Enhancing Clients’ Satisfaction Through Staff Motivation: A Case Study in Retail Industry in Sydney: Project Proposal
Introduction:
Every organization wants to be profitable. Every organization wants to grow. However, not all organizations are able to do so. Finding the right ingredients in making up an organization that is profitable and shows long term growth is impertinent for the organizations. This is a topic that has been researched in the past and is going to be researched in the future as well. Finding strategies which will provide the company with a competitive advantage over its competitors is important for every organization in order to remain competitive. Some companies consider exceptional service as the key, while others consider staff satisfaction and product quality as the main factor in becoming successful. Companies in today’s world are continuously looking for, finding the Holy Grail for the competitive advantage. There are cases in which companies have found this Holy Grail in the form of exceptional service even if their core product is a physical or intangible service. Companies work hard only to make their clients satisfied as satisfied clients result in loyal clients, which consequently result in higher profitability for the companies. Companies adopt strategies that work for their clients. The rising environmental sustainability and corporate social responsibility efforts are one example of showing how companies adopt strategies that they think would increase client satisfaction. Hence, if any strategy is expected to increase client satisfaction, it is assumed that companies will surely adopt it. Staff Motivation is one thing that is often neglected. Companies who work to attain the satisfaction of their clients and not their staff cannot achieve long-term success. In terms of the retail business, the workforce is the real asset of the company. However, service companies still consider client satisfaction as the only important factor and ignore that staff motivation, and satisfaction is something of importance as well. These firms do not recognize that the happy and satisfied staff are more productive ad is stronger in terms of delivering better client service. Thus, this report will investigate if having motivated staff results in higher client satisfaction and consequently, higher profits for the company. The case study of the retail industry of Sydney, Australia is going to be analysed for in-depth analysis.
Problem Statement:
The problem statement for this report is related to exploring the association between staff motivation and client satisfaction in the retail industry of Sydney in Australia. The report assumes that companies, if work on their staff, can get higher satisfaction with their clients in the retail industry. The analysis will be focused on finding the association between staff motivation and client satisfaction in the retail industry. Organizations work to increase client satisfaction. And these organizations also work to motivate their staff. However, this report is based on finding a strategic association between staff motivation and client satisfaction. The company is working on their staff engagement and increased motivation should result in increased client satisfaction. This is the statement that is going to be analysed and evaluated in this report. The report will analyse if higher staff motivation results in higher client satisfaction.
Research Aim
It is a fact that there is a link between staff and client satisfaction. Happy staff evidently result in happy clients. Similarly, unhappy staff result in unhappy clients. However, it is not as simple as that. The goal of the research study is to examine if the high motivation of staff results in higher client satisfaction for retail companies in Australia. The chief purpose of this study is to show how investing in staff motivation can result in higher client satisfaction. The retail industry is considered one of the main industries in which the workforce is the most crucial asset. Therefore, using staff motivation in the retail industry is expected to show immediate results in terms of client satisfaction. This is the main objective of the research, as well.
Research Objectives
The objective of this research is to realize if the enhancement of staff motivation results in higher client satisfaction. The objective is to find out and prove that the retail industry of Australia can work on their staff motivation and as a result can improve their client satisfaction degree. The retail industry can adopt strategies that can help them motivate their staff. And consequently, it is expected that it will improve their client satisfaction degree. The objective of the report is also to find out the techniques through which staff motivation can be enhanced, consequently improving the client’s satisfaction degree as well.
Research Scope
The scope of the study is extended to include the aspects which lead to staff motivation resulting in an increased client satisfaction degree. The research will investigate first the association between staff engagement and motivation and the satisfaction of the clients. Leading on to that, the report will also work on identifying the factors or strategies which help in increasing the motivation degree and engagement degree of the staff. It is important to note that the research scope does not include finding out the association between client satisfaction and the success of the company. The research scope of this study will be limited to finding the association between staff motivation and the satisfaction degree of the clients.
Research Justification
Until now, there have been numerous studies that have been aimed at finding out the association between staff engagement and profitability and client satisfaction and profitability. However, one would find limited literature on the association and effect of the enhancements of the staff engagement and motivation on the client’s satisfaction degree. Furthermore, finding this association in literature for the retail services industry is more difficult. Hence, it is important to conduct this research as identifying the association between the staff motivation staff, and the client-satisfaction degree will evidently result in positive results for staff, clients, and the company as a whole.
Potential Outputs
This research will result in identifying the association between staff motivation and client satisfaction in the retail and services industry of Sydney Australia. The result will find out if the association between staff motivation and client satisfaction is strong enough to make the companies work for greater investment in the staff. Furthermore, this research will also result in the strategies which can be adopted in order to make the motivation degree of the staff improve. The strategies or factors which, if adopted, can result in a higher motivation degree among the staff and a greater client satisfaction degree for the company as well.
The Conceptual Framework/Literature Review
It is true that the highly engaged staff and the positive growth in the profitability of the company are positively correlated. However, is it because engaged staffs result in positive outcomes for a company or the companies who are successful usually have highly engaged staff? There are numerous studies that have worked on finding out the association between these variables. An article published in Forbes showed over studies which have provided evidence for the association between these two variables. It has been shown in the article that the high engagement of staff correlates directly with the decline in turnover, absenteeism, defective products, and services, while, on the other hand, it also affects and causes an increment in productivity, client service, sales, and profitability. The author of the article showed that causality is suggested in terms of the engagement or the emotional commitment of the staff with a higher degree of discretionary efforts of the staff. The theoretical linkage presented by the author is shown below.
Staff Motivation/Engagement Service Retention à Client Satisfaction Client Loyalty à Profitability/Growth
The author, however, showed that with numerous evidence given by several studies about the correlation of the business outcomes and staff engagement there are few studies that have shown causality. Further, another study is indicated which shows how organizational commitment of the staff affects the business performance (Kruse, 2014). It is true that for the service sector, because of the interactive and intangible nature of the services, the clients are usually dependent on the service staff’s behaviour for judging the quality of the service of the company. This is one of the reasons the strong client orientation of the staff is considered an asset for the company. The study conducted in 2003 (Thurau & Hennig-Thurau, 2003) showed empirical testing of the three-dimensional conceptualization of the staffs’ client orientation by using the factors of staff motivation for servicing the clients, their perceived decision-making skills, and their client-oriented skills. A study based on the examination of 989 participants reported that the degree of the client orientation of the service staff, their degree of retention, and their degree of emotional commitment to the organization are key drivers of client satisfaction in organizations (Hennig-Thurau, 2004). Another study which was aimed at integrating the factors that affected the client loyalty in the service and retail organizations found that client loyalty is the most important goal for any company operating in the retail or the services sector. The study showed that client loyalty is more cost-effective as compared to attracting new clients; therefore, it suggested managers adopt cogent strategies. The study found six factors to be influencing the client loyalty of companies. This included the factors of perceived value of service, service quality, technological perception, perceived enjoyment, and trust and client satisfaction. The study showed how the management needs to work on these six factors to improve the loyalty of their clients. Therefore, the management is suggested to put in extra effort to increase client satisfaction, service quality, and perceived value of the service in order to improve client loyalty (Almaamar & Abdulrab, 2017). Another specific study was conducted in 2016 aimed at investigating the impact of the store environment on the degree of client satisfaction among several segmentation, in terms of demographics, in the Australian supermarkets. The main aim of the study was to establish that there is an evident association between the environmental factors of the store and the client satisfaction degree in the various demographic groups of the Australian supermarkets. The study is built on the literature review of the existing literature on the retail sector. The study is based on the theoretical model of providing justification to the association between the demographic segmentation, store environment, and client satisfaction degree. The study identified and analysed the three factors of physical design, ambiance, and social factors. The quantitative survey method was used along with a deductive and descriptive approach. The answers to the 300 survey respondents belonged to the area of New South Wales and Queensland of Australia. The 7 points Likert scale was used for the measurement of the variables. The SPSS analysis conducted showed an analysis of variance, correlation coefficient, cluster analysis and multiple regression analysis (Duong, 2016). Another study showed the importance of Staff based brand equity. The study showed that for the service organizations, it is relevant to consider the staffs’ awareness about the brand in order to improve client satisfaction and organization brand worth (King & Grace, 2009).Another study which was aimed at the retail service industry as well examined the effect of the aspects of the retail service quality in terms of problem solving, policy, personal interaction, reliability, and physical aspects and the aspects of product quality in terms of the client perceived quality, the aesthetics, and features on the loyalty of client (Yuen & Chan, 2010). Another study showed that leaders, their passion for vision, and motivation of the staff by using this vision and the client satisfaction in the retail companies of Australia (Carr, 2005; Kantanen & Julkunen, 2017). The study showed that the stores with a strong vision of the leaders and higher motivation lead to enhanced satisfaction of the staff consequently improving the client satisfaction degree. The motivation of the staff was found as predicting the improved staff satisfaction degree, and the vision of the company and its incorporation in the staff’s service helped in predicting improvement in the client and staff satisfaction degree (Kantabutra & Vimolratana, 2010; Simpson, 2006).
Methodology:
This dissertation is going to use a qualitative mode of research. The qualitative model of research is the one in which the analytical tools of research are utilized for the research. In this type of study, no quantitative tools are used. The study is going to make use of secondary sources or the secondary research method. The data that has been already published by other sources in the form of research reports, documents, articles, etc. are going to be utilized for the analysis of the association between client satisfaction and staff motivation. The research reports on the industry of Retail services in Australia are going to be used for this purpose. The method that is going to be used for the collection of the data is the use of publicly available libraries and internet search engines. The Proquest research tool is also going to be utilized for the collection of the data (Silmerman, 2010). The study will use all secondary sources on the specific topic and analyse it to conduct desk research. This kind of research is usually used when more than quantitative data; the content of the data needs to be analysed. The study is, therefore, going to be making use of the qualitative content analysis and analyse all the literature easily available on the subject of association between the staff engagement, motivation and client satisfaction, and client loyalty. Keywords of staff engagement, staff satisfaction, staff motivation, client satisfaction, client loyalty, and Australian retail services are going to be utilized for searching the search engines.
Research project Organization
The research project is going to be organized in the following sections.
Introduction:
This section will give the background of the study. The introduction section will provide the foundation on which this study is going to be based. The introduction chapter will give the general description and the layout that the study is going to follow. The introduction chapter will give the readers all the information needed to understand the direction of the study, its aims, objectives, research questions, and its significance to the academic and retail services industry.
Methodology:
This chapter will show the approach that the study is going to use. This chapter will deliver details on the sources of data and how the data is going to be collected. The chapter will show how the data from the sources are going to be collected. The chapter will also show how and what tools are going to be utilized for the analysis and evaluation of the data.
Literature Review:
This chapter is going to be the foundation of data analysis. The literature review will provide a short analysis of the literature that is going to be analysed. The literature review will include several journal articles, research reports, book articles, web articles, and other literature on the association of client satisfaction and staff motivation and their published years.
Analysis & Discussion:
This is going to be the most important chapter as this chapter will analyse in detail the literature and data that has been collected in the literature review chapter. This chapter will lead on to the literature review section and use the already summarized and introduced articles in a way that it becomes meaningful in terms of the research questions. All three research questions are going to be answered in this section in an orderly manner.
Conclusion and Recommendations:
This chapter will provide the concluding remarks on the findings and results of the study in terms of the research questions raised in the first section of the study. This chapter is also going to provide some insightful recommendations to the companies in the retail services industry for utilizing this study in their operations. Furthermore, this section is also going to provide recommendations on any future research directions. The limitations of this research are also going to be discussed in this chapter.
Research Budget
The budget for this research study is going to be very limited, as most of the data that needs to be collected is available on online sources. The use of qualitative analysis and secondary sources is chosen for the same reason; to make the study less costly.
Research Schedule
The Schedule of the research is shown below in terms of the Gantt chart. 
Reference List:
Almaamar, Q., & Abdulrab, M. (2017). Factors Affecting Customer Loyalty in Service Organizations. International Journal of Energy Policy and Management, 2(5), 25-31.
Carr, G. (2005). nvestigating The Motivation of Retail Managers at a Retail Organisation in the Western Cape. Retrieved from https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/58912602.pdf
Duong, Q. B. (2016). The influence of store environment on customer satisfaction across different customer demographic segmentations within Australian supermarkets. Retrieved October 7, 2019, from https://epubs.scu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1531&context=theses
Hennig-Thurau, T. (2004). Customer orientation of service employees: Its impact on customer satisfaction, commitment, and retention. International Journal of Service Industry Management, 15(5), 460-478.
Kantabutra, S., & Vimolratana, P. (2010). Vision-Based Leaders and Their Followers in Retail Stores: Relationships and Consequences in Australia. Journal of Applied Business Research, 26(6), 123-134.
Kantanen, T., & Julkunen, S. (2017). Creating employees’ motivational paths in the retail. Cogent Business & Management (4), 1-14.
King, C., & Grace, D. (2009). Employee Based Brand Equity: A Third Perspective. Services Marketing Quarterly, 30(2), 122-147.
Kruse, K. (2014, January 7). Employee Engagement: The Wonder Drug for Customer Satisfaction. Retrieved October 6, 2019, from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2014/01/07/employee-engagement-the-wonder-drug-for-customer-satisfaction/#4d0557a36d46
Silmerman, D. (2010). Qualitative Research. Sage. Simpson, E. P. (2006). Examining employee satisfaction, customer service and customer satisfaction in a retail banking organization. Retrieved from Proquest.com: https://search.proquest.com/businesspremium/docview/305302893/previewPDF/CFA68F06FF50454BPQ/1?accountid=30552
Thurau, C., & Hennig-Thurau, T. (2003). Customer orientation of service employees – toward a conceptual framework of a key relationship marketing construct. Journal of Relationship Management, 2(1), 1-32.
Yuen, E. F., & Chan, S. S. (2010). The effect of retail service quality and product quality on customer loyalty. Journal of Database Marketing & Customer Strategy Management, 17(3-4), 222-240.
