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A
Study of Customers’ Quality Evaluations And Satisfaction With
Landline Telephone Services of Saudi Telecom Company Project Proposal for Submission to: SAUDI TELECOM To be executed by: Students
of MBA Marketing Research course
College
of Industrial Management
King
Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM)
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia Under
supervision of the Course Instructor: Dr. Alhassan G.
Abdul-Muhmin Associate Professor of Marketing
Department of Management and Marketing
As part of the
requirements for completing the Marketing Research course offered to MBA
students at the College of Industrial Management, King Fahd University of
Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM), students are often required to conduct
research on a marketing-related topic of interest. In order to facilitate the
learning process in the course, I often prefer that the research address a
real-life marketing situation faced by a Saudi company. Upon recommendation
from the Business Development Center of the College of Industrial Management
at KFUPM, I am considering having the Marketing Research class conduct a
study to examine customers’ satisfaction with landline telephone services of
the Saudi Telecom Company (STC). This brief proposal outlines some of the
preliminary issues that I deem relevant to the conduct of such a project. 2. RESEARCH
OBJECTIVES The study will be
designed to achieve the following preliminary research objectives.
These objectives are
only preliminary, and can be modified with input from STC, and discussion
with the students at the beginning of the course next semester. 3. RESEARCH DESIGN To achieve the above
objectives, we plan to conduct a survey in the Eastern Province using a
structured self-administered questionnaire. We have chosen the option of conducting
a survey because this is the type of research that can conveniently be
conducted by the students within the 12-week period that is available for the
remainder of the course. Prior to the main
survey, exploratory research will be conducted to identify the dimensions and
factors that consumers consider important in the evaluation of landline
telephone services. This will be achieved through focus group and depth
interviews with selected customers and resource personnel at STC. Results
from this investigation will be used to design the questionnaire that will
then be pre-tested in a small-scale pilot study before final implementation
in the main survey. 4. DATA COLLECTION Students of the MBA
Marketing Research course at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals
will be responsible for the data collection. Each student will be responsible
for collecting information from a sample of respondents large enough to
enable him to write a separate individual report on his findings in order to
fulfill the course requirements. At the end of the course, the course
instructor will pool together the responses obtained by all students in the
course, analyze the pooled data, and prepare a separate report of the
findings for STC. 5. DATA ANALYSIS Each student will
code and enter his data into a computer for electronic processing using the
SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) software. Specific
analysis techniques to be employed will be dictated by requirements of the
research objectives formulated for the study. The usual approach is for us to
take the objectives one-by-one, discuss the appropriate statistical analysis
to be performed in class, and how to go about implementing the analysis in
SPSS. 6. PRESENTATION OF RESULTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Findings from the
study, conclusions drawn and related recommendations will be communicated to
STC in a written report. An oral presentation could also be arranged if this
would be of interest to the company. This will provide the opportunity for
management to seek clarification of issues contained in the written report. 7. EXECUTION TIME SCHEDULE Table 1 shows a schedule of the time
requirements for executing the research contained in this proposal. TABLE 1 EXECUTION TIMETABLE FOR PROPOSED STUDY
8. BENEFITS OF THE
PROJECT We envisage that STC
will derive the following benefits from this project. 1.
Feedback from the study
will help STC understand its customers and better prepare the company for the
ensuing competition that will result from the planned privatization of the
Telecom sector in the Kingdom 2.
Sponsorship for the
project will be seen as support for KFUPM’s academic programs by STC, and
this will portray the company as fulfilling a social responsibility. The
company will be seen as contributing
to the professional development of the Kingdom’s managers. 3.
The project sponsorship
Improve the image of STC in the society 4.
MBA students are more
aware of the Saudi culture and environment and the historical development of
STC than most professional consulting firms in the Kingdom that tend to have
a foreign background. 5.
Furthermore, almost all
our MBA students are working in industry and taking the MBA on a part time
basis. These have experience with STC services both as consumers and as
corporate customers and their varied experiences will definitely be useful in
the design and execution of the project. 6.
The above two factors,
combined with the fact that the project will be supervised by an instructor
with the requisite skills and research experience means that the students
would be able to do a better (or at least comparable) job in the research
than most professional consulting firms operating in the Kingdom. Our
experience in other class sponsorship projects shows that this is not an
overstatement. For the amount of monies involved in the two options,
sponsoring the class project will definitely provide much better value. |
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