1. You are required to conduct a systematic, critical literature review on the various factors influencing your chosen area of interest (i.e. area a), b), or c)). For instance, if area b) is chosen, you will be critically reviewing established literature on the factors that influence/determine/affect the degree of overall customer satisfaction. In order to better inform Secret Recipe's managers on what they should focus on, it is also essential to critically evaluate factors that may seem important at first glance but are not supported by the empirical literature. This is to prevent them from devoting too much resource to aspects that are likely to be ineffective.
2. In order for Secret Recipe to gain a clearer insight into their actual competitive position in relation to their closest competitors (only for the specific area that you have chosen), you are required to formulate a research design (either qualitative OR quantitative) that would adequately address this need. For instance, if you have chosen area c), what sort of research methodology/method would you 9 adopt to find out the degree of overall customer satisfaction? You should elaborate on both choice of data collection method as well as the underlying research methodology.
3. In addition to the methodological approach (Requirement 2), you are required to develop a suitable sampling procedure in order to carry out the said exercise. More specifically, the proposed sampling procedure should enable appropriate comparisons to be made (in relation to Customer Satisfaction, for example) between Secret Recipe and ANY ONE chosen competitor (for a list of the company's closest competitors, please refer to Table 2 within the given case study). Please also include the practical details of carrying out the data collection exercise (for e.g. indicative sample size, location(s) where data is collected, etc.).
For Requirements 2 and 3, the general manager expects you to justify each chosen aspect of your methodology and also sampling procedure by referring to/drawing upon credible research work done in the past (i.e. empirical literature).
4. For the methodology and sampling procedure chosen above (i.e. Question 2), please explain clearly how your underlying Research Philosophy influenced the aforementioned choices.