In May 2019, the Infocomm Media Development Authority Reported that the Mobile Penetration Rate: Research Proposal, OU, Singapore

Assignment Brief:

In May 2019, the Infocomm Media Development Authority reported that the mobile penetration rate in Singapore remained high at 154.1% or 1.54 mobile subscriptions per person. In another independent poll conducted in 2018 by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, it was reported that more than 90% of Singaporean adults were using a smartphone, exceeding that of other Asia Pacific countries such as Japan and South Korea. Even though it has a small population of 5.7 million people, Singapore is the third wealthiest country in the world based on GDP per adult.

Singaporeans are obsessed with owning the latest models of mobile phones, especially among young working adults. It is hardly surprising that Singapore has been designated, by the major mobile phone vendors, as among the first batch of countries to launch their latest smartphone models in recent years. Apple has always been the most sought-after brand in Singapore, followed closely by Samsung which has managed to narrow its gap with Apple in recent years. Competitions for market share remain very intensive, especially among the smaller players such as Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Sony. With the mobile phone vendors trying to outdo each other by launching at least a few new models each year, these vendors are finding it tough to maintain profitability in this important yet tight market.

TASK

The management of one of the mobile phone vendors strongly believes that it is still possible to thrive in the Singapore market. It believes the key to its future success will depend on how well the company could build and sustain strong brand loyalty among its users. In order to help it to develop relevant and effective marketing strategies to build strong loyalty, the management reckons it needs to understand the impact of factors such as brand image, brand personality, perception of corporate social responsibility, and product quality have on brand loyalty.

As a result, the management is interested to conduct a marketing research study among smartphone users in Singapore to find out the relationships between these factors and brand loyalty. Assuming you are the marketing research consultant engaged by the company to design a marketing research study to meet the needs of the management.

1. Provide justifications as to whether to conduct qualitative and/or quantitative research by comparing the applications and limitations of these two research approaches.

2. Explain how you would go about planning and conducting the focus groups. To propose a maximum of 10 themes for the focus group discussions.

3. Explain how you are going to select the respondents for the online survey. Examine the benefits of non-probability and probability sampling and justify the selection of the sampling method you have chosen.

4. Customers’ contact details and basic demographic data collected in the warranty card: suggestions on how to make use of this information and the limitations for using such information.