumers, making
communicating terms and also helps the consumers to feel in control regarding their personal
data.
Komodromos, Papaioannou and Adamu (2018), also elucidated that there are some other
issues faced by the UK retailers which includes establishing the customer loyalty. The companies
need to think about the ways in which it can increase the interaction of the customers with the
brand. The retailers need to provide relevant and personalized experience which can help in
establishing the loyalty of the customers. Also, the companies face the issues in finding the
technology solution. The company find the issues to integrate the platforms for data storage
along with the reporting and fulfilment solution which includes the display networks, email
service providers and the tools of marketing intelligence. Also, Blackley, Resnick and Cassidy
(2017), examined that the retailers also need to explore the industry for making substantial
investment with the right partner of technology. If the companies do not evaluate the potential
partners consistently and equally, then they can face a major loss in terms of the decreased
customer base and the least profitability. The companies are required to change the way in which
they think for continuing to thrive. They also need to sort the larger data and figures to select the
reliable one and reject the unreliable and irrelevant data. They must also make use of some
effective marketing tools in order to increase the customer base.
Research Methodology
These are the specific techniques or the procedures which are used for identifying,
selecting, processing and analysing information about a particular study or topic. This helps in
critically evaluating the overall reliability and validity of the overall study (Basias and Pollalis,
2018). It is the path which helps the researchers in conducting the research. This will help in
achieving the objectives of the research and will help in gaining deeper insights regarding the
marketing issues faced by the retailers of UK such as Tesco plc.
Research Design
Research Onion is used in this research which helps in describing the stages through
which the researcher will pass during the formulation of research methodology. This will include
describing the research philosophy followed by examining the research approach and then focus
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on the research strategy. The, the time horizon will be developed through a systematic time plan.
This will be followed by representing the data collection. The research onion will be proved to
be the best option because it develops series of stages under which methodological study is
described.
Research Type
This decides the type of the research which will be conducted. There are mainly two type
of research types which includes qualitative and quantitative. This is mainly used in the
collecting as well as analysing of data. At this stage of research, the qualitative research deals
with the words and meanings while the quantitative research deals with the numbers and
statistics. Both the types of researches help to gain different types of knowledge. The qualitative
research is basically expressed in words and used for understanding the thoughts, concepts and
experiences (Ørngreen and Levinsen, 2017). The methods used for this type of research are
interviews, literature reviews and even the observations which help in exploring the theories and
concepts. Whereas, the quantitative type of research is used for testing and confirming the
assumptions and theories. The methods include surveys, experiments etc. The research will make
use of the qualitative type of study as the objectives of research will be achieved by gaining deep
insights about the marketing issues in Tesco.
Research Approach
Research approaches are the procedure and plans for the research which helps in
spanning the steps from broad assumptions to the methods of collecting, analysing and
interpreting the data. There are basically two types of approaches i.e., inductive and deductive.
Inductive approaches follow the process of gathering data, looking for patterns and developing
theory. The deductive approaches follow the process of theorizing, analysing data and supporting
the hypothesis (Dźwigoł and Dźwigoł-Barosz, 2018.). The research will follow the inductive
approach as the focus is on developing the theory rather than testing the theory. This approach is
chosen because there is no existing theory to be tested but there is a need to develop the
marketing related theories which can help in analysing the issues.
Research Philosophy
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These are the set of beliefs which represent the world view of the research. This can be
society based or scientific. These are of two types mainly interpretivism and positivism.
Interpretivism is associated with qualitative research while the positivism is associated with
quantitative research. The philosophy chosen will be decided by the aim and objectives of the
research. This research will be based on the interpretivism philosophy as it believes that the way
in which somebody behaves cannot be determined by numbers but the in-depth assessment of
actions, words and behaviours are required (Mohajan, 2018). This research does not need to
focus upon the statistical data but needs to know the behaviours and the experiences of the
individuals regarding the marketing issues prevailing in the company. Positivism is not used as
the data in this is inflexible and is unable to address certain aspects like experiences, personal
beliefs and motivations.
Research Strategy
This basically describes the ways in which researcher intends for carrying out the work.
There can be number of different strategies such as action research, experimental research,
interviews, surveys, literature review and many more. Since, it is a qualitative research, literature
review and the questionnaire will be used in order to gain in-depth insights about the marketing
issues in Tesco.
Data Collection and Analysis
Data Collection
This is basically collecting or gathering the data through various relevant sources like
Primary and Secondary. Primary data collection is collecting the first hand raw data from various
sources like surveys, observations, experiments, questionnaires etc. Primary data is collected in
the raw form by the researcher itself. On the other hand, the secondary data collection is
collecting the second hand or the already collected data which is not in the raw form and already
collected by some other researchers (Ngozwana, 2018). This type of data can be collected by
secondary sources like business documents, government publications, books, journals,
publications etc. The research will make use of primary as well as secondary data. In the primary
data collection, questionnaires will be used and in the secondary collection, literature review will
be done in order to critically evaluate the secondary studies. The primary research will help in
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gaining the views and the experiences of the respondents and the secondary data will help in
gaining views of the other publishers and researchers. Using both the methods, the objectives of
the research can be easily and efficiently achieved.
Sampling
This deals in selecting a group from the whole population. The sample selected will help
in gaining the responses during the primary data collection. The sample will be acting as the
respondents who will participate in the questionnaire (Dodds and Hess, 2020). In this research,
simple random sampling of probabilistic type will be used as 30 employees from the marketing
department will be selected at respondents. Probability sampling is used as the criteria is decided
to select only the employees from marketing department and the simple random type was
selected as the employees from that department will be chosen at random. These respondents
will participate in the questionnaire which will help in gaining their opinions and experiences
which will help in achieving the research objectives.
Data analysis
This deals in analysing the data collected from various sources. There are mainly two
ways to analyse the data which are thematic and SPSS. Thematic analysis is use to analyse the
qualitative data and the SPSS tools are used to analyse the quantitative data. In this research, the
data collected from primary and secondary sources will be analysed through thematic analysis
which will help in making various themes according to the questions of the questionnaires (Attia
and Edge, 2017). The information gained will be presented by making use of graphs, pictures
and pictorial representations. This will make the information more understandable as well as
attractive.
Ethical considerations
All the ethics will be followed in the research such as ethical forms will be filled by the
researcher and consent forms will be filled by the respondents. None of the respondents will be
forced for filling the questionnaire. No biasness will be done in choosing the respondents. The
personal information of the respondents will be kept confidential and the information will not be
misled by adhering to the Data Protection Act (1998) (Ragab and Arisha, 2018). The respect and
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dignity of the respondents will be maintained. Furthermore, the secondary data is highly ethical
practice in itself as it maximizes the data collection investment. This also enhances the
transparency of the research procedures and the research work integrity. The information is also
taken from secondary sources by taking the permission of the authors and the publishers.
Reliability and Validity
These are the concepts which help in evaluating the quality of the research. Reliability
deals in the ways in which a method consistently measures something and same results can be
obtained by using same methods. In this research, the questionnaire will be used many times and
will be able to gain the results. The data collected from the secondary resources will be copyright
protected and will be taken from the recent publication which will help in gaining recent data
instead of outdated one. The validity is the accurateness which is gained in the results (Goldberg
and et.al., 2017). The research is also valid as the results will correspond to the real
characteristics, properties and variations in the social world.
Limitations
The research has some limitations like lack of time and capital but the researcher made
proper and justified use of the available time and money in order to perform the research. The
numerical and the statistical data were not used in the research but the qualitative study will help
in achieving the research objectives. The resources were also less like the number of respondents
but the available respondents will help in gaining the overall results.
Research Plan
Timeline
Tasks/ Weeks Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8 Week 9 Week 10 Week 11
Aim &
Objectives
Research
Methodology
Literature
review
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