Future Shop : Retail customer research.

Future shop: Retail customer research.

Future Shop is Canada’s largest retailer and e-tailer of consumer electronics, founded in 1982.

With over 135 stores from coast-to-coast and over $3.5 billion in annual revenue. Future Shop was dedicated to providing customers with expert technology advice both in stores and online.

Research objectives

• Customer service quality - presented by Ivers&Kay
•  Number and disponibility of locations (customers’ reaching) - presented by Alidina
• RVP - Retail Value Proposition - customer care + price + selection of products
• Reputation of the Future Shop (geographic area and in general)
• Web - awareness, why online?
  

Strengths and Weaknesses of the research study

- Strengths

• The research takes several forms: e-mailing, in- person and covers different facets of the company’s operations
• Personal implication and interest (Ivers and Kay had their own experience of shopping at Future Shop)
• Large scale: 9 states in Canada, 2 cities in Great Britain
• Customers’ comments and emotional feedback
• Questions cover all the issues of the marketing problems
• High-quality research on Price and Service

- Weaknesses

• Long questionnaire, that is not organised due to the MR issues (for ex. price is repeated 3 times)
• No geographic segmentation of the results
• No info about the age of respondents
• How many customers were interviewed/feedback by mail
• Web-retail - only 1 question.
• Not divided (questionnaire for employers and
  customers should be different)
• Competitors are not covered by the research, it is only the interior research
• Selection of the products is not studied in details, despite it’s importance (57% marked the large selection as the best description)

Alternative research design

Due to our research analysis, with it’s weaknesses and strengths, we could improve questions’ order, adapting them more to the needs of the research and getting better results.

1. Questions should be adapted to the geographic zones: one general research and one special.
2. We can divide employers’ and customers’ interviews and results.

3. Organise the questionnaire by the marketing questions (price, service etc). 4. Pay more attention to the questions about selection of products.

Implications of the research.

Service level is not satisfying enough (interview feedback, + only 33% rated the service as satisfying - 7/10 or higher)

The shop should keep the best price range, because it is the question of high importance for customers (52% compare them, 62% valued it’s prices lower than average)

Keep investing in the advertising (50% were attracted by AD)

Develop and promote the Future Shop website (63% of customers are web-shoppers, but only a half of them visited the FutureShop.ca)

Recommendations.

Improve customer-service (develop training and development programs)

Create fidelity program with discounts and special offers/ presents to keep clients devoted to Future Shop

Develop more advertisement campaigns, especially promoting the website, because the Internet is the future of the shopping.

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