A Detailed Analysis of Sim's Hardware's Business Performance

This report presents a detailed analysis of Sim’s Hardware, focusing on its business operations, policies, and performance. The research examines the impact of uncertainties on the company, particularly in the financial year 2016-17 when an advertising campaign led to decreased net income. The study investigates the retail environment, including customer behavior, organizational policies, and the use of secondary data collection methods. It explores the company's responses to market challenges and its strategic approach to maintain its position in the Australian market. The analysis includes a review of research methods, theories, and techniques used, with a focus on the limitations of the secondary data collected and its justification. The report concludes with a discussion of further research and approaches that Sim's Hardware could consider to improve its business strategies.

Running head: A DETAILED ANALYSIS OF SIM’S HARDWARE
A DETAILED ANALYSIS OF SIM’S HARDWARE
Name of the Student
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Author Note

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A DETAILED ANALYSIS OF SIM’S HARDWARE
Table of Contents
Part A.........................................................................................................................................2
Introduction............................................................................................................................2
Description.............................................................................................................................2
Policies and Procedures..........................................................................................................3
Research Methodology...............................................................................................................4
Data Collection...................................................................................................................4
Data Analysis.....................................................................................................................5
Analysis of Factors affecting the research data......................................................................5
Limitations.............................................................................................................................6
Justification............................................................................................................................6
Part B..........................................................................................................................................6
Research methods, theories, and techniques..........................................................................6
Selected methods and Techniques.........................................................................................7
Justification............................................................................................................................8
Sources of Information...........................................................................................................9
Part C..........................................................................................................................................9
Aims of the Research.............................................................................................................9
Hypothesis............................................................................................................................10
Research strategy and justification.......................................................................................11
Data collection technique.....................................................................................................11
Justification and Findings against previous research strategy.............................................12

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Risks and Threats to the data...............................................................................................13
Implication and Evaluation of the research..........................................................................14
Re-evaluation of data and Research Findings......................................................................15
Discussion regarding research..............................................................................................15
Further Research and Approaches.......................................................................................16
References................................................................................................................................17

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Part A
Introduction
The main aim of the research was to discuss the role of uncertainty that had affected
the business of Sim’s Hardware and to analyse the causes and effects of those uncertainties.
The company had invested a lot of amount in an advertisement during the financial year of
2016-17 intending to gain a positive income. However, the advertisement led to negative
consequences where the net income of the company decreased as compared to the previous
year. Therefore, the study was focused on the different types of uncertainties that a business
organization has to face. It also focused on how Sim’s Hardware coped with the problem.
The hypothetical question that was discussed in the paper was: Will Sim’s Hardware runs
beyond 20 years? Sim’s Hardware will not run beyond 20 years and Is the behavior of
customers related to purchasing from organised as well as unorganised retail stores affected
by personal, social, economic, psychological, cultural, and technological factors? Once the
research was conducted on the above hypothetical questions, the company was able to
understand the needs of their target group and accordingly work on it.
Description
The research was conducted within different cities in Australia, where Sim’s
Hardware has its outlet. The retail shop has many outlets in the country and is one of the
leading business organizations in Australia, with 138 outlets throughout the country and
approximately 10,000 employees providing people with daily needs. Since it is a retail
business selling household types of equipment such as tools, hardware, kitchen and house
appliances so the research mainly focused on the groups that are frequent visitors to the store.
Women had been the primary target to conduct the study as they are loyal customers who
visit the store quite often. The employees of the company were also targeted for the research

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to see whether some loopholes are missed out by the senior managers or not. Therefore, the
study was conducted amongst the customers from different cities who frequently visited the
shop as well as those who attended other retail shops.
Policies and Procedures
All business organisation faces much uncertainty during their stay in the market. The
company might face a sudden change in the environmental and financial system; the
influence of technology and competitors all affect the business policy of the organisations.
The research saw how and what uncertainty had transformed the business of Sim’s Hardware
and what were the policies and procedures that they will follow to deal with the problem. The
plan to resolve the issue of uncertainty that the business faced in the financial year of 2016-17
included everyone such as- people, assets, customers, reputation as well as the environment.
The policy would also work towards minimizing environmental impacts such as using the
resources wisely, ensuring that the suppliers operate both sustainably and ethically, the
company would also work towards controlling and managing risk factors such as a sudden
change in the economy and taking the help of the technology to promote their products in a
meaningful manner. The company needs to understand the risk factors and should be capable
of mitigating it. Regular meetings would be held with the store partners to recognise the
loopholes. Business planning and budgeting would be strictly regulated keeping in mind the
governmental policies. Ethics was to be maintained while implementing the above
procedures. Strong employment relations would be maintained to preserve the reputation of
the company and ensure a healthy environment for both the customers as well as the
employees. A strong CSR relation will be built with the customers. The ethical responsibility
of the company was to offer product supply to customers to differentiate itself from the
competitors. While coping with the economic changes, the company should follow the ethical
rules of not violating the laws and policies of the government. The company also developed a

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code of conduct while ensuring that the products they are selling are conforming with the
rules as well as the regulations, and at the same time, their employees, stores, and agents are
aware of those laws and policies. The code of conduct would also promote honesty, the
disclosure as well as fair distribution of information to the customers.
Research Methodology
Data Collection
The research that was employed is the use of secondary data collection. Secondary
data collection involves the use of existing data. It includes materials that have been
published in journals, newspapers, record books of the company, internet sources, data that is
obtained from already filled in surveys and other written documents (Johnston, 2017). The
research made use of printed and electronic annual reports, journals, and magazines. It also
focused on related research work and the opinion of the researchers regarding their work. The
research also included old and existing trends and will focus on the FDI policy as well as
official reports. Weekly magazine, as well as websites related to the research, had been
included
Secondary data was collected from the pieces of information that were available on the
Internet along with sources such as newspapers, journals and articles (Gray, 2019). The
collected data was both qualitative and quantitative. The paper would include both
descriptive as well as exploratory research to understand the relationship between the
behavior of the purchaser and the socio-economic, cultural, technological as well as
psychological factors that affect the buying behaviour of a customer (Iravani, 2016).
Therefore, the above data collection method had helped in maintaining the policies of the
organization as prior research will be included in the paper, and it further improved the
company to understand the mistake in their advertising technique.

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Data Analysis
The analysed data was based on various experts as well as authors, analytical research
that is already available in the form of previous study and information. The descriptive
analysis also helped to know about the condition, structures, differences, practices, as well as
the relationship that exists, the opinions held by the researchers as well as the customers and
the ongoing trends. The secondary data had help in identifying and interpreting the existing
data in the form of documents (Ellram & Tate 2016). Further, the relation between the
behavior of the customer as well as an independent variable such s income, personality, and
social class could be determined.
Analysis of Factors affecting the research data
Secondary data saves time that would otherwise have been spent in collecting the data
and doing the research. For analysing socio-economic changes, secondary data can be relied
on. Secondary data has high-quality data that would be almost impossible for an individual
researcher to collect it. It already has a pre-established degree of reliability and validity that
cannot be used for re-examining by the researcher. It helps it adding fundamental values as
well as attributes to the research. It will further provide a base on which the primary research
can be carried out. It proved to be very helpful for this research as prior and extensive
research has already been done. However, it can affect the integrity, reliability, and validity
of the data that is derived from secondary sources. Since prior information is taken for the
research, the data that is collected can be inaccurate and out of date (Cole & Trinh 2017). It
had not covered the areas from where present researchers want to collect information.
Administrative data was difficult to assemble as it was not collected with the intention of
research.

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Limitations
The research suffers from characteristic limitations. It only focused on one retail
industry that is Sim’s Hardware. Other stores in Australia had not been taken into
consideration. The data that was collected might be inaccurate for the present business
scenario. The published journals and newspaper articles regarding the company, along with
other secondary data, may have been biased as it consists of the author’s personal views and
is not a generalized opinion. Sometimes data collected from secondary sources might not
portray the correct picture as well as an idea regarding the company.
Justification
Though secondary data has its limitations, however, it is reliable as there are various
viewpoints from different sources and journals from which conclusions can be made.
Secondary data helped to analyse the previous reports and changes that have taken place in
the company. The various factors that had affected the business organisation were looked at
through the secondary data from which a definite conclusion can arrive. Therefore, it can be
justified that the secondary sources can be used for the research that is conducted for Sim’s
Hardware.
Part B
Research methods, theories, and techniques
Various research methods had been applied for the above research, such as- research
design, research approach, research philosophy and research strategy. Theories had also been
used to support the research method along with a research technique. Theories regarding
government regulation and marketing had also been applied to support the research. Theories
of regulation consist of the arguments regarding market power, the theory regarding interest
groups that talk about the stakeholders and the theories of the government relating to the

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decisions that they take about the various market organization (Marti & Scherer 2016). These
are the uncertainties that Sim’s Hardware faced during the financial year of 2016-17. All
business organisation should be vigilant that their policies do not violate the policies of the
government. Theories of technology try to explain the various factors that help in shaping the
impact of technology on culture as well as society. The technological theory looks at the
historical shreds of evidence to show that technology always gives rise to newer scientific
fields. Technology has adversely affected the scenario of business organisations (Tavani,
2016). New developments in technology and online marketing has transformed the retailers
to a great extent. Sim’s Hardware had to face this uncertainty and cope with it. Therefore, the
above theories helped to arrive at a definite conclusion. A secondary data technique had been
used to make research reliable and valid. Research design is a framework that is chosen by a
researcher. There are three types of research design- data collection, measurement as well as
analysis (Creswell & Poth 2016). The research approach is a procedure that comprises of the
assumptions regarding data collection, analysis as well as interpretation. Research approach
can be divided into the deductive, abductive and inductive approach (Tuffour, 2017).
Research philosophy mainly deals with source, development of knowledge as well as nature.
There are four main research philosophies- pragmatism, positivism, realism and
interpretivism (Fulford & Hodgson 2016). Research strategy includes a case study,
quantitative research, and qualitative interviews (Gravetter & Forzano 2018).
Selected methods and Techniques
A secondary research technique had been adopted to research Sim’s Hardware. The
above kinds of research techniques and methods were applied to the research to make it more
valuable. Furthermore, government records and other journals were also used for the study.
The documents were collected from the Internet, google scholar, company website, and

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additional newspaper articles that further optimised the research, data collection, data
analysis and made it more reliable and accurate.
Justification
Research design had been implemented as there is minimum bias in the data
collection and, at the same time, increases the trust in the accuracy of the data collected.
Qualitative research design creates a relationship between the data collected and the
observations that are based on those data. It helped in the research as it makes clear as to why
a specific theory exists with the opinion of the respondents (Silverman, 2016). For this
research, an analytical research design had been selected as the researcher is interested in
giving a detailed description of the case that is under their study (Schnurr & Schroeder2019).
For this research, an inductive research approach was chosen where the researcher began by
collecting already relevant data for the topic of interest. This research helped to build a
pattern from which the researcher can look back to a theory that can explain his design of the
study (Jebb, Parrigon & Woo (2017). The inductive research approach was used where the
hypothesis was decided, and then a conclusion was made based on that hypothesis. The
research philosophy had assisted in analyzing and using the data collected reasonably. It had
also helped to become aware as well as formulate observations and beliefs. For this research,
the research strategy that was chosen as a case study (Yin, 2017). This helped to focus on an
in-depth investigation of one or several cases. The case study had helped in this research as it
had allowed a composite as well as a multifaceted investigation regarding the issue or the
problem that is was being dealt with in the study (Holmes et al., 2018). For the entire
research, secondary data technique was chosen as a lot of surveys and discussions have
already been conducted that had helped to arrive at a definite conclusion. It would further
validate the research. Internet sources and journals had been used. The use of technology had
been applied as it posts the most recent studies that have been conducted on a specific

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company or topic. Therefore, the sources can be accurate and can be reliable. It also helped in
connecting various theories with the issue that is being discussed in the report.
Sources of Information
The source of information that was used to conduct this research is secondary data
collection. Secondary sources consist of data that is collected from previous research that has
been done on the same company, government records, newspaper articles, company website
and their rules and policies. The above sources had been used to conduct this research.
Recent case studies and reports have been chosen to make the analysis more accurate and
reliable. A case study regarding the company had proved to be very beneficial for this
research as it showed the prior investment made by the company, their growth, and downfall
in specific financial years, policies regarding the employees and the customers as well as the
various uncertainties that had affected the growth of the company. Theories to support the
argument was taken from google scholar to make it more authentic (Martin et al., 2017).
Part C
Aims of the Research
The main objective of the research was to discuss the role of uncertainty due to which
Sim’s Hardware faced a decline in the financial year of 2016-17. The primary purpose was to
discuss what were the changes that caused its downfall. The research had also discussed the
purchaser and their ideas as well as the thoughts that affect his/her buying behavior.
Uncertainties can be the rise of technological demand, government regulations or the
dissatisfaction of the customers with the products of the company (Gern et al., 2017). The
research was initiated by the business organisation Sim’s Hardware to check the mistakes
committed by them in the financial year of 2016-17. The wanted to ensure the growth of the
company. The research was directed towards the customers and factors affecting the

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marketing scenario. It was primarily conducted for the business organization of Sim’s
Hardware to cope with the sudden uncertainty that they faced.
Hypothesis
The question of the hypothesis for this research was Will Sim’s Hardware run beyond
20 years? Sim’s Hardware will not run beyond twenty years along with one more question
that is What personal, social, economic, psychological, cultural and technological factors
affect the purchasing behavior of the customers of organized as well as unorganised retail
stores? The ideology of the company includes its culture, organisational diversity and how
the employees can further improvise themselves. The culture of the organization is healthy
and vibrant. The retailers try hard to initiate a positive shopping experience for the company
with return policies that re flexible. Workplace attire is a kind of gateway towards the retail
culture to see how it is viewed from the opinions of the customers as well as the employees.
The retail culture can be branded with the help of required attire in the workplace (Parashakti,
2018). A uniform could be given to the employees to enhance the culture of the organisation.
The culture within the company is always defined by how activities are performed within the
company. The culture of the company is characterized by respect, success, communication,
innovation capability, trust, integrity and team spirit. Unwanted behavior is avoided. This
retail company is also in line with the aspect of diversity that gives it tremendous opportunity.
The method of diversity had helped to gain a positive impact on the behavior of the purchaser
(Mora-Sanchez, 2016). Shoppers move away from retailers who fail to reflect the importance
of diversity. Diversity improves the customers to choose various products from the
organization. Sim’s Hardware has given this opportunity to their customers. They encourage
their customers to use the products in a friendly environmental manner. They are also
committed to the effective management of risks. Employees are trained about all the products
that are displayed in the store and are taught courteous manners. However, they can be given