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

 

 

 

 

 

  1. INTRODUCTION
  2. RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
  3. RESEARCH DESIGN
  4. DATA COLLECTION
  5. DATA ANALYSIS
  6. PRESENTATION OF RESULTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
  7. EXECUTION TIME SCHEDULE
  8. BENEFITS OF THE PROJECT

 

1. INTRODUCTION

 

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.

 

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2. RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

 

The study will be designed to achieve the following preliminary research objectives.

  1. To examine customers’ evaluations of the quality of various aspects of landline telephone services in Saudi Arabia
  2. To investigate the level of consumer satisfaction with landline telephone services in Saudi Arabia.
  3. To identify the factors that influence consumers’ satisfaction levels.
  4. To examine variations in quality evaluations and satisfaction across different customer groups

 

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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

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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.

 

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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

 

 

February

March

April

May

June

Week #:

2

3

4

1

2

3

4

1

2

3

4

1

2

3

2

3

RESEARCH ACTIVITY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EXPLORATORY STUDY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Focus groups

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Depth interviews

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SURVEY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.    Questionnaire design

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2.    Data collection (by students)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3.    Coding and data entry (by students)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4.    Data analysis (by students)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5.    Student report writing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6.    Pooled data analysis and written company report

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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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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