Background

The mobile network industry in Singapore is primarily composed of three major players –SingTel, StarHub, and M1. With current industry standards, Singapore now boasts one of the most advanced and well-developed telecommunications infrastructures in the world. In 2018, the total market size of the Singapore telecommunication industry was estimated to be worth around S$9.51 billion.

Even though the mobile network providers are not directly hit by the current pandemic, however, in recent years, the mobile network industry in Singapore has been facing major shake-ups and the future of the industry is predicted to get even tougher. With a penetration rate of mobile subscriptions hovering around 148% in 2020, experts have predicted the highly saturated mobile network industry to face very slow growth over the next three years to 2024. One major challenge is the rapid rise in competition as new providers such as TPG, Zero1, Circles. Life and MyRepublic have entered the market in recent years.

In order to thrive in this hyper-competitive industry, the management of a mobile network provider in Singapore strongly believes its company must shift its focus from being product-centric to customer-centric. The management reckons that the best way to increase its market share in the next few years is to increase customer retention; by ensuring that its customers who are currently on a two-year contract with the company will renew their contract once it expires. In order to better allocate the company’s resources to meet this goal, the management wants to conduct a marketing research study to determine if factors such as price, advertising, brand image, and service quality are important predictors of customer retention.

Task

Assuming you are the marketing research consultant contacted by this local mobile network company to design a marketing research study to meet the needs of the management.

a) Research design

You are to write and submit a research proposal for the research study. In the proposal, you are to recommend a suitable research design to meet the objectives of the research study. In the proposal, you must provide justifications whether to conduct qualitative and/or quantitative research by comparing the applications and limitations of these two research approaches. You are expected to provide examples of business applications for these two research approaches. (~1,000 words)

b) Assuming that after studying a few marketing research proposals submitted by different marketing research agencies, the management decides to commission your company and wants to conduct a two-stage research design starting with a qualitative research using online focus groups and then followed by a quantitative study using online surveys.

i) Online focus group discussions

As the moderator, explain how you would go about planning and conducting the online focus groups. The purpose of the online focus groups is to identify the key factors that will drive customer retention and the findings will be used in the questionnaire design for the quantitative phase. You are expected to propose a maximum of 10 themes (with a maximum 3 questions for each theme) for the online focus group discussions. (~800 words)

ii) Online survey

For the quantitative phase of the research, you are to propose how you will select (or sample) the respondents for the online survey. In your discussion, you are to examine the benefits and limitations of non-probability and probability sampling. In addition, you are to select a sampling method (to choose either a non-probability or probability sampling technique) and justify the selection of the sampling method you have chosen. (~800 words)

c) The marketing manager of the mobile network company disclosed that it has a large database of customers’ contact details and basic demographic data which were collected when its customers signed up to use its mobile network services. You are to provide suggestions on how the management could make use of this customer database (not limited to usage within the current research study). Your answers should also include the limitations for using such information.

Learning Outcomes Assessed:

1. Develop and design research to address a given business scenario
2. Compare the advantages and disadvantages of qualitative and quantitative research techniques