Assignment Sample on 7BUS2002 Business Research Method
Title
An investigation to the impact of growing online sales on the business operations and consumer behaviour of Tesco during Covid 19
Introduction
Online sales in the current scenario seem to be growing rapidly due to the prevalence of covid scenarios. This is impacting the operations of different companies worldwide. The current research will be focused on analysing the impact of growing online sales on the operations of Tesco and its strategy to cope with the current trend within the market. In this respect, this research will be proposing research aims and objectives further will be providing a literature review on the concerned matter and will specify the research strategies that will be used by the researcher in collecting and analysing data.
Background
Covid-19 in the current scenario is creating several changes within the demand of the customers. Due to lockdown, the online sales seem to grow on a huge margin as customers solely depend on the ecommerce platform for shopping and getting their necessities during lockdown (Gu et al. 2021). Tesco is considered to be one of the largest retailers within the domain of the UK dealing with general and multinational groceries (Tesco, 2022). Founded by Jack Cohen in 1919, the company has been operating successfully with currently more than 7000 shops in different locations with group sales of £53,445 m in the current year (Tesco, 2021). Henceforth, this research will be investigating the impact of growing online sales on this company.
Rationale
The current reports of Tesco depict a huge shift of the company to the online sales due to change of customer preferences for covid scenario. Ecommerce in this respect grew from 9% of the total sales of the UK to 14% of UK’s sales (Rigby, 2020). Besides, Tesco seems to be spending £840 m, in terms of adjusting to the covid secure shopping. In this respect, the company seems to be facing several challenges.
However, the growing online sales also seems to be impacting the revenue margin of the company as revenue of 2020 depicts a decline of 1.84% followed by a decline of 9.37% as of 2021 (Macrotrends, 2021). This resulted in a negative impact of the growing online sales within the domain of Tesco and thus is considered to be worth investigating.
Significance of the research
This research will be highly significant as it will be effective in understanding the impact of online sales on the business scenario. Besides, it will also be effective in understanding the current trends of customers within the market that further influence the business operations adversely. Other than that, it will also be effective in creating high awareness among different companies in implementing measures to meet the growing online sales and demands of the customers within the market.
Structure of dissertation
Aims and objectives of the research
Aim
This research aims at analysing the impact of growing online sales on consumer behaviour and business operations of Tesco.
Objectives
The objectives of this research include
- To analyse the impact of growing online sales on consumer behaviour and business operations of Tesco
- To evaluate the challenges of growing online sales on consumer behaviour and business operations of Tesco
- To illustrate the benefits of growing online sales on consumer behaviour and business operations of Tesco
- To provide recommendations to manage the growing online sales
Research questions
Research questions includes
- What is the impact of growing online sales on consumer behaviour and business operations of Tesco?
- What are the challenges of growing online sales on consumer behaviour and business operations of Tesco?
- What are the benefits of growing online sales on consumer behaviour and business operations of Tesco?
- What are the ways to manage the growing online sales?
Literature review
Critical analysis of the concept of online sales and consumer behaviour
Online sales mainly refer to the process of buying products from an ecommerce platform. According to the illustration of Loxton et al. (2020), the aspects of online sales are directly linked towards the aspects of consumer behaviour within the market. Is because, the behaviour of customers in terms of buying goods and services from an ecommerce platform that operates online depicts buying behaviour of the customers. Ismagilova et al. (2020) stated that, growing online sales within a market generally results from behaviour of the consumers within the domain. Henceforth, online sales and consumer behaviour are linked with each other.
Critical evaluation of challenges and benefits of growing online sales for business operations
Online sales tend to have certain benefits and challenges that impact a business operation. According to do Paço et al. (2019), online sale is highly convenient and is also considered to be highly comfortable. Besides, it also requires less cost of staff and further deals with providing 24-hour services to the customers. As per Wiederhold and Martinez (2018), it also results in high customer satisfaction and deals with quick setup with low cost of infrastructure. It is because, as per Maslow Hierarchy Needs theory, it can be observed that a customer is highly satisfied if its needs are met properly (Sarda et al. 2018). However, as argued by Al Balushi (2018), proper skills of staff in terms of technical instances are highly required in an ecommerce platform. In this respect this can be a major challenge of online sales faced by business operations. Other than that, problems related to logistics alongside payment issues and ambiguous policies of websites can also be serious threats to online sales of a business. Therefore, there are several challenges and benefits of online sales.
Critical illustration of the impact of online sales for business operations
Online sales tend to create a positive impact on the business operations. It is because as per White and Tong (2019), online sales help in providing proper access to the customers to review products and further results in quick purchasing. In addition to this, online sales also provide the customers with several opportunities such as home delivery, wide range of products, saving lots of time and efforts and many others. In this respect, it can be stated that ecommerce platforms help in increasing the sales of a company. It is because as per consumer behaviour theory it can be noticed that the decision of the people in terms of buying a product are predicted through their activities (Spangenberg and Lorek, 2019). Currently, it can be observed that 59.5% of the users are active on the internet in a worldwide scenario (Johnson, 2021). As the majority of the consumers are active on online platforms, therefore, there is a high chance of increasing sales through the ecommerce platforms.
Literature gap
Literacy gap in the current research can be effective in creating barriers in gaining proper outcomes. Based on this notion, it can be stated that low availability in terms of research materials can be effective in creating a high gap for the current literature. It is because improper information may create high barriers to acquire the desired result. Other than that, improper cost and time can also create a high gap in gaining proper literature that further will assist the researcher to gain a proper outcome.
Discussion of research designs
Research philosophy
The current research will be using positivism philosophy. As per Snyder (2019), positivism philosophy helps in understanding the world in an objective way. In this respect, the researcher of the current field will be able to analyse the impact of online sales on the operations and consumer behaviour of Tesco in an objective way. Besides as per Zangirolami-Raimundo et al. (2018), this philosophy also helps in gaining factual knowledge and links its observation with the real world. Henceforth, using this philosophy the current researcher will be able to analyse the impact of online sales on the business operations in consumer behaviour of Tesco in a positive way.
Research strategy
The current researcher will also be using the deductive approach and descriptive design as a strategy to collect information regarding the impact of online sales on the business operations in consumer behaviour of Tesco. As per Basias and Pollalis (2018), deductive approach helps in supporting the collective information with proper reason while descriptive design helps in analysing the collected information in a descriptive way. As a result of these, it can be stated that through the stated strategy the current researcher will be able to justify the collected information and support the outcome with proper reasons. Other than that, the current researcher will also be using a mixed approach using both qualitative and quantitative methodology to collect information. It is because, as per Ragab and Arisha (2018), mixed methodology helps in collecting different types of information that further benefits the research highly. Hence, the research strategy will be effective for analysing the impact of online sales on the business operations and consumer behaviour of Tesco.
Methods of data collection
The current research will be using a secondary method of data Collection. As per Newman and Gough (2020), the secondary methods of data collection help in saving lots of time and provides a researcher with the opportunity of collecting a wide range of literature that enhances research outcome positively as compared to the primary research. In this respect the researcher will be using secondary sources such as journals, books, articles, newspapers and others to collect secondary information from the data sources such as Google Scholar and ProQuest.
Methods of data analysis
The collected data with the help of secondary sources will be analysed through thematic analysis. According to the illustration of Turnbull et al. (2021), thematic analysis helps in proper evaluation of the collected data through different themes. It is also subjected to proper understanding of the readers. In this respect 5 to 6 themes will be developed based on the data collected through secondary data collection methods and will be analysed respectively. Henceforth, through thematic analysis, the researcher will be able to analyse the impact of online sales on the business operations and consumer behaviour of Tesco [Refer to Appendix].
Research limitations
The current research is based on secondary methods of collecting and analysing data and will be limited to it. The current research will also be limited towards the use of a wide range of literature that are available on online sources and will be limited to it while avoiding any kind of primary data and insights of the current topic through the help of questionnaires, interviews and others. Henceforth, using secondary data and not using any kind of primary data is one of the main limitations of the current research.
Ethical issues
Secondary methods of data collection and analysis deal with different kinds of ethical issues such as copyrights, improper content and others. As illustrated by Ryder et al. (2020), collection of secondary information from other works requires third party access to avoid the ethical issue of copyright. In this respect, collecting information from various secondary sources and not having any proper permission from the authors of the sources may lead to copyright that is considered to be the measure at issue in this research.
Summary
From the current study it can be summarised that the research will be based on analysing the impact of online sales on the business operations in consumer behaviour of Tesco. From this study it can be analysed that, in the current scenario the revenue of Tesco is declining due to the prevalence of covid-19 that further increases the trend of ecommerce platforms. However, in this respect, the objective of the research will be to analyse the impact of growing online sales on the consumer behaviour and operations of Tesco and will also be dealing with the challenges and benefits of it. Other than that, ways of improving online sales of the current business will also be researched through this study. However, the researcher will adopt secondary methods of collecting data with the help of positivism philosophy, deductive approach and descriptive design and it will be analysed through thematic analysis. Henceforth, it can be stated that through the help of secondary methods of data collection and analysis, the current researcher is likely to gain proper results on the impact of growing online sales on the consumer behaviour and business operations of Tesco.
Reference list
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Basias, N. and Pollalis, Y., 2018. Quantitative and qualitative research in business & technology: Justifying a suitable research methodology. Review of Integrative Business and Economics Research, 7, pp.91-105.
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Gu, S., Ślusarczyk, B., Hajizada, S., Kovalyova, I. and Sakhbieva, A., 2021. Impact of the covid-19 pandemic on online consumer purchasing behavior. Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research, 16(6), pp.2263-2281.
Ismagilova, E., Slade, E., Rana, N.P. and Dwivedi, Y.K., 2020. The effect of characteristics of source credibility on consumer behaviour: A meta-analysis. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 53, p.101736.
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