Polygamous Behavior Of Consumers And Coping Strategies Of Coles Supermarket, Australia Essay.

Recession is a phenomenon of decreasing demand for raw materials, products and services and its beginning, progress and ending depends on the operational measures used by different researchers and federal agencies (Shama, 1993). It leads to a drop in share market, an increase in unemployment, stagnant wages, a fall in retail sales and a decline in the housing market (Amadeo, 2015). If a recession lasts longer, it can be classified as economic depression. There were worldwide recessions during the years 2007 – 2009 (“The Great Recession”). Large business companies were a bit resilient during this time with government subsidy and grants but, smaller companies which contribute more to the overall employment growth were badly affected (Nanto, 2009).

Smaller businesses suffered huge net employment losses due to sharper cuts in the rate of gross job gains which in turn reflected on slower business creation and a lower rate of hiring among expanding small businesses (Laderman, 2013). Between 2007 and 2012, small businesses experienced disproportionate job losses wherein their overall job losses was double their 30% share of total employment. Also, jobs at small businesses declined about 11% and the payrolls at businesses that had 50 or more employees declined further by 7% (Laderman, 2013). SME’s suffered disproportionately during such economic downturns because of their limited financial resources, their relative shortcomings in technological, managerial and human capabilities and their greater dependence on fewer customers and suppliers which readily reduced their capacity to overcome the economic crisis (Bourletidis & Triantafyllopoulos,
2014).

In such a scenario, it becomes imperative to analyse and understand what went wrong for these SME’s and this study will fill that gap with empirical evidence of the losses/impacts suffered by the small firms during the period of recession. Also, the marketing strategies, innovative tactics and new concepts adopted by them in order to survive the 

The overall aim of this project is to investigate the Recession-related effects on small firms,their responses to tackle that (i.e. their strategies) and the resulting impact on the performance of the firm. More specifically, this study aims to answer the following research questions:
RQ1: How did recession affect the SMEs
RQ2: What were the impacts suffered by SMEs as a result of Recession
RQ3: How did the SMEs respond to the Recession conditions
RQ4: What are the factors that drive the SMEs performance under Recession conditions
These questions will help answer the most important aim of this project: providing the best
options/schemes that any SME can follow in order to survive economic downturns.

This assignment is to understand the Polygamous behavior of consumers and how retailer’s of Coles, Australia cope up with those  consumers. The Polygamous behavior of the consumer can be seen when the customer buys or have relationships with other competitors in the market. This has been analyzed that the customers build enduring regard with different companies at the same time.

Thus, this research report is written to understand why the customers have a connection with the other companies or competitors and the factors which influence the polygamous behavior of consumers. This research report not only includes the ability of retailers of Coles, Australia of coping up with the customers with the polygamous behavior, but also comprises the research design and methodologies which help in analyzing the current status of the retailers of Coles, Australia and consumers link through various sources. This report also comprises the solution on how to cope up with the consumers with polygamous behavior and how a Coles supermarket can overcome this problem (Coles Supermarkets Australia , 2017).   

Problem Statement

The  reason for the Polygamous behavior of the customers is their choice of products based on the non-random brands. It is defined on the basis of customer dependency or choice of selecting the products of the same category from different supermarkets. The problem statement of the Coles supermarket can be evaluated on the basis of  its competitors and analyzing the factors which influence the customers to behave polygamous.

The main problem within the Coles Supermarket is to cut down the prices to remain competitive with the other supermarkets. But as per the latest  report, it has been observed that after cutting down the prices of the products, it is not necessary that the consumers of the Coles supermarket will remain monogamous with them and will maintain the long term relationship to increase the revenue or turnover in the near future (Mohan, 2013).  

In the monetary terms, the earnings of Coles supermarket has been decreased to approx 6.8 percent after the earnings tax excluding the profit margin, evaluating the previous record, which was approximately decreased 2.6 percent relative to the revenue.

Research Objectives/Questions

The aim of this project is to analyze the factors which motivate the Polygamous behavior of employees and what steps the retailers can take to cope up with those customers, to maintain the profit margins and competitive position in terms of other supermarkets. The few questions which this report aims to answer are as follows :

RQ1: How the polygamous behavior of consumers affects the supermarkets?

RQ2: What were the impact of the polygamous behavior of consumers?

RQ3: How did the retailers cope up with the consumers with the polygamous behavior?

RQ4: What are the factors that motivate the polygamous behavior of consumers?

The above questions will assist answer the most vital aim of this report by providing the best strategies that can be adopted to make the consumers monogamous in nature and help the supermarket retailers to cope up with the consumers showing polygamous behavior.

Research Objectives/Questions

Justification of the project and expected research outcome

This part of the project is to explain the reason on why there is a need to understand the problems faced by the Coyle Supermarket, Australia due to the Polygamous behavior of the consumers. This part of the research report also provides solutions to the above problems and how these solutions can be implemented to the Coyle Supermarket, Australia to maintain their sales and growth without reducing the actual cost of the product.

Understanding the problems faced by the Coyle Supermarket, Australia

The main issue faced by the Coyle Supermarket, Australia is the increase in the polygamous behavior of consumers thereby increasing the efforts. It has been evaluated that after reducing the prices of the products, the Coyle Supermarket, Australia, the organization is not sure that the consumers will  react as normal monogamous consumers after that. Also, if they will help them  reduce the cost of marketing and help them build a strong base to compete the supermarket worldwide (Ha, Minh, Anh, & Matsui, 2014).

Solutions to the problems faced by the Coyle Supermarket, Australia

Reduction in the cost of marketing: This can be done by retaining the existing consumer as the existing consumer will have some past experience of using the products and with the company. Rather than investing on the new marketing campaigns and running different strategies to acquire the new consumers, it is best to improve the quality of the brands and satisfaction of the existing consumers. Also, it will cut the extra costs as building new business alliance will require more promotion and efforts (Brooks, 2016).

Reducing the cost of transactions: This can be done once there is a list of loyal consumers. That is, more is the number of loyalty consumers lesser will be the chances of them to explore other brands. Also, they will not negotiate on price, quality, time, etc. thereby reducing the cost of the transaction.

Reducing the cost of customer acquisition: This can be achieved by making the existing clients satisfied with the branding and products. This will work with direct proportion effect. That is, more is the number of existing fully satisfied consumers, more there will be chances to get new consumers with less effort. Same applies to the negative side. If there is a proportion of unhappy consumers, there would be less chances to acquire new consumers, thereby increasing the marketing efforts to build the new business acquisitions with the other competitors as well as providing some offers to the consumers.

Increasing Cross selling: Since the existing consumers are more likely to know the 4P’s or product mix of the company, there are chances to sell the extra or an advanced item along with the primary brand can help in increasing the sales and  customer base.

Reducing the cost of failure: By the time, With the linking of the consumers with the organization, there are chances for both the sides to expect more services. This helps in reducing the overall cost of failure as both will try to maintain the long-term business alliance (Myer, 2004).  

Justification of the project and expected research outcome

Increasing the word-of-mouth. This can be done by motivating the existing consumers to sponsor or suggest the brand to their friends or colleagues. This will help the Coyle, Australia to increase the customers, paying for the cost of marketing in terms of efforts and monetary terms.

Implementation of the solution in the  Coyle Supermarket, Australia

The following are the solutions to the problems which can help Coyle supermarket to grow and remain competitive with the other local as well as a social market by making the consumers loyal. Loyal consumers can help in the following:

• Lowering down the market share of competitors. (When they select the same organization for their shopping repetitively) (Banasiewicz, 2005).
• Loyal consumers will not go to shop for the other brands due to the offers or promotions made by competitors because they may be price-sensitive.  
• Helping the organization by reducing the competition with its competitors by calling or promoting the same brand.
• Less pose to the other brands.

Also, the above solutions will help in the overall marketing and customer satisfaction which in turn help in achieving the goals and objectives of the Coyle, Australia. Thus, the above customer loyalty programs can also help with:

• Reducing the overall customer turnover.
• Increasing the market share.
• Increasing the growth of the  organization
• Motivating existing customers to bring new clients.
• Taking care of the customer behavior (Yi & Jeon, 2003).
• Building long term business alliance
• Increasing profitability.

Expected Research Output/ Outcome

The output of this research report will provide an analytical framework that will help the researcher to researcher to collect, quick-sort, make the priority list and interpret an array of collections of data for evaluating the factors responsible for the polygamous behavior of the consumers and how the retailers can cope with them in an effective manner.

Conceptual Framework and Research Hypothesis 

The Conceptual framework of this research report is derived on the basis of “Customer loyalty” which can be defined  as the asset of the link between the repetitive consumer and the organization. For strategic planning in the organization, customer loyalty plays an important role. It requires marketing efforts and measured on the basis of customer satisfaction. This helps to evaluate how the consumer which reach to the brand in future.  The impact of brand quality and customer satisfaction to draw the customer loyalty is examined in this report. The FSTA framework has been proposed to build the consumer loyalty. THE FSTA comprises of 4 major parts known as Familiarity, Satisfaction, Trust and the Attitude of the customer related to the brand. These 4 parts can be explained as below:

• Familiarity: To build the brand loyalty, marketers of the organization should review the familiarity of the brand among consumers. This is the first step to win the consumer loyalty. This can be done by evaluating the experience of consumers with the product and getting their reviews based on it. Through this part, the organization can also evaluate the consumers knowledge or awareness to the other brands or competitors supermarkets.
• Satisfaction:This can also be considered as a main part of the conceptual framework to analyze the loyalty of the customer towards the brand. This can be evaluated by reviewing the overall experience of the customer after using the product. Customer satisfaction can also be evaluated on the basis of the total purchase made by the customer over a period of time (Latif & Islam, 2014).
• Trust:This is a factor which which decisively affects the nature or outcome of the customer loyalty with the organization. In order to build the customer loyalty, the organization should give special importance or prominence to trust which will substantially add a positive impact on building the customer loyalty.
• Attitude towards brand:This concept of conceptual framework  identifies the ability of the customer to evoke or suggest images, memories, and emotions towards the brand loyalty.  This should be noted that the attitude of the consumer should only be measured or evaluated on the basis actual responses given the customer over the period of time (Farhat & Khan, 2011).

Following image implies the conceptual framework of the customer behavior on branding loyalty On the basis of the research completed on the problem statement and the research objectives studied in this report, the following Hypothesis’s can be put forward that can be evaluated in this study:

Null Hypothesis (H0):  This hypothesis is to describe that there is no impact on  polygamous behavior at the Coyle Supermarket, Australia There is no significant impact of the factors on customer satisfaction in food retail supermarkets.

Alternate Hypothesis (H1): This hypothesis is to describe that there is an impact on the polygamous behavior at the Coyle Supermarket, Australia There is no significant impact of the factors on customer satisfaction in food retail supermarkets (Dick & Basu, 1994).

The aim of writing the literature review is to scrutinize the previous findings that can help to understand better the problems and finding the best suggestions and answers to those problems (Lu & Lukoma, 2011). The Coles, Australia supermarket has been facing the polygamous behavior of their customers. So there is a need to understand the nature of those customers to reduce such behavior and help them maintain their revenues without making the rates of the products lowered. Also, there is a need to understand the current workflow of the Coles, Australia, so that the retailers can cope up with the customers with polygamous behavior.

Understanding the problems faced by the Coyle Supermarket, Australia

To understand the present status of the Coles Supermarket Industry in Australia, we have explored the current report of the Coles, Australia. The Coles, Australia stands out of the competition with its competitors in the supermarkets such as Woolworths. Both the Coles, Australia and the Woolworths, share almost equal sales and revenue margins in the past few years. To understand better, please find the below table

In the year 2007, Coles, Australia was obtained by the Supermarket, Wesfarmers to settle up a new management team to bring up the new strategies to give new strength or energy to the retailers of the Coles, Australia. Coles has also invested a lot to improve the turnarounds that led the Supermarket to lower the prices of its products. John Durkan, Managing Director of the Coles, Australia, recently reported in the news that the company has regained enough to beat the price deflations. He also stated that in order to stay competitive with the other local as well as international supermarket, Coles has to provide the offers to the customers to maintain the phenomena of lower growth with direct proportion to the increased competition (Ivanauskiene & Volung?naite, 2014).

This has also been observed that it has been difficult for the Coler Australia maintain the sales graph to match the reduced prices. Coles, Australia have identified that it is not necessary to actually lower down the prices of the products to increase the profit margins.  

Further, it has been analyzed by the Coles Australia that

• How the Coles Australia retailers can compete with the local as well as international markets?
• How the retailers can stay competitive with the other supermarket loyalty programs?
• How the retailers can cope up with the consumers with the polygamous behavior?

Before finding the answers to the above said questions, it has been identified that the consumers are open to try different brands and can switch between the new and the upcoming supermarkets in Australia. To make them stay engaged with the Coles, Australia, the company has to lower the prices of the products which may help them maintain their competitive position in the short term, but no strategy has been applied yet for the long term, that will help them to increase the sales of the company without lowering down the actual price of the product.

Methodologies 

To effectively evaluate the aims and objectives of this report, the following methodologies will be used:

Data Series and Survey 

To reduce the polygamous behavior among the consumers and to attract them to buy their products without lowering down the cost of the product, In order to understand the extent of retailer’s ability to attract customers, a survey need to be conducted. The results of these surveys can be evaluated by matching the previous and current data (Luo, 2012).

Quantitative Approach 

Quantitative approach of the research design and methodology helps to acquire the ample amount of data that can be easily stored as numerical or integer values. We can say that quantitative approach is a mathematical phenomena of data collection, which helps to answer the questions like how many or how much amount of data has been retrieved. However, before actually performing a research, quantitative approach required a hypothesis of the report (UNISA, 2015).

Qualitative Approach 

The Qualitative approach of the research design and methodology helps to evaluate the results directly via survey and the behavior or the attitude of the individuals. The Qualitative approach helps to answer which problem to fix and why  to fix.Also, qualitative research is developed to assist researchers in understanding people, and their mentality to solve the issues. The examples of few Qualitative data sources are individual observations, interviews of the personnel, questionnaires, documents, text data, and the researcher's reaction to the questions (Rohrer, 2014).

Organization of the study

The organisation of the study is as follows:

• Chapter One will be the Research Proposal as mentioned in the report
• Chapter Two will outline the case study of the polygamous behavior of the consumers.
• Chapter Three will embrace the particulars of methodology such as literature review, data series and research methodologies such as questionnaire, surveys, journals and other data collection methodologies, and examining the key factors responsible for the polygamous behavior of consumers.
• Chapter Four will account the Findings and Analysis of the submitted research.
• Chapter Five will sum up the principal components and discuss their suggestions to remove or reduce the polygamous behavior of the consumers and how the retailers can cope up with the retailers having polygamous behavior.

Conclusion 

In this report, we have scrutinized the impact of the polygamous behavior of consumers in the Coyle Supermarket, Australia. We have also evaluated on how the retailers can cop on to such behavior of consumers. This report also summarized a report on literature review, methods, and the findings on how to reduce the polygamous behavior of consumers while maintaining the competitive position without reducing the rates.

References

Banasiewicz, A. (2005). Loyalty program planning and analytics. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 22(6), 332-339. Retrieved from https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/07363760510623920?journalCode=jc

Brooks, T. (2016). Business and Economics Research and Communication. Retrieved from https://websites.uwlax.edu/tbrooks/bus230/230syl.pdf

Coles Supermarkets Australia . (2017). Coles official website. Retrieved from www.coles.com.au: https://www.coles.com.au/

Dick, A., & Basu, K. (1994, March). Customer Loyalty: Toward an Integrated Conceptual Framework. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 22(2). Retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0092070394222001

Farhat, R., & Khan, B. (2011). Importance of Brand Personality To Customer Loyalty: A Conceptual Study. New Media and Mass Communication, 1, 1-8. Retrieved from https://www.iiste.org/Journals/index.php/NMMC/article/viewFile/868/783

Ha, N., Minh, N., Anh, P., & Matsui, Y. (2014). The relationship between service quality and customer loyalty in specialty supermarkets. International Journal of Business and Economics Research, 3(5), 178-186. Retrieved from https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijber.20140305.13.pdf

Ivanauskiene, N., & Volung?naite, J. (2014, March). Relations between Service Quality and Customer Loyalty: An Empirical Investigation of Retail Chain Stores in Emerging Markets. American International Journal of Social Science, 3(2), 1-8. Retrieved from https://www.aijssnet.com/journals/Vol_3_No_2_March_2014/13.pdf

Latif, W., & Islam, M. (2014). A conceptual framework to build brand loyalty in the modern marketing environment. Journal of Asian Scientific Research, 4(10), 547-557.

Lu, P., & Lukoma, I. (2011). Customer Satisfaction towards Retailers. Retrieved from https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:428996/FULLTEXT02

Luo, H. (2012, September). Introducing Research Methodology: A Beginner's Guide to Doing a Research Project by UWE FLICK. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262085148_Introducing_Research_Methodology_A_Beginner%27s_Guide_to_Doing_a_Research_Project_by_UWE_FLICK

Mohan, R. (2013). To identify the factors impacting customer to identify the factors impacting customer. Retrieved from https://www.irdindia.in/journal_ijrdmr/pdf/vol2_iss2/11.pdf

Myer, C. (2004). Retail supermarkets sector: Coles supermarkets—energy improvement in action. Retrieved from https://industry.gov.au/energy/Documents/best-practice-guides/energy_case_studies_coles.pdf

Rohrer, C. (2014, October 12). When to Use Which User-Experience Research Methods. Retrieved from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/which-ux-research-methods/

UNISA. (2015). Research Methodology and Design. Retrieved from https://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/4245/05Chap%204_Research%20methodology%20and%20design.pdf

Yi, Y., & Jeon, H. (2003). Effects of Loyalty Programs on Value Perception, Program Loyalty, and Brand Loyalty. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 31(3). Retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0092070303031003002