You are a business consultant at a small consulting firm inSydney Australia. A client Ben McDonald from office suppliesretailer “Office Storeroom†has contacted you to ask for your help.Ben is the newly appointed sales manager at Office Storeroom. Youarrange a meeting with Ben at a local coffee shop. During themeeting Ben explains that Office Storeroom is the longest runningoffice supplies company in Australia, having started business in1973. They pride themselves on providing the most affordable officesupplies available. They sell office supplies to businesses andpersonal shoppers.
They have 15 retail outlets across Australia, one store in eachof the major cities and a few in some of the larger regional areas.Office supplies are also sold online, via the Office Storeroomwebsite. Interestingly, despite limited investment in onlinewebsite and logistics, almost 65% of their business is now online.Online sales have significantly increased since Office Storeroomwent online in 2013. However, during the same time-frame sales atretail outlets have declined.
Overall, sales at Office Storeroom have been declining for thepast 3 years. Sales figures for the past 5 years are shown in thetable below.
Year | Sales |
2013 | $1,094,398.00 |
2014 | $1,987, 213.00 |
2015 | $1,772,973.00 |
2016 | $1,436,392.00 |
2017 | $1,073,924.00 |
Table 1: Sales Figures
As the new head of sales (Ben joined in year 2017) at OfficeStoreroom, Ben is responsible for improving the sales of officesupplies. During the meeting Ben explains that he knows it is hisjob to improve sales but he is unsure how to do this. He has askedfor your help to conduct some research to help make some informeddecisions about how to improve sales.
- Develop research question(s) that address the concerns outlinedin the above scenario.
- What secondary data sources might be used to help answer theresearch question(s)?
- Selection of primary data collection method(s): What primarydata collection method(s) can you use to help develop somerecommendations for Ben? Justify your chosen method(s).
- Selection of sampling technique: Ben wants you to get staffopinions about the decline in sales. How will you obtain thesample? Justify your sampling design.
- What ethical principles you should follow when conducting thisresearch?
- Identify limitations in the research design you described in Q3(relating to data collection) and/or Q4 (relating tosampling).
